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Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda

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Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighal country. The Daily oz acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the

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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate

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Speaker 1: island and nations. We pay our respects to the first

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Speaker 1: peoples of these countries, both past and present.

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Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os It's Thursday,

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Speaker 2: the thirtieth of November.

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Speaker 3: I'm Zara, I'm Saram.

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Speaker 2: Prime Minister Anthony Alberizi has made a national apology to

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Speaker 2: those impacted by a morning sickness drug in the early sixties.

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Speaker 2: The drug caused severe disabilities in thousands of babies whose

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Speaker 2: mothers had taken the drug.

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Speaker 4: So let it be said today and recorded for all time.

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Speaker 4: These parents, these mothers did nothing wrong. These parents did

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Speaker 4: not foil their children. The system foiled them both.

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Speaker 2: Now we're going to explain what the drug is, harmit

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Speaker 2: cause and why the PM apologized for it in the

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Speaker 2: Deep Dive. But first the headlines.

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Speaker 3: Free television content will become easier to find on smart TVs.

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Speaker 3: That's under new government measures legislation introduced by Communications Minister

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Speaker 3: Michelle Roland will require TV manufacturers to prioritize the on

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Speaker 3: screen discoverability of free tooware services over subscription services like Netflix.

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Speaker 3: Roland said it's becoming harder to find Australian programming on

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Speaker 3: connected devices like smart televisions, and that this bill will

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Speaker 3: prevent content slipping behind online paywalls.

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Speaker 2: The Victorian government will repay seven million dollars worth of

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Speaker 2: road taxes to electric vehicle owners in the state. Victorian

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Speaker 2: ev drivers had been required to make payments based on

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Speaker 2: the number of kilometers they traveled on public roads. However,

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Speaker 2: that road charge was challenged in the High Court earlier

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Speaker 2: this year and was eventually scrapped. Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas

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Speaker 2: told ABC News that government revenue from the tax will

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Speaker 2: be repaid to drivers with interest.

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Speaker 3: Amazon has launched its new AI assistant, Amazon Q. The

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Speaker 3: chatbot joins a growing market of AI assistants from tech

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Speaker 3: companies including Open Ai, Google and Microsoft. Amazon Q is

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Speaker 3: aimed at workplaces to help complete daily tasks and solve

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Speaker 3: business issues. Amazon said it thinks Q has the potential

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Speaker 3: to become a work companion for millions of workers. Pricing

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Speaker 3: starts at around twenty US dollars per month per person.

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Speaker 2: And the good news forty one construction workers have been

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Speaker 2: rescued after seventeen days trapped in a collapsed tunnel in India.

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Speaker 2: A landslide in the Himalayas buried a section of the

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Speaker 2: tunnel on the twelfth of November, but workers survived on

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Speaker 2: food and water delivered to them by rescuers through small pipes.

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Speaker 2: Handheld drills were used to eventually free all of the workers.

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Speaker 2: They were taken from medical checks and observation before they

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Speaker 2: were sent home. So Sam, this story about thalidamide has

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Speaker 2: obviously existed for a very long time, but was back

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Speaker 2: in the new cycle yesterday because Anthony Alberinezi delivered a

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Speaker 2: very rare but significant national apology to those affected. I'm

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Speaker 2: interested to know if you'd heard of this before yesterday.

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Speaker 3: I really hadn't. I hadn't heard of it yesterday, and

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Speaker 3: when I saw the emotional scenes unfolding in Parliament, it

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Speaker 3: felt like I'd really missed a big discussion, like it's

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Speaker 3: very rare for an apology to be delivered in the

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Speaker 3: National Parliament, and so I knew it was important and

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Speaker 3: I wanted to find out a bit more about it.

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Speaker 2: It was really interesting because I think like the majority

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Speaker 2: of people we were speaking to hadn't heard of it before, right,

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Speaker 2: And I thought that was interesting.

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Speaker 3: So before we get to the apology that was delivered yesterday,

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Speaker 3: can we first go back to what the drug actually

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Speaker 3: is and why it was used originally.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So the drugs called thlidamide. It was an oral

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Speaker 2: medication and it was given to pregnant women who were

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Speaker 2: experiencing morning sickness. So you can imagine that that's a

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Speaker 2: pretty big cohort. It was very big towards the end

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Speaker 2: of the fifties and the beginning of the nineteen sixties.

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Speaker 2: It was actually first developed as a sleeping pill, interestingly

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Speaker 2: sold in Germany in nineteen fifty seven, and it ended

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Speaker 2: up being distributed to about forty six countries around the world.

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Speaker 2: That of course included Australia, where we're talking about the

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Speaker 2: story today here. It was sold from nineteen sixty and

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Speaker 2: ended up being banned just a year later in nineteen

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Speaker 2: sixty one.

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Speaker 3: So it wasn't on the shelves for a very long time, no.

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Speaker 2: But it still had a huge impact despite only being

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Speaker 2: around for that short period.

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Speaker 3: What was that impact? Why was it then banned so quickly?

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Speaker 2: So essentially it was marketed as this reputable, highly effective drug,

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Speaker 2: but ultimately thlidamide was quickly found to be very, very unsafe.

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Speaker 2: It caused severe disabilities in the thousands of babies whose

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Speaker 2: mothers had taken the drug again, they were taking it

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Speaker 2: from warning sickness. What that looked like was babies being

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Speaker 2: born with shortened or absent limbs, things like facial disfigurement

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Speaker 2: or brain injury. There were also lowered health outcomes among survivors.

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Speaker 2: Things like poor mental health had also been reported. High

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Speaker 2: rates of premature deaths due to thlinamide were also reported,

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Speaker 2: and there were also miscarriages and infant deaths associated with

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Speaker 2: the drug. As many as one hundred thousand babies were

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Speaker 2: believed to have been affected by thlinamine.

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Speaker 3: And keeping in mind that time that it was on

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Speaker 3: the shelf, that's a lot of people. Where were the

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Speaker 3: signs in that year that the drug was dangerous and

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Speaker 3: kind of take me through how it came off the shelves.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So interestingly, it was an Australian doctor who was

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Speaker 2: the first to publicly make the link between thlinamide and

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Speaker 2: disabilities in infants.

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Speaker 3: So this was available elsewhere around them, and I think.

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Speaker 2: We said some of the forty six countries so yes.

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Speaker 2: But it was an Australian doctor. His name is William McBride.

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Speaker 2: He published a letter in a medical journal in nineteen

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Speaker 2: sixty one asking other doctors if they had seen similar

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Speaker 2: results to him, and the results he was talking about

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Speaker 2: there were babies with a particular set of disabilities being

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Speaker 2: born to women who had taken thlidamide. So essentially he

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Speaker 2: published what was an observation of a trend that he

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Speaker 2: was detecting, basically a call out to see has anyone

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Speaker 2: else seen this and could it be linked to the

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Speaker 2: drug that these women are taking? Ultimately turned out to

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Speaker 2: be true, and it was that that led eventually to

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Speaker 2: a ban on the drug. Later that year, the German

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Speaker 2: company that first developed the drug formally pulled thlidamide from

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Speaker 2: the market, and other distributors of course followed suit. While

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Speaker 2: the drug was only in circulation for fewer than five years,

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Speaker 2: it's fair to say it's had a generational impact on

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Speaker 2: families and communities across the world, and here in Australia

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Speaker 2: we saw the very real impact it had when Anthony

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Speaker 2: Aberinezi apologized, and we've seen some really moving photos of

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Speaker 2: people sitting in the public gallery balling because of it.

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Speaker 3: And there was a nice moment after as well where

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Speaker 3: Anthony Albanese actually met some of the survivors and kind

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Speaker 3: of embraced them personally. What did Anthony Aberanese actually apologize for?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was interesting. I called my mum to talk

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Speaker 2: about this story yesterday and she couldn't understand what role

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Speaker 2: the Australian government had in it. She was like, well,

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Speaker 2: wasn't it the drug manufacturer or the researchers or you know,

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Speaker 2: the doctors were prescribing it, Like why is it the

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Speaker 2: Australian government? And essentially what Anthony Aberzi was saying was

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Speaker 2: related to the Australian Government's failure to test the advertised

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Speaker 2: claims that the drug was safe to use. Essentially, he

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Speaker 2: was apologizing that they didn't go far enough in testing

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Speaker 2: these claims.

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Speaker 5: There was no system for properly evaluating the safety of medicines,

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Speaker 5: and the terrible cruelty the lidamide was that far from

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Speaker 5: being safe, just one dose was enough to cause devastating harm.

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Speaker 5: Just one dose was enough to inflict a lifetime of

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Speaker 5: damage on an unborn child or indeed cause premature death

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Speaker 5: either in utero or in the years ahead.

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Speaker 2: And interestingly, the litamine tragedy partly led to the creation

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Speaker 2: of the Therapeutic Goods Administration Yeah, the TGA, which is

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Speaker 2: the medicine and the Therapeutic Regulatory Agency, so basically the

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Speaker 2: group that is regulating the quality, the supply, the advertising

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Speaker 2: of medicine here in Australia. But it was because of

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Speaker 2: this tragedy in part that that eventually was created. Albanize

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Speaker 2: said that the Australian health system failed the mothers who

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Speaker 2: used the littamite and he said they had been haunted

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Speaker 2: by undeserved regret their whole lives, calling the period one

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Speaker 2: of the darkest chapters in Australia's medical history. And as

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Speaker 2: we were just speaking about before, there were lots of

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Speaker 2: survivors in Parliament yesterday when Anthony Abernesi delivered this apology,

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Speaker 2: there was also a minute silence observed for those who

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Speaker 2: had suffered or died due to the drugs.

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Speaker 3: So this apology didn't come out of nowhere. What have

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Speaker 3: we seen the Australian government do over the last couple

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Speaker 3: of years that's led to this.

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Speaker 2: So a key reform came back in twenty twenty, so

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Speaker 2: that was the Morrison government at the time. They announced

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Speaker 2: a program that would provide compensation for survivors.

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Speaker 3: Still remarkable, it was between nineteen sixty one to twenty twenty. Yes,

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Speaker 3: it's a long time.

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Speaker 2: It actually came in two forms. So the first was

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Speaker 2: a one off tax free payment between seventy five thousand

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Speaker 2: dollars and half a million dollars. The amount that each

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Speaker 2: recipient got would depend on their level of disability. The

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Speaker 2: other was an ongoing annual payment, so that was designed

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Speaker 2: to provide survivors with a very steady payment to then

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Speaker 2: help them address what can only be characterized as like

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Speaker 2: ongoing health needs on a day to day basis.

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Speaker 3: And when Anthony Albinezi won the election last year, did

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Speaker 3: he maintain that Morrison government policy up until today.

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Speaker 2: So there hadn't been any changes until yesterday. In his apology,

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Speaker 2: Albanezi promised two changes to the program. Firstly, he said

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Speaker 2: that those who didn't receive compensation from the program when

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Speaker 2: it launched would now be given the opportunity to make

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Speaker 2: an application. He also committed to indexing the annual payments

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Speaker 2: from the government, so that it just means that the

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Speaker 2: payment will rise each year in accordance with inflation.

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Speaker 3: I think the thing that's really struck me about this

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Speaker 3: story is that period between nineteen sixty one and twenty twenty,

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Speaker 3: and I can only imagine the hard work that went

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Speaker 3: into advocating for survivors during that time. So for then

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Speaker 3: a program to come in twenty twenty and an apology

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Speaker 3: to be delivered in National Parliament three years later does

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Speaker 3: seem like progress in this space, and I hope it's

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Speaker 3: brought some sort of solace to survivors and their families.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and then on the symbolic side, there'll also be

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Speaker 2: a national Solidimide recognition site. Basically a monument be unveiled

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Speaker 2: in Canberra today and there'll be a ceremony that will

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Speaker 2: be attended by polidamine survivors and their families.

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Speaker 3: That's all from us here today at The Daily Oz.

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Speaker 3: If you enjoyed this podcast, would love you to leave

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Speaker 3: a review or a comment and question in the Spotify

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Speaker 3: answer box. You can also leave a review on Apple

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Speaker 3: Podcasts if that's where you're listening. We'll be back again

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Speaker 3: in your ears tomorrow morning. Until then, have a great day.