Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighal country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate
Speaker 1: island and nations. We pay our respects to the first
Speaker 1: peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os It's Thursday,
Speaker 2: the thirtieth of November.
Speaker 3: I'm Zara, I'm Saram.
Speaker 2: Prime Minister Anthony Alberizi has made a national apology to
Speaker 2: those impacted by a morning sickness drug in the early sixties.
Speaker 2: The drug caused severe disabilities in thousands of babies whose
Speaker 2: mothers had taken the drug.
Speaker 4: So let it be said today and recorded for all time.
Speaker 4: These parents, these mothers did nothing wrong. These parents did
Speaker 4: not foil their children. The system foiled them both.
Speaker 2: Now we're going to explain what the drug is, harmit
Speaker 2: cause and why the PM apologized for it in the
Speaker 2: Deep Dive. But first the headlines.
Speaker 3: Free television content will become easier to find on smart TVs.
Speaker 3: That's under new government measures legislation introduced by Communications Minister
Speaker 3: Michelle Roland will require TV manufacturers to prioritize the on
Speaker 3: screen discoverability of free tooware services over subscription services like Netflix.
Speaker 3: Roland said it's becoming harder to find Australian programming on
Speaker 3: connected devices like smart televisions, and that this bill will
Speaker 3: prevent content slipping behind online paywalls.
Speaker 2: The Victorian government will repay seven million dollars worth of
Speaker 2: road taxes to electric vehicle owners in the state. Victorian
Speaker 2: ev drivers had been required to make payments based on
Speaker 2: the number of kilometers they traveled on public roads. However,
Speaker 2: that road charge was challenged in the High Court earlier
Speaker 2: this year and was eventually scrapped. Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas
Speaker 2: told ABC News that government revenue from the tax will
Speaker 2: be repaid to drivers with interest.
Speaker 3: Amazon has launched its new AI assistant, Amazon Q. The
Speaker 3: chatbot joins a growing market of AI assistants from tech
Speaker 3: companies including Open Ai, Google and Microsoft. Amazon Q is
Speaker 3: aimed at workplaces to help complete daily tasks and solve
Speaker 3: business issues. Amazon said it thinks Q has the potential
Speaker 3: to become a work companion for millions of workers. Pricing
Speaker 3: starts at around twenty US dollars per month per person.
Speaker 2: And the good news forty one construction workers have been
Speaker 2: rescued after seventeen days trapped in a collapsed tunnel in India.
Speaker 2: A landslide in the Himalayas buried a section of the
Speaker 2: tunnel on the twelfth of November, but workers survived on
Speaker 2: food and water delivered to them by rescuers through small pipes.
Speaker 2: Handheld drills were used to eventually free all of the workers.
Speaker 2: They were taken from medical checks and observation before they
Speaker 2: were sent home. So Sam, this story about thalidamide has
Speaker 2: obviously existed for a very long time, but was back
Speaker 2: in the new cycle yesterday because Anthony Alberinezi delivered a
Speaker 2: very rare but significant national apology to those affected. I'm
Speaker 2: interested to know if you'd heard of this before yesterday.
Speaker 3: I really hadn't. I hadn't heard of it yesterday, and
Speaker 3: when I saw the emotional scenes unfolding in Parliament, it
Speaker 3: felt like I'd really missed a big discussion, like it's
Speaker 3: very rare for an apology to be delivered in the
Speaker 3: National Parliament, and so I knew it was important and
Speaker 3: I wanted to find out a bit more about it.
Speaker 2: It was really interesting because I think like the majority
Speaker 2: of people we were speaking to hadn't heard of it before, right,
Speaker 2: And I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 3: So before we get to the apology that was delivered yesterday,
Speaker 3: can we first go back to what the drug actually
Speaker 3: is and why it was used originally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the drugs called thlidamide. It was an oral
Speaker 2: medication and it was given to pregnant women who were
Speaker 2: experiencing morning sickness. So you can imagine that that's a
Speaker 2: pretty big cohort. It was very big towards the end
Speaker 2: of the fifties and the beginning of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: It was actually first developed as a sleeping pill, interestingly
Speaker 2: sold in Germany in nineteen fifty seven, and it ended
Speaker 2: up being distributed to about forty six countries around the world.
Speaker 2: That of course included Australia, where we're talking about the
Speaker 2: story today here. It was sold from nineteen sixty and
Speaker 2: ended up being banned just a year later in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty one.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't on the shelves for a very long time, no.
Speaker 2: But it still had a huge impact despite only being
Speaker 2: around for that short period.
Speaker 3: What was that impact? Why was it then banned so quickly?
Speaker 2: So essentially it was marketed as this reputable, highly effective drug,
Speaker 2: but ultimately thlidamide was quickly found to be very, very unsafe.
Speaker 2: It caused severe disabilities in the thousands of babies whose
Speaker 2: mothers had taken the drug again, they were taking it
Speaker 2: from warning sickness. What that looked like was babies being
Speaker 2: born with shortened or absent limbs, things like facial disfigurement
Speaker 2: or brain injury. There were also lowered health outcomes among survivors.
Speaker 2: Things like poor mental health had also been reported. High
Speaker 2: rates of premature deaths due to thlinamide were also reported,
Speaker 2: and there were also miscarriages and infant deaths associated with
Speaker 2: the drug. As many as one hundred thousand babies were
Speaker 2: believed to have been affected by thlinamine.
Speaker 3: And keeping in mind that time that it was on
Speaker 3: the shelf, that's a lot of people. Where were the
Speaker 3: signs in that year that the drug was dangerous and
Speaker 3: kind of take me through how it came off the shelves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So interestingly, it was an Australian doctor who was
Speaker 2: the first to publicly make the link between thlinamide and
Speaker 2: disabilities in infants.
Speaker 3: So this was available elsewhere around them, and I think.
Speaker 2: We said some of the forty six countries so yes.
Speaker 2: But it was an Australian doctor. His name is William McBride.
Speaker 2: He published a letter in a medical journal in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty one asking other doctors if they had seen similar
Speaker 2: results to him, and the results he was talking about
Speaker 2: there were babies with a particular set of disabilities being
Speaker 2: born to women who had taken thlidamide. So essentially he
Speaker 2: published what was an observation of a trend that he
Speaker 2: was detecting, basically a call out to see has anyone
Speaker 2: else seen this and could it be linked to the
Speaker 2: drug that these women are taking? Ultimately turned out to
Speaker 2: be true, and it was that that led eventually to
Speaker 2: a ban on the drug. Later that year, the German
Speaker 2: company that first developed the drug formally pulled thlidamide from
Speaker 2: the market, and other distributors of course followed suit. While
Speaker 2: the drug was only in circulation for fewer than five years,
Speaker 2: it's fair to say it's had a generational impact on
Speaker 2: families and communities across the world, and here in Australia
Speaker 2: we saw the very real impact it had when Anthony
Speaker 2: Aberinezi apologized, and we've seen some really moving photos of
Speaker 2: people sitting in the public gallery balling because of it.
Speaker 3: And there was a nice moment after as well where
Speaker 3: Anthony Albanese actually met some of the survivors and kind
Speaker 3: of embraced them personally. What did Anthony Aberanese actually apologize for?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was interesting. I called my mum to talk
Speaker 2: about this story yesterday and she couldn't understand what role
Speaker 2: the Australian government had in it. She was like, well,
Speaker 2: wasn't it the drug manufacturer or the researchers or you know,
Speaker 2: the doctors were prescribing it, Like why is it the
Speaker 2: Australian government? And essentially what Anthony Aberzi was saying was
Speaker 2: related to the Australian Government's failure to test the advertised
Speaker 2: claims that the drug was safe to use. Essentially, he
Speaker 2: was apologizing that they didn't go far enough in testing
Speaker 2: these claims.
Speaker 5: There was no system for properly evaluating the safety of medicines,
Speaker 5: and the terrible cruelty the lidamide was that far from
Speaker 5: being safe, just one dose was enough to cause devastating harm.
Speaker 5: Just one dose was enough to inflict a lifetime of
Speaker 5: damage on an unborn child or indeed cause premature death
Speaker 5: either in utero or in the years ahead.
Speaker 2: And interestingly, the litamine tragedy partly led to the creation
Speaker 2: of the Therapeutic Goods Administration Yeah, the TGA, which is
Speaker 2: the medicine and the Therapeutic Regulatory Agency, so basically the
Speaker 2: group that is regulating the quality, the supply, the advertising
Speaker 2: of medicine here in Australia. But it was because of
Speaker 2: this tragedy in part that that eventually was created. Albanize
Speaker 2: said that the Australian health system failed the mothers who
Speaker 2: used the littamite and he said they had been haunted
Speaker 2: by undeserved regret their whole lives, calling the period one
Speaker 2: of the darkest chapters in Australia's medical history. And as
Speaker 2: we were just speaking about before, there were lots of
Speaker 2: survivors in Parliament yesterday when Anthony Abernesi delivered this apology,
Speaker 2: there was also a minute silence observed for those who
Speaker 2: had suffered or died due to the drugs.
Speaker 3: So this apology didn't come out of nowhere. What have
Speaker 3: we seen the Australian government do over the last couple
Speaker 3: of years that's led to this.
Speaker 2: So a key reform came back in twenty twenty, so
Speaker 2: that was the Morrison government at the time. They announced
Speaker 2: a program that would provide compensation for survivors.
Speaker 3: Still remarkable, it was between nineteen sixty one to twenty twenty. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's a long time.
Speaker 2: It actually came in two forms. So the first was
Speaker 2: a one off tax free payment between seventy five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars and half a million dollars. The amount that each
Speaker 2: recipient got would depend on their level of disability. The
Speaker 2: other was an ongoing annual payment, so that was designed
Speaker 2: to provide survivors with a very steady payment to then
Speaker 2: help them address what can only be characterized as like
Speaker 2: ongoing health needs on a day to day basis.
Speaker 3: And when Anthony Albinezi won the election last year, did
Speaker 3: he maintain that Morrison government policy up until today.
Speaker 2: So there hadn't been any changes until yesterday. In his apology,
Speaker 2: Albanezi promised two changes to the program. Firstly, he said
Speaker 2: that those who didn't receive compensation from the program when
Speaker 2: it launched would now be given the opportunity to make
Speaker 2: an application. He also committed to indexing the annual payments
Speaker 2: from the government, so that it just means that the
Speaker 2: payment will rise each year in accordance with inflation.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that's really struck me about this
Speaker 3: story is that period between nineteen sixty one and twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: and I can only imagine the hard work that went
Speaker 3: into advocating for survivors during that time. So for then
Speaker 3: a program to come in twenty twenty and an apology
Speaker 3: to be delivered in National Parliament three years later does
Speaker 3: seem like progress in this space, and I hope it's
Speaker 3: brought some sort of solace to survivors and their families.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then on the symbolic side, there'll also be
Speaker 2: a national Solidimide recognition site. Basically a monument be unveiled
Speaker 2: in Canberra today and there'll be a ceremony that will
Speaker 2: be attended by polidamine survivors and their families.
Speaker 3: That's all from us here today at The Daily Oz.
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