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Friday, August 31, 2012

Shots - Health News

Thalidomide Maker Apologizes After More Than 50 Years

A sculpture by the artist Bonifatius Stirnberg memorializes the victims of thalidomide, a drug that caused thousands of birth defects. A translation of the German text below the chairs: "In memory of the dead and the survivors of the thalidomide catastrophe."

August 31, 2012 More than a half-century after a German drugmaker took thalidomide off the market because of birth defects, the company said it was sorry. The occasion was the dedication of a memorial to the victims near the company's headquarters. The sculpture features a girl with malformed feet and no arms.

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