Frances Kelsey & Thalidomide

In 1954, chemists Wilhelm Kunz and Herbert Keller at Chemie Grunenthal, a West German firm founded in 1946, were hunting for a new drug from glutamic-acid research when they produced a compound that calmed test animals so thoroughly that no dose seemed to kill them. Company leadership, guided by head of research Heinrich Mückter, a scientist who had worked for the Nazi regime during the war, saw an opportunity no barbiturate could match. Grünenthal applied for a patent on the compound in May 1954 and launched it on October 1, 1957 as Contergan, sold in Germany without a prescription and marketed as completely non-toxic. Soon it was pushed for morning sickness too, though it had never been tested on a single pregnant animal or woman. Licensees sold it abroad as Distaval and Softenon. Between 1957 and 1961, Germans alone swallowed some 300 million daily doses, taken by roughly 5 million people trusting a label that promised no harm.