• Starya67@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    It’s still used for treating severe nausea in pregnant women, even. In life and death cases.

    Pregnancy. Such fun.

    • Kirp123@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      You have a source for that? Nausea is just a symptom and can’t really be life and death by itself.

      Thalidomide is still mainly used for the treatment of multiple myeloma and leprosy.

      Also a fun fact is that the US was basically unaffected by the thalidomide crisis because a pharmacologist employed by the FDA refused to approve the medication on the basis that it lacked sufficient clinical trials. Frances Oldham Kelsey resisted pressure from the company that was trying to sell the medicine in the US and only 17 people were affected in the US compared to the 20000 figure cited for global cases. JFK awarded her with a presidential award for her service.

      • whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        but the company still sent 2.5millions pills to doctors in the US before approval thinking it would be fast to get the permit…

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I wouldn’t say that they still use thalidomide to treat it, at least not it in countries with well regulated medical industries, but nausea during pregnancy that causes hyperemesis can absolutely be life threatening, especially without proper treatment (so it’s something you would consider life threatening when weighing a treatment plan, but IV fluids and nutrition through a PICC are obviously a safer and better treatment than thalidomide). The psychological effects of constant, overwhelming nausea can be so serious for the pregnant person that it’s life threatening even without the nutritional problems.

        In that case, even if there’s no effective treatment, I still suspect doctors would advise terminating the pregnancy over something like thalidomide though, to be clear. I just had a sister with HG, and saw how devastating it was for her.

        We don’t talk about the potential negative side effects of pregnancy or childbirth nearly enough, and the depiction in popular culture of pregnancy related nausea as a harmless annoyance is only one example, but that’s a rant for another day.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      No it isn’t. There’s plenty of safe anti-nausea medication on the market why would they use something like this that would cause birth defects?

      Also as far as I’m aware preventing nausea isn’t even one of its effects. When are you getting this information from?