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.