Medicines During Pregnancy

Abstract

There was a case from Germany in 1960 where a pregnant women named 'Sigi' took the drug - thalidomide - which was advertised as effective, safe, and nonaddictive hypnotic for treatment of her insomnia. She delivered a monster which had no limbs (phocomelia). Her cherished dream of many years shattered to pieces!

This and many other cases of foetal malformations shook the conscience of the doctors and awakened the medical profession to the grim reality of druginduced teratogenicity, i.e. the production of structural, biochemical and behavioral abnormalities in the offspring when the drug is given to the mother during pregnancy.