The battle in the European Parliament to obtain reparations from Berlin. The drug was marketed worldwide as a tranquilizer but harmed fetuses. In Italy it caused handicaps to about 400 people: since 2008 they have been entitled to compensation.
Of Gian Antonio Stella – 25 June 2015 – CORRIERE DELLA SERA
“How many divisions do thalidomides have?” someone might ask, imitating Stalin's infamous joke about the Pope. None, of course. On the contrary: it is the most defenseless and harmless of all the "armies" in the world. However moral and unarmed a "declaration of war" by the victims of thalidomide, the drug that mutilated thousands of children born without arms, hands or legs, would nevertheless put Germany in very serious difficulty. One can also defend oneself from ISIS: not from shame. And the thalidomides have every intention of putting Angela Merkel's Bundesrepublik in the dock precisely for the decades of ambiguity, starting with the "Mammuth Prozess" (we would say snail trial) which ended up covering up the faults of the German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal of Stolberg, near Aachen. Which only in 2012, over half a century later, resigned herself to apologizing to the thousands of people mutilated by the criminal sloppiness with which the lethal thalidomide was marketed and even recommended (recommended!) to pregnant women.
The drug passed off as a tranquilizer
«There are various causes which give rise to monsters», wrote Ambroise Paré, one of the fathers of surgery, «the first is the glory of God. The second is his wrath». Half a millennium has passed since then. And no one dares to attribute a child's disabilities to the mating of the mother with the devil. Indeed, here we know who the devil was: who produced that drug passed off as a tranquilizer without checking the effects on the fetuses. Effects which, as later (and late) analyzes on rabbits, rats, chicks, fish would have shown, were catastrophic.
Yet the failed development of the fetus is still defined, in the frightening "scientific" jargon of doctors, "teratogenesis": from the Greek "creation of monsters". And half a century was not enough for the victims of thalidomide to drag the pharmaceutical company to pay for its responsibilities not only the German victims, compensated to silence the domestic controversies, but also those of many other countries of the world.
The indemnities
Pope Francis saw the Spanish thalidomides yesterday at the general audience. And he spoke a few words of comfort and encouragement to them. Beautiful, as always. And of great moral help. People who had a very complicated childhood, adolescence, schooling and life of social relationships imposed on them half a century ago, however, as they reiterated a few days ago in the European Parliament, have an absolute need "also" for help concrete economic. Of course, Italy, making up for the German fugitives and accepting the mistake of taking the historic reliability of German products for granted, allowing between 1958 and 1962 the sale of 15 medicines containing thalidomide without «national» rebuttals by 7 pharmaceutical industries which made between 350 and 400 victims of various handicaps in our country (plus spontaneous abortions, stillborn babies and those "pitifully" accompanied to death), has recognized the pathology for almost a decade and since 2008 has paid more serious thalidomides an indemnity that can reach 5,300 euros per month.
Nadia Malavasi, a Paduan lady who thanks to a contagious smile, an extraordinary self-irony and a will of steel managed to cope with the disability, explained what «more serious thalidomides» means. 
graduate in languages, get married, have a child and even get a driving license ("The examiner looked at me and said:" But what do you expect if you are missing two arms and a leg! ", but I won it") told to Stefano Lorenzetto. She herself can't wash her own face and can't take a dress out of the wardrobe and can't lift a blind and can't cut herself a steak and if she drops anything to pick it up she has to lie down on the floor. "She got on the bus only once in her life: the driver set off again with the doors still open and she, who can't hold on to the handrails, flew onto the asphalt".
(… CONTINUES)
Related news: Life of Italian Victims Thalidomide
Thalidomide, story of a disaster
Thalidomide, on compensation, Parliament's first response, but the commitment must continue
Thalidomide survivors in Brussels, Berlin remedies tragedy
