A Handful of Thalidomides

By jjSchaer - 5/11/2012

In 1957 the German pharmaceutical Grünenthal GmbH manufactured and distributed the drug Thalidomide as a safe treatment for morning sickness in pregnant women. By 1961 the drug had been withdrawn from the market for causing the deaths of thousands of babies and leading to over ten thousand children being born with mal-formed limbs as a result. The company had bypassed human testing and had only tested the drug on non-pregnant rats.

On the 31st of August 2012, over fifty years after the drug was unleashed on the market, Grünenthal released their first apology for the lasting effects of the drug. Though they are still to admit liability for the damage caused.

What follows is an interview with Kevin Donnellon. Thalidomider, political campaigner, father and my uncle. I talked to him about the drug, his life, politics, religion and driving.

Ok, so where do you want to start?

My name is Kevin Donnellon. I was born on the twenty eighth of November 1961, roughly the same time that the drug Thalidomide was withdrawn from the United Kingdom. Even though as early as 1955 they knew that it was dangerous. After many legal battles my parents finally settled out of court which meant the drug company never admitted liability.

What was the settlement?

I was awarded the grand sum of twenty two thousand pounds in 1975. But when I turned twenty-one the money had gone down to just over nineteen thousand pounds. Nineteen! If they had stuck it in a building society it probably would have doubled over those ten years.

Why did it reduce?

‘Cause it was in the hands of the law courts and they basically invested it into crap stocks and shares even though, well we can’t prove it, but I reckon there was a big fiddle going on. And they bought up the good shares and gave me the shit ones. But I couldn’t prove it. And we actually got a letter from Lord Denning, who was the Master of the Roles at that time, asking me if I wanted to keep it in the law courts even though they’d lost my money. So I said no.

What was the settlement based on?

Roughly based on our injuries the drug caused. But if you look at comparative payments now you’re talking multi-millions.

So was the twenty two thousand supposed to set you up for the rest of your life?

Well when it was awarded around 1975 it was the equivalent of two hundred thousand pounds today apparently. But it’s still a load of crap. It was supposed to set me up for life. But that’s the other problem as well, they didn’t think we’d live that long. And they didn’t think we’d go into adulthood and become parents and all the rest of it. So that’s why the figures were so low. None of them expected we’d live to fifty or beyond.

Is that why the Thalidomide Trust was set up?

Yeah, because the compensation levels were totally inadequate. People think we all got multi-millions because a trust fund was set up worth around four million pounds initially. And now it’s worth about sixty million in the Trust. People think we’re all multi-millionaires but that’s got to go around roughly four hundred and eighty people. So we only get a small allocation each year.

And that’s just for the UK?

Yeah. It’s a lot better than it used to be because we used to pay the super-tax rate which was forty percent at that time. So I was paying tax at the same rate as someone like David Beckham was. But thanks to Gordon Brown – one of the few things that he did was to take the forty percent tax off. So we get the whole lump sum without any tax. Whether future governments will stick to the no tax ruling I don’t know. But apparently it is unique amongst trust funds in Britain that it’s not taxable. And it came at the same time when the government officially apologised for not banning the drug when they could have done.

Which government was that? Thatcher?

No, it was well before Thatcher. I think it was Ted Heath. There was a woman in America called Dr France Oldham Kelsey and she was awarded one of the highest civilian honour by JFK because she actually warned the FDA, the ‘Food and Drug Administration’, that the drug was dangerous. They believed her so they banned the drug.

What year?

1960.

So she was reviewing the drug before it even came out?

Yeah and she said it was dangerous. So she stopped the Thalidomide tragedy in America. There was a handful of Thalidomides born to American parents but that’s because their fathers were in the armed services, either in Germany or in Britain. And because they sued in America they got multi-millions. Some like ridiculous figures around two hundred million or something like that. When I say ridiculous I mean, you know, that’s what we all should have got really!

So is the main reason that the American Thalidomide kids got such large amounts of compensation was because there was less of them?

Yeah. Also it’s a better legal system and you can sue the arses off people in America.

Was it also the fact that it happened outside of America?

Well that was in Germany, but no pharmaceutical companies admitted liability. Although Grünenthal recently apologised. Fifty years too late! But they still haven’t admitted liability even though they have apologised. Which is as good as really, because why would you apologise for something you haven’t done?

So that’s basically the closest you’ve come to getting a blanket apology for it?

Yeah, but there are lawyers getting together who are in the process of taking another legal action against Diageo.Also, Grünenthal were sued in Australia recently and I think some woman got something like eight million Australian dollars. Which is a little bit better.

So is that the original manufacturer before it was sold over to Distillers?

Yeah. If you look at the history of Thalidomide, the guy who synthesised the drug was actually a Nazi who worked in the concentration camps. Can’t remember his name.

There’s a new generation of Thalidomide kids growing up in America...?

Because the drug is coming up on the black-market and is coming in from places like South America. It has been heavily pushed there and a lot of Thalidomide kids are being born in Brazil. The drug is getting traded on the black market in places like New York illegally and it’s very dangerous.

Because it helps cancer?

Well it helps mouth ulcers, alleviates pain in some cancers and it cures leprosy almost instantly. It’s a miracle drug for leprosy. People in the United States who can’t afford to see their doctor are using any old drugs they can get off the street.

Do you think there’ll be an end to kids being born Thalidomide?

No, because the drug companies are making a massive profit. And it’s like you can’t put the genie back in the bottle really. It’s out there. And there are other companies that are manufacturing it.

Do you want to describe how the drug affected you?

Ok, I was born without legs and shortened arms. Two fingers on the left and three and a half fingers on the right. I have perfectly formed feet at the end of my hips – so I’ve got one big toe and four other toes. Some Thalidomides were born with toes missing or even extra toes. And the feet are attached to my hips, but they stick upwards so I don’t walk on them and they’re very sensitive to touch.

Are you having any problems now later in life as a result of it?

I get aches. I get pains in my hips and they said it might be sciatica but they don’t really know because I’ve got a funny shaped skeleton.

Do you mind being called Thalidomide?

Well it’s a crap word really. I don’t really mind. But I’d rather be called Kevin!

Do you want to say anything about how there has been a lot of media attention around Thalidomide over the years?

Well all my life I’ve been involved in various documentaries and journalists would come to our house or go the school, etcetera, and do programmes on me. World In Action did three programmes starting from about the age of ten and then right up until I was doing my A-Levels in college. Then they did another one featuring two other Thalidomiders when we were approaching forty. And various documentaries: The BBC, NBC, CBS. I was even interviewed by Princess Diana’s brother Charles Spencer when he was working at NBC. He got the job because he was a semi-royal of course. He didn’t have a clue about Thalidomide. He was handed a sheet of questions and he just rattled through them like a parrot and that was it. But I took him for a spin in my new Ford Escort and went really fast around corners. I remember seeing his white knuckles holding onto the seat. I was a bit mad when I got my first car because I’d always wanted to drive. It was a souped-up Escort that looked like an XR-3i with a full body kit and alloy wheels. I drove like a lunatic. But I always wanted to drive and when I was a kid I used to drive round the garden in a small battery car imagining I was on the road in a real one. My friend Teresa Smith, who was a year older than me, drove up to my mother’s in her car she got when she turned seventeen. She was one of the first to get a car and my mother said, “Oh, that’s marvellous Teresa!”. And Teresa replied, “Well Kevin will be able to drive next year”. Then my mother said “oh no, that’s out of the question”. Mother was very over-protective and kept me wrapped in cotton wool. The first thing I did when I left home at the age of twenty-two was put in for a car. I put in for the car in the October and I passed in the December. So it only took three months to learn to drive. But I was driving round on my own even when I was learning. My mates used to take the L-Plates off for me so I learned bad habits even before I drove legally. And the first time I ever drove at night, I drove to Blackpool to see the lights, before I passed my test; I didn’t know how to put my lights on. And my mate Gary, who only drove a moped, he got out and said “oh, I think they’re a bit bright”, so we drove to Blackpool and back on side lights! But it’s brilliant I love driving, when I’m on the road I feel totally equal with all the other drivers.

Was it hard to get the car modified, back in the day?

It wasn’t hard just bleeding expensive! You really get ripped off when it comes to adaptions. The main adaption in the car was basically metal pedals that came down from the steering column. And I use my feet, where your knees would be, for the accelerator and the break. It’s only metal rods coming from the steering column connected to the ordinary peddles. It also had powered steering [which was fairly new in those days] and a small sports wheel. But my first car, a Ford Escort, was I think about twenty grand and that was, you know, about thirty odd years ago. My last car was forty thousand, and that was a van with a wheelchair lift, which was ten years ago. The next car I get will no doubt be nearer fifty or sixty thousand! But the technology is getting a lot better though and there are a lot more gadgets and innovations out there that I probably can’t afford.

What did you use the first time instead of the wheelchair lift in your Ford Escort?

It was called the Car Chair system and you can still see it on the Internet. Basically it’s a nice idea in theory, less so in practise. A big hydraulic hook attaches to the back of the powered wheelchair and swings it into the passenger side, as it swings in the wheels fold up like an undercarriage on a plane. But because the chair was so lightweight and flimsy if it went over cobblestones the frame would break. Or invariably the wheels wouldn’t lock and the front wheels would fall out from underneath you. So it was very dangerous. I had two of those because I thought they may have improved the design over the years but it was exactly the same. That’s why I got a van because it’s got a lift. So it’s more reliable really. But I wish I could drive, you know, a sports car or something like that instead of vans. But I like my van, I like driving, I like being on the road. It gives me massive independence.

I was going to say do you want to say anything about that reality TV show you were on?

Which one?

Why were you on more than one? The politics one? Vote For Me?

God, no it was awful! I’ve been involved in politics all my life really. I was arrested twice for cutting the fences at a former American airbase in Cheshire. It was called ‘The Snowball Campaign’ and what you do is symbolically put a hacksaw blade on the fence and then the coppers arrest you. Then you can have your day in court. On the video it looks like a nail file but it is a hacksaw blade. And the copper, his name was also Kevin, he kept saying “stop cutting that fence, stop cutting that fence”. This was in the 80s at the height of the Cold War with Thatcher inviting President Reagan to bring over his cruise missiles, making Britain an even more important target. Anyway, even I was starting to get bored. I remember thinking “just fucking arrest me will ya!” And I got through the plastic coating of the fence and he eventually said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you” and he very gingerly took the blade out of my hand. Very, very carefully. Then we went into the base and you were supposed to get photographed upstairs by the CIA or whoever. But obviously they had to bring down this massive camera on a tripod. And they brought it down to the ground floor and I pulled a silly face and they took my photograph. And then I got a letter from the Chief Constable of Cheshire saying they weren’t “taking any further action” in this case. So I was like pissed off because I felt I was patronised, because my comrades where in court.

Didn’t the other woman who you got arrested with get a fine?

Yeah, she was up in court and so where other people. So I decided to do it again and the same thing happened. The copper said “stop cutting the fence” but he arrested me fairly quickly this time, less than a minute really, so I couldn’t cut through the plastic. They brought the camera down the stairs and I pulled a stupid face. Then I got another letter from the Chief Constable which I framed! But I went to the law courts to support a witness and they wouldn’t even let me in. But anyway, it wasn’t accessible it had all kinds of steps. And the reason I wasn’t arrested properly is that they had no accessible police vans or police cells. And then I got into disability politics later, handcuffing myself to buses and trains in the 90s.

How many times did you get arrested for that?

Well they say you’re under arrest but they never take it anywhere. I was only arrested once, in the sense I was put into a police van, in London when we did Downing Street. But they had accessible vans and they had accessible police cells. And I was glad to get arrested because I could use their loo. They had a loo in the cell which I was able to use and the coppers were dead nice.

That was featured in Time magazine wasn’t it?

All over the place. It was front page of virtually every paper in the country. ‘Cause it was Downing Street and Blair hadn’t been in power long and it was the first big demo against them.

Those protests did get Labour to reform the disability laws didn’t they?

Yeah. Well when they first got into power they threatened to take disability benefits away so history is repeating itself. And although they had the DDA it was a rubbish act – like education wasn’t included. It wasn’t enforceable most of it. We didn’t even have a Disability Rights Commission. So New Labour at least did all that.

That’s what I was going to say, do you think that disability rights are getting better with each coming government or...?

No, it’s getting worse. I feel like we’re back to square one. All the demos that we did around the country I feel it’s a waste of time. All the rights we achieved have been clawed back and we’ve lost it.

Have any of the Thalidomide people been turfed off benefits under the new reforms do you know?

Not that I know of, but I’m sure they have. I haven’t heard of any but I bet you they will be soon. It’s going to get worse next year.

Anyway, I went to mainstream school at Dovecot, South Liverpool, because no school in Sefton would educate me. And Liverpool Education paid for a taxi to take me there. And then I went to Highfield, which is now called Broadgreen Community School, in Broadgreen, South Liverpool. Again Liverpool Education paid for a taxi. And ironically the local school, Sacred Heart in Crosby, a couple of years ago asked me to speak to everybody at the school assembly about disability and inclusion. I made the point that thirty years ago this was one of the schools that wouldn’t educate me. I had two brothers and three sisters and they all went to the local Catholic schools but they wouldn’t educate me. But in some ways I think I had a lucky escape.

So why wouldn’t they take you?

Because they could discriminate in those days and they didn’t want handicapped people in their schools. So because I mixed with able-bodied kids I never really bothered with disabled kids, not even other Thalidomiders, well apart from the handful that went to school with me. But apart from that I didn’t bother with any other disabled people. And I used to feel embarrassed if they were in my company. You know when I went the cinema and there was someone in a wheelchair by me I’d sort of feel embarrassed and wouldn’t know what to say to them. Isn’t that mad? And then one day I was in Teresa Smith’s house, the woman who drove up in her car years ago, and she said she was going to a meeting called ‘Ideas In Motion’. I said “what’s that about?” She said, “It’s a disability group”. I said “I’m not goin’ it’ll be full of wheelchairs”. And she said “come along you miserable get”, so she persuaded me to go. And when I went, there was a guy there with a flip chat and some non-disabled person writing notes for them and he had a speech impediment. It was Lawrence Clark and he was talking about the ‘social model of disability’. He was saying, like, society causes your disability and if society was more accessible you’d be less disabled. So if there’s accessible buses and accessible building you’ll be less disabled. So the degree of disability is not your fault or down to you it’s down to how society included you. And I never got that before, because previously I would go to nightclubs and bouncers would carry me up the stairs and I’d be grateful. So as soon as I found out about the ‘social model’ it hit me straight away and I’m thinking “why didn’t I get involved in this before?” I stopped being grateful for being carried everywhere and I started to demand access. And that’s how I got involved in disability politics. Thanks to Teresa for dragging me to this meeting. So after the ‘Ideas In Motion’ meeting I decided to do my own DAN group. Which is: Disabled People’s Direct Action Network. And we had our first demo outside the New Strand. It wasn’t pedestrianised then and on the junction where the law courts are we stopped two buses and caused a massive backlog of traffic in Bootle. The copper said, “When are you going? When are you leaving?” And I said, “When we made our point”. We could’ve spent the whole day there because the copper couldn’t do anything about it. He had no accessible police vans. And disabled people in those days didn’t really demonstrate and it was totally off their scale. They didn’t know how to handle it.

Are those types of demonstrations what sort of fed into the accessibility laws?

Yeah, I think it helped with the DDA. That was the start of the Direct Action Network because loads of disability rights bills had been talked out. And when the last one was talked out by Roger Berry MP, ‘The Berry Bill’, then disabled people got even more angry and stepped up the direct action. Demanding accessible transport, you know rights for work, etcetera, etcetera.

Did you notice a massive change when the Accessibility Bill came in?

Yeah, well then they extended it so all public buildings had to be accessible. At first, council buildings didn’t have to be. The town halls didn’t have to be accessible. But they’ve all got to be accessible now. But I think some of those rights will be rolled back because they use austerity as an excuse.

Is that a major difference between England and America then? Because you’ve said before that America is so much more accessible.

Well they had The American’s With Disabilities Act, the ADA, in 1990, five years before we did. Ronald Reagan signed it into government. When I went to America on holiday, I was with the Baha’is and we went to a conference, and I found out all the buses were accessible I was on cloud nine. I spent the whole week just getting on and off the bus. And I thought wouldn’t it be nice if we had accessible buses in Sefton. I never thought it was a right because I wasn’t politicised about disability then. But then once I found out about the Social Model I became more politicised.

Do you see the Social Model as a major turning point? I’ve seen a lot of disabled people on documentaries and debates that have cited it as the major turning point.

Oh god yeah. Because then you realised, you stopped being apologetic and you don’t feel like a burden anymore. You feel like society should be accommodating you and it should be accessible for everyone. And when you have an accessible world it doesn’t harm anyone because mothers with prams will find it easier to get on and off buses and go into buildings easier. Automatic doors don’t harm anyone. Generally.

You mentioned the Baha’is. Do you want to say anything about the religions you’ve been involved with?

Well I was always searching. When I left home, because I’d been wrapped in cotton wool, I threw myself into revolutionary politics and I’d sell the Socialist Worker on the street corner. I went on all the demonstrations, Anti-Apartheid and the CND, and it’s part of wanting to belong I suppose. But instead of getting into disability politics I threw myself into everything but really. You know Ecology, CND, Anti-Apartheid, Worker’s Revolutionary Party, Socialist Worker’s Party. I threw myself into everything. Apart from the Tory party. Joined the Labour Party a couple of times. I’ve always been a joiner but I was always searching for something as well. So I went on the biggest anti-war demo and I took Pat, my home help who’s never been on a demo in her life and she ended up going on the biggest one. I was even in Arthur Scargill’s Worker’s Revolutionary Party and I shared platforms with him when he was speaking. Once he was speaking in Crosby and he said “when we form a government Kevin Donnellon’s going to be the disabilities minister”. And I had to bite my tongue to stop from laughing because he was so delusional. He was a nice fella though.

Have you still got a signed picture of him in the toilet?

I have. It’s on a bookshelf now. ‘To Kevin. A great comrade. Arthur Scargill’. I was on his Party Political Broadcast for the General Election as well. I was the token cripple. They had the token gay, the token Asian, the token lesbian, you know they had token everything. They even gave me something to read, I couldn’t use my own words.
So I tried politics, but I’ve always believed in not slagging something off until I’ve looked into it. So if the Jehovah’s Witness’ knocked on my door I’d let them in and talk to them. So I tried Jehovah’s Witness’, The Mormons, and Evangelical Christians and then the last religion I tried was the Baha’i faith – which is like a Westernised Islam. Which I believed for a short while. And I went to the Baha’i World Conference in New York. But I’m an atheist now.

What’s the best and worst religion then?

The best one I’ve been in is the Baha’is. They seem more rational on the surface. But all religions I reject now. It’s all nonsense.

Something else I was going to ask, do you want to mention anything about when you were lecturing? You were lecturing in Disability Politics?

Well after my A-Levels I went to Liverpool University and Manchester University to look around and it was completely inaccessible. So all universities in those days, in about 1981, were completely inaccessible. A disabled person at university was as rare as a dodo. So I didn’t go to university until later on in my life, in my late thirties, and I went to Edge Hill in Ormskirk which was accessible. And just before I went to university I discovered DAN and the Social Model and everything, so I chose Disability as a minor subject. If I hadn’t gone to that meeting I wouldn’t have even picked it as a subject. I got into disability politics but it was only a minor subject – I was doing Sociology and Politics. And then after I got my degree they invited me back as a guest lecturer. Just to talk to the first years about disability and inclusion. Which I really enjoyed, it was fabulous.

How did you find it going to university then in your late thirties?

I loved it. Wall-to-wall totty. I mean mentally I’ve always been about seventeen anyway, so I’ve always had a childish mind, so the age gap didn’t bother me. And I look incredibly young as well.

How did you decide you wanted to teach for a bit afterwards?

I didn’t they just invited me. I was dead nervous the first time. I started using PowerPoint and everything. The senior lecturer didn’t even use PowerPoint, he didn’t know how to, he just used OHPs. They didn’t relate to him because he was old and patronising to the students and non-disabled.

Were most of the students disabled?

In Edge Hill?

No, in the Disability Politics class?

No, most of them weren’t. Most of them were trainee social workers or nurses and things like that. They had no idea what to expect on the course, they thought it would be about medical conditions. But it wasn’t it was all about the politics. And in the evaluation forms, I got the best comments. Like “Kevin should do all the lectures” and things like that. The senior lecturer’s face dropped when he was reading them. But I could speak from experience, which he couldn’t.

Have you noticed much of a difference in the way you have been treated, or disabled people have been treated, in the last fifty years?

Yeah, massively because more disabled people are now out in society because the world is far more accessible. So a lot more disabled people are in society and a lot of the institutions are closed down. So we’re out there now where generally disabled people were hidden away. So attitudes are changing. But because the economy’s collapsing we’re also seen as scapegoats as well, so a lot of people are saying ‘you’re not disabled why are you on benefits?’ Not me, other people who might not, quote, ‘look disabled’. So there’s a lot of hate crime coming up now but I haven’t personally experienced it. But attitudes are different as well, I’ve come across disabled people and after talking to them for five minutes you know whether they’ve been in a special school or a mainstream school. Because they have a kind of disabled mentality. They’ve got no confidence. But the ones that went to mainstream school have got far more confidence and can relate to people outside.

‘Inclusion not exclusion’.

Yeah, ‘nothing about us without us’ is some of the chants that DAN used to do. ‘We’re DAN, we’re here, get used to it’. We nicked that off the queer movement, you know ‘We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it’. We nicked everything from other movements; you know like the black civil rights movement we nicked their ideas...

Do you remember when you were telling me about the first protest you went on and you dropped you sign and a policeman picked it up?

That was an anti-Apartheid demo with the Socialist Workers Party. And it was a dead peaceful demo, it was the biggest one I’ve been on up until the Iraq one, and there were about one hundred thousand people. There were like families and balloons and kids there. And I remember one silly bitch that was bent over and she had her hands cupped around a ladybird to stop it being squashed as we all marched past her. But because I was a hippy in those days I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Now I think ‘what a stupid bitch’. But anyway it was nice. So it was a fabulous march until we got to the South African Embassy. Because Thatcher had just invited the South African minister back to Britain and she’d even laid on a big golden coach and everything just to wind the demo up even further I think. So when we got to the embassy the SWP tried to storm the barricades and break in, so there was a pitch battle between the pigs and us. I was in the middle of it and there was like rocks and bottles and sticks flying over my head. And in the melee I dropped my placard and this copper picked it up for me. And just as I was about to take it, a comrade called Kate said “leave him alone you pig, he doesn’t want to touch it now you’ve contaminated it”. And the copper just looked at her and said “stupid bitch” and I looked at her and thought “stupid bitch” as well. How ridiculous is that? So I left the SWP shortly after because I realised they were a bunch of nutters. ‘Cause I used to go to Apartheid meetings and they’d try and break up the meeting, you know promote their own kind of Trotskyite/Marxism or whatever it was. Saying “It’s not racism it’s about capitalism”. And all this bollocks. So they used to disrupt the meetings. And the Anti-Apartheid demo could have been portrayed as a very, very peaceful and powerful march, but what the media did the next day was just focus on the little fight outside the embassy. And that’s all they focussed on.

I was born in Walton Hospital, which was the maternity hospital in those days. And obviously my mother didn’t have a clue and neither did the doctors because there were no ultra-sound scans or anything like that.

Had there been many kids born before you? I mean were your parents prepared in any way?

No, they weren’t prepared at all. And it was also hidden in the media. It was only after I was born really that they started to link it to the drug because we were all getting born more or less at the same time. So even the doctors were shocked when I popped out. But when I was born apparently (and I only found out about this a couple of months ago from Martin Johnson who is the director of the Trust and has been going through the late Professor Smitthells files on Thalidomide) Smitthells was a doctor that witnessed the birth. And when I came out they thought I was dead so a nurse just put me in a box and shoved me under the table. And then I don’t know whether the nurse kicked the box, or I rolled, or something like that, but they heard me crying and opened up the box and found out I was very much alive. And Smitthells wrote in his notes that he very much regretted saying nothing and not punishing the nurse for not checking me properly. He said he lived with that guilt all his life.

And then Smitthells set up his own organisation? Wasn’t he the first to set up the Thalidomide Trust?

Well he was one of the ones campaigning for the Thalidomide Trust and I think he became one of the first trustees of the Trust.

Was he the one who set up the Kevin Club?

Yeah, that was why it was called the Kevin Club. And as Martin Johnson said, “why do you think it was called the Kevin club? He had to live with that guilt.” Because he knew that I would have just been chucked in a furnace or something. And a lot of Thalidomides were actually abandoned by their parents in the hospitals. I’ve heard anecdotes that they had ‘nil by mouth’ on the beds so they were literally starved to death. So they reckon there was actually hundreds more Thaliomides that never actually made it.

Didn’t some Thalidomides have their arms and legs removed by doctors as well?

They had bits cut off. Like where I’ve got half a finger they would have removed it in some kids. I don’t know why but they were chopped off. My mother wouldn’t let them chop my finger off. And some had their feet amputated so they could wear their artificial legs better. But thank god I didn’t. I know one guy called Brian, he’s got arms but he was born with feet like me, and he had his amputated because they thought he could wear artificial legs better. But it’s affected his spine, so he’s got really bad back ache now and it affected his whole skeleton really. But they just saw us a guinea pigs and because we were fairly unique, in the sense that we were a whole bunch of people born like this that they did loads of experiments on us. Not in the same way as Mengele or anything like that. They did mean well. And they had good intentions for the artificial legs and arms even though they were useless.

So you only found that out around the time you turned fifty?

Yeah, just after. A few months ago.

What did you think when you found that out? Was it upsetting?

Well not really because I don’t remember being born. But I just thought ‘wow’, it was a lot like a lot of ‘imagine if’ or ‘what if’. Do you know what I mean?

Printer friendly page

Sorry Comments Closed

Comment left by Denise Tilton on 4th July, 2015 at 17:55
I had goose dumps when I came across an article in today's Echo online which featured Kevin. I now live in the USA but as a teen I went to Alder Hey as part of my course at Mable Fletchers Tech. College and Kevin was a patient there at the time. I have spoken and thought of Kevin often and was thrilled to see how successful he is and a father, just wonderful. Kevin was unforggetable, not because of his condition, but he was so full of life and a bit of a scamp too ! He scooted around the ward like he owned it, and he did as he was sisters pet. Sister almost exclusively took care of him but many times you could hear her bellowing " Kevin " when he had been impish. Reading this article about your uncle Kevin has made my day and after all these years I have never forgotten him, nor will I.

Comment left by James Trelawney on 13th December, 2015 at 12:59
The Congenitally deformed should be sterilised at birth, if the birth is allowed, as should the parents (not in the case of thalidomide). The disabled should not be integrated into normal schools or society but should be places in camps where they could work and live without bothering normal people.