Thalidomide is not a human mutagen

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7374.1245/a

BMJ 2002;325:1245 ( 23 November )

Letters

Thalidomide is not a human mutagen

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ In 1994 McBride reported two cases of a malformed child born to fathers with thalidomide embryopathy.¹ In case 1the child had two unaffected brothers, and in case 2 the childhad an unaffected older sibling. McBride suggested that thalidomidemight be (the first) human germ cell mutagen. This contentionwas countered by several respondents, but several tabloid newspapersespoused the cause of the alleged second generation cases of thalidomideembryopathy. ² ³ Subsequent to these exchanges a comprehensiveexperimental mutagenicity database was published, indicating thatthalidomide was devoid of mutagenic activity.⁴

A major clinical evaluation of the hypothesis presented by McBride has just been published, and does not support it.⁵ Stromlandet al conducted a retrospective study of the 88 Swedes recordedwith thalidomide embryopathy between 1959 and 1963. Forty sixof them were the parents of a total of 86 children, and 34 ofthe parents agreed to participate in the study. This allowed reference. . . [Full text of this article]