THE EVIL MEN DO –
Nov. 14, 2014 – The criminal trial of employees of Chemie-Grünenthal, the German company that created and marketed thalidomide, opened in the pretty town of Alsdorf, near Aachen, on 27 May 1968. It promised to be comparable in scale and emotional intensity to Nuremberg. Thousands of deformed babies had died or been allowed to die. Many families with surviving children filed civil suits, but all the victims had to wait years without support because the criminal trial took precedence.
Grünenthal had insisted that it was blameless: the thousands of abnormal births were an act of God. It had the discreet support of the politically well-connected chemical industry, mindful that a conviction would raise insurance premiums. The North Rhine-Westphalia public prosecutors found the company obstructive. They had to seize the most important Grünenthal documents in police raids on its “bunker” and a company lawyer’s house.
It took them six years to examine 5,000 case histories: expectant mothers who had taken thalidomide and given birth to deformed and dead babies, and men and women who had suffered irreversible nerve damage. The bill of indictment they prepared against nine Grünenthal employees ran to 972 pages. In support, they had lined up 351 witnesses, 29 technical experts and 70,000 pages of evidence. There were 400 co-plaintiffs.
Nearly 700 people crowded the biggest space in the region, a “casino” in the premises of a mining company. Every day, the judges – three professional, two lay – lawyers and scientists, press and witnesses, passed by three deformed children nursed by Red Cross sisters while their mothers were inside hoping to learn why they had suffered.
