Silent shock : the men behind the thalidomide scandal and an Australian family's long road to justice

The baby started to come out. Head first, everything OK. But then I saw that there were no arms. And then no legs. The little girl had only a torso and a head. Lyn Rowe was born in Melbourne in 1962, seven months after her mother Wendy was given a new wonder drug for morning sickness called thalidomide. For fifty years the Rowe family cared for Lyn. Decades of exhausting, round-the-clock work. But then in 2011 Lyn Rowe launched a legal claim against the thalidomide companies. Against the odds, she won a multi-million-dollar settlement. Former journalist Michael Magazanik is one of the lawyers who ran Lyn’s case. In Silent Shock he exposes a fifty-year cover up concerning history’s most notorious drug, and details not only the damning case against manufacturers Grünenthal—whose enthusiastic promotion of their lucrative drug in the face of mounting evidence beggars belief—but also the moving story of the Rowe family. Spanning Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Sweden and, of course, Germany, Silent Shock is an epic account of corporate wrongdoing against a backdrop of heroic personal struggle and sacrifice. 'The baby started to come out. Head first, everything OK. But then I saw that there were no arms. And then no legs. The little girl had only a torso and a head.' IN 1962 Lyn Rowe was born in Melbourne, entirely without limbs. Months earlier, her mother Wendy was given a new wonder drug for morning sickness called thalidomide. IN 2012 , after almost fifty years of struggle and poverty, Lyn won a multi-million-dollar settlement from the drug's distributor, Distillers. It was the first compensation she ever received. In Silent Shock , Michael Magazanik tells Lyn Rowe's story - and lifts the lid on how the thalidomide tragedy was allowed to happen. He shows how the guilty did their best to get away with it. He explodes the myth that the whole scandal was just a tragic accident, unavoidable within the safety standards of the time. And he exposes the disgraceful cover-up at the heart of Distillers' Australian thalidomide operation Silent Shock is an epic account of corporate wrongdoing against a backdrop of heroic personal struggle and sacrifice. It is crucial, compelling reading. Lyn Rowe was born in Melbourne in 1962, seven months after her mother Wendy was given a new 'wonder drug' for morning sickness called thalidomide. For fifty years the Rowe family cared for Lyn. Decades of exhausting, round-the-clock work. But then in 2011 Lyn Rowe launched a legal claim against the thalidomide companies. Against the odds, she won a multimillion-dollar settlement. Former journalist Michael Magazanik is one of the lawyers who ran Lyn's case. In Silent Shock he exposes a fifty-year cover up concerning history's most notorious drug, and details not only the damning case against manufacturers Grunenthal - whose ruthless promotion of their lucrative drug in the face of mounting evidence beggars belief - but also the moving story of the Rowe family. This is an epic account of corporate villainy against a backdrop of heroic personal struggle and sacrifice