It means the counterclockwise or (sinister) isomer of methamphetamine constricts blood vessels. However unless I am mistaken that would be levomethamphetamine. Also called L-methamphetamine oddly that folks say the s-enantiomer instead of L- isomer. But that is just me. Stuff is nasal decongestant and an optical isomer of methamphetamine and its mirror is called dextromethamphetamine. Funny out how different the effects can be chemically just based on on the chiral orientation. The levo and dextro in this case have far different effects on the human body. The distinction in medicine can be life and death.
My grandmother was prescribed thalidomide but never took it. My dad could have been born with deformities. Thankful she never took it. I love you grandma, rest in peace.
Is it weird that my grandma is only 60 and she had 4 children (i have 3 cousins and i have 2 siblings) so thats crazy that shes that young. im grateful :)
Same, my nan was prescribed it when pregnant with my mum, but never took it, my mum went to school with children who were missing limbs due to thalidomide. Having had 2 children of my own now I fully understand wanting relief from 'morning' sickness.
Yes! Thank you to Dr. Frances Kelsey for saving many many babies in the US from this awful mistake!!! She was critical in the drug never being approved for morning sickness in the US!
A few slipped through, Pop was doing a sermon in his final year of ministry where someone in the base 30 miles (only Baptist church in Townsville the USAF members could get to) away suggested that his wife was one of the unlucky.
@Dacia Sandero guys I believe the president (I think JFK) gave her an award. I’m not sure what it’s called but it’s like the highest award a civilian can receive.
In the climate that was the late 50s to the early 60s, my mother KNEW about drug, but being an impoverished black woman living in the southern U.S., she couldn't afford it. My sisters were fortunate unlike a few of the babies born in that small town around that time. What a horribly sad legacy for a drug designed to help.
It was never approved in the U.S. though. Some doctors had samples of it from clinical trials, but it was never available as a prescription. The FDA denied it and then shortly afterward the news of the birth defects came out and it was banned.
The saddest part is that many of those babies that died were actually left to die. When the babies were born very severely deformed, some doctors and nurses thought it was kinder to let them die quickly, rather than live a life of suffering. I think part of it was because disabled people often weren't allowed to be part of society at the time, unless their disability was acquired through an injury (e.g. in the war). Call the Midwife did a wonderful job of showing the human side of this story over a number of years from a patient first being prescribed it, to the first affected babies being born, to discovering the connection and final the support groups for parents who either lost their babies or had disabled babies because of it.
I was born in Canada in 1958 and, thankfully my mother did not take the drug. I then lived in the UK for 27 years so l have met many survivors - most, if not all, have now passed on after years of suffering and misery.
@Elizabeth Exactly, thankfully there's a lot more understanding and visibility nowadays. I think things like RU-vid help, where you can see real people living their real lives, rather than just hearing rumours and misinformation from the people around you.
I'm a Thalidomide Survivor, thanks for the video, I have shared it with a few other survivors so we can get the message out about how it affected unborn babies. It's great that this is practicality a newly released video. Currently in some South American countries, Thalidomide is once again being sold as a morning sickness drug, this time by suppliers through the black market.
If I remember correctly, one interesting thing to note is that the misuse of thalidomide contributed greatly to clinical tests favoring men instead of women because of pregnancy risks and women having less stable hormone levels. This is highly unfortunate since a lot of drugs after that has only been tested on men but still prescribed to women. This is still the case today for many drugs.
That's a great point. So much of medicine is based on the male body, it's only fairly recently that they finally noticed that women are built differently and respond differently to medications
Isn't it funny how out of ALL possible uses for this drug, the first one people discover just happens to be useful in the only situation when it has a significant side effect?
Actually, the very first use for what it was designed was as a tranquillizer for the soldiers in war. It ended up being used for different things, included morning sickness.
Some people complain that it takes too long to get a drug approved in the US, but thalidomide shows our wisdom in going slow. In Europe it was quickly accepted, and tragedy resulted.
@@grundgesetzart.1463 Morning sickness ranges wildly from mild nausea to constant vomiting. My friend got pregnant with her first child while working as a teacher and had a difficult time being able to go to work since she literally couldn't get through most days without vomiting repeatedly. For women who have it that bad, it would absolutely be a godsend to have a drug that could effectively combat morning sickness.
Interestingly, cannibals suffer a higher rate of disorders and afflictions caused by chiral molecules than do non cannibals. And I don't mean just humans; lobsters (the only species I remember as being cannibalistic, I know there are others, I just don't remember which) suffer many such disorders and afflictions.
My mother has multiple myeloma, and they gave her thalidomide to treat that. We had to make sure that no women of childbearing years were ever near when she was handling it.
Thought it might be worth mentioning, currently in Australia they're waiting on the results of a high court government inquiry into giving victims who were born affected with birth defects and their families compensation for the damageand suffering it caused ( our ABC has done a documentary on it called 'bitter pill') and hopefully they get answers. It's extremely horrific that this happened.
I remember vaguely from my school days that even venom is venomous only in one of it's form, I guess the levo-rotatory form and when converted to dextro-version it's harmless.
My grandma took this when she was pregnant with my aunt, her first kid. She doesn’t have any physical defects but she has been plagued with mental illness from the get go
And here in the USA we have Frances Oldham Kelsey to thank for her refusal to approve thalidomide pending further testing; she doubtless saved many, many lives because of it.
Science was also used to establish the link between the drug and birth defects. Science is a process - a grueling one. This has more to do with the people that developed the drug than the science itself. Science has done more to improve lives then any other method out there.
Just heard of this situation, from watching "Call the Midwife" series on Netflix. I was more curios, so I did my own research and ended up here. I didn't know I was going to get a chemistry lesson today! I am glad I did. Chemistry was the only subject I ever failed, in high school. It has daunted me ever since. I am now an elementary teacher, and I love these SciShow episodes and use them often for my students. They teach me as well!! I love this video and the simple explanations are valuable!
This exact example is why I was afraid to take any medication while pregnant. I learned about this debacle in highschool history class and then at some point watched a documentary on it and basically a pharmaceutical company knew something was wrong but kept pushing it out to doctors anyway and doctors didn't make the connection for way too long. So when I because pregnant I was like "You can tell me it's safe to take that all you want but things get recalled and I won't trust my babies developmental well-being to anything that it's absolutely necessary for me to take." And then shortly after my pregnancy an anti nausea medicine prescribed to my pregnant friend was once again recalled for possibly causing birth defects.
It's so interesting and important to remember that just because a drug produces terrible side effects in one circumstance doesn't mean it can't be incredibly useful in another!
Thanks for the in depth explanation of left handed vs right handed molecules! I’d been taught about this less in depth when I was taught about some skin care brands and why some work better than others but your explanation makes tons of sense in that way as well as medically!
I really appreciate this take!!! I've watched many docs and minidocs on Thalidomide, but this is the first one which discussed the chemistry behind it!
I once had a friend who was one of the so-called thalidomide children; all the fingers on his right hand were the size and shape of peas, but he was a fighter: he played both guitar and piano with great enthusiasm! :D
Scientist 1: Hey, we just found this new chemical and we're not really sure what it does or how it works, what should we do with it? Scientist 2: Why, give it to pregnant women of course!
Praise the Profits! Other countries have different standards for many things. That's a big reason many American companies move production to other countries. Lax regulations for employee protection, consumer protection, environmental protection..... That's what the right-wing whining about regulations is about. They don't want doing things safely to cut into stockholders' profits.
@@jman1749 You're on a science channel spouting conspiracy nonsense. The mechanism of vaccines is well understood and is a technology as old as frigging time. The Chinese used to grind up smallpox scabs from people with mild cases and make healthy people snort it back in the 1500s! We understood vaccines before we understood germ theory. You have no leg to stand on (and if these were the times of Polio that would be a literal statement.)
These videos are very informative. I already knew that thalidomide caused birth defects but I was not aware of the enantiomers and chiral chemistry side of things so yeah I've learned something new.
My mum was one of the children born of thalidomide. Luckily she wasn't effected as greatly as other people were, but the effects of her birth are causing problems to her today Not fun
Following the science is why it was never approved for use in the US and why it got recalled elsewhere, so yeah, follow the science, follow actual evidence, not your fearful speculation
Just to give more context to this and since there is something missing in your explanation: A molecule is only chiral if it has four different substitutes, for example 1. Hydrogen, 2. Methyl-group, 3. Ethyl-group and 4. Propyl-group. Otherwise, you could just turn the molecule. Also, if you were wondering: The S and R Form aren't distinguishable by any physical or chemical trait, making it really hard to seperate the two forms. The only way to seperate those two is by shooting polarised light at them. And even doing that is not a 100% guarantee that it is what you think it is.
KreaTiefpunkt under certain circumstances chiral enantiomers can result in different NMR and IR spectra on analysis. Also the majority enantiomers in a reaction product can be determined using plane polarised light and a rough idea of how much of that enantiomer is present as well by reference to predetermined values for 'pure' enantiomeric samples. Alot of this has been developed and refined as a result of the experience detailed in the video.
That's interesting. The prescription drug armodafinil (for alertness, attention, ) was sold as Provigil. Then it was allegedly purified to contain more of the molecules with the effective chirality. The purified drug is sold as Nuvigil. It is more expensive. That purification somehow was used to avoid patent expiration. The manufacturer lost that class-action lawsuit. That is an example of a current drug sold under two names and prices due to the purification to eliminate some of the wrong-chirality molecules.
Big shout out to Dr. Frances Kelsey of the FDA. She did not let the pressure of the pharma company sway her opinion that the drug was not tested enough. If it wasn't for her, many of us here in the US would not be watching this video right now. She is a true hero.
Do you know i have been taking thalidomide since past 2 years as i have thallesemia and this drug has been a big, big, big life saver for me and I’ve never had to have a blood transfusion since the start of this. I am really thankful to this drug
iridium56 Yeah, you have to deal with massive molecules that have different versions of each other while having the same chemical formula. Inorganic chemistry is a lot simpler XD
When preparing for my pre med exams I was told by so many people that organic chemistry will probably be easier than inorganic because it's logical and mostly requires applying certain rules, like in a language's grammar or in mathematics. But I found organic chemistry to be much more demanding as it also requires you to memorize so much information - large molecules with complicated, confusing and strictly specific structures. Inorganic compounds are much simpler and generally inorganic chemistry (in pre med school particularly) relies on logically searching for an answer rather than memorization.
I found ochem to be easy. Its like a puzzle game. BUT, biochem is so damn hard, since the biology aspect is so overwhelming ( beta sheet, alpha helices, ) ...uhhh.....
I have a cousin with this, they were able to get it in the US because of a relative in the medical field. The umbilical just affected their hand and arm.
Every time we went to the dog park, my boy Zoot would dance with the same little white girl-dog. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Z55q9wpouT4.html That always brought a smile.
Hello, SciShow! Do you think you could make a video explaining the current knowledge of cerebral aneurysms? I had one rupture at 19 and after learning so much about them, I would love for a bigger audience to learn of them!
phantasm1234 I recently joined Patreon (at the level which allows you to ask questions.) Would you like me to ask your question there? I won't without your permission, but I think aneurysms would make for an interesting video.
I would greatly appreciate that! I'm currently a doctoral student and OH BOY, money is tight, so I can't be a patron at the moment. Thank you very much!
Here you have it from an unbiased source... Not everything FDA approves is safe and vice versa 😉 of course it was 20-30 years ago but people still make mistakes
But the FDA never approved Thalidomide for morning sickness. The approval application was rejected six times for not demonstrating with research that it was safe during pregnancy. Consequently, Thalidomide was never prescribed to pregnant women in the United States.
My mom was born (1959) with severely disfigured hands because of this drug. When my sister and I were born (1979 & 1982) her main concern is that we had the typical amount of digits (we did). Thanks for explaining why this happened!
Me too! I went to a FDA professional presentation about food label VS "nutritional supplement" label regulations . There is a huge difference. Food labels are regulated carefully and supplements are.....a something else.
The company did know of a surge in birth defects after Thalidamide was avaialable. Yet when Drs also wrote to them, instead of withdrawing the drug and conducting research - they ramped up the marketing and free samples to doctors.
Is that the Contagan scandal? If so noone in Germany knows this as thalidomide. Contagan however is more than well known, everyone knows someone who has been affected by it.
that's interesting... I don't think many people outside Germany, who learn this in school, would know about the brand instead of the active ingredient... in Brazil, I was only taught this as thalidomide
Not sure how old you are, Jessica, but I'm GLAD you at least heard about this! I'm 53 - a neighbor's cousin had a Thalidomide baby when I was a kid - & NO ONE at work below a certain age (all w/degrees in chemistry or biology or science) ever heard of it. Even some ppl my age never heard of it (w/o degrees in science). I am aghast. So I'm delighted at least you heard of it from the show. Thank you!!
For me this is a very interesting video because as a pharmaceutical technician in a big university hospital. I see this used as away for patients that respond to no other threat meant for there non Hodgkin’s disease and other forms of leukaemia. Thanks I of course have heard of the story but never knew the reason why.
I think it would be really awesome if SciShow had a segment just for toxicology related topics like thalidomide. I might be biased because I have my BSc in toxicology, but I think it accounts for some of the channels most interesting videos! Ex. The video on Minimata disease from a couple weeks ago could be part of the segment too
A severe teratogen used frequently is isotretinoin, Accutane. It causes very severe, incompatible with life, birth defects when taken by pregnant people, but is a common treatment for severe acne and is also used for some cancers. It does require patients to participate in a program that tracks contraceptive use and potential pregnancy. It is somewhat intrusive, but worth it for no longer having painful cystic acne
Here in December 2020, as I consider how unknown, or incomplete, info in science effects us and sometimes does what we did not anticipate. Which is why, I prefer more time ... typically, before using a new drug. This is so challenging when deciding whether to vaccinate or not to vaccinate (while I still have a choice). #vaccine 🤷🏻♀️
You do realise that the reason a vaccine took this long was because for like 80% of that time they were testing it to prevent bad side effects but people you are to busy iqnoring what the experts you know the people's who's Jon it is to save your sorry asses say
There is a lot of things not known about what permanent damage Covid19 (SARS2) does to the body. Surprise, it can deafen you! I have two family members who have the "long-haul" Covid syndrome. They never know what awful thing will happen next. Sudden body temperature drop? Terrible headache?....So while you are waiting to see if the vaccine is 100% safe for every human, you're risking something that is absolutely less healthy.
My grandma took this when she was pregnant with my mom for a bit before stopping because she didn't like the way it made her feel. My mom doesn't have any obvious birth defects, but now her doctor thinks her exposure to this drug is responsible for her neurologic problems.
My brother used to take this medicine. I remember it having a picture of a deformed baby on the packaging and strict instructions for pregnant women not to even touch it.
Hold on, how can one enantiomer change into another inside the body? The chirality can only change by rotating through four dimensions, and since I doubt we all have fourth-dimensional portals within us, the only other explanation is that the molecule get broken down and re-assembled the other way around... But, if that's the case, why doesn't it naturally occur in the body? Does it have some unique subcomponent that only exists in Thalidomide, yet the body readily reconstructs either enantiomer of Thalidomide out of it?
This is a genuinely good question and I would like to see an answer. My guess would be that it naturally occurs, but very rarely, enough that the effects aren't noticeable, and it's only when the drug is taken that it forms in large quantities
no and no with enough energy you can have the 4 links temporary planar until the rearrange (in one configuration or the other) chiral molecules do it all the time, most of it is from sunlight giving enough energy at once, but molecules which are ''strained'' in one position can spontaneously change (technically there is an equilibrium that, altough slow, will lead to a point where some amount of both exist, the exact ration to be calculated from the reaction speeds)
I watch the show "Call the Midwife" and the thalidomide scandal was the basis for multiple episodes when they disocovered babies in the the area being born with deformities! Interesting to learn more about what the episodes were reffering to. :)
No, not quite. There is validity to directly requesting a topic. I do volunteer work where I clearly answer any science question to the best of my ability. I don't mind topic requests and this website probably doesn't either.
My mother actually takes this drug as low dose chemo for multiple myeloma in order to keep her in remission. It started as stage 4 and she has been in remission for 5 years now!
Bad title. It is not the "chemistry mistake" that killed babies. It is the fact that we cannot test any drug on pregnant humans, therefore the effects of drugs are unknown. Thalidomide was tested on animals, and showed no effects on embryos. But there are differences between animals and humans, and because of them (and the fact that drugs can't be tested on pregnant humans) there are not a lot of drugs that can be truly marked as "safe for pregnancy".
And, the manufacturer didn't test on pregnant animals. At the time the medical community worldwide operated under the assumption that if it couldn't harm the mother, it couldn't harm the fetus. Crick and Watson had only made their discovery of DNA 3 years before thalidomide was put on the market in Germany.
Humans ARE animals! I agree that the title isn't appropriate because the video is about fetal deformities , not the unknown total number of stillborns or infants that die soon after death. No America shouldn't start testing drugs deliberately on pregnant women.
I was writing a paper on the importance of the FDA and I brought up thalidomide as an example of how it stopped that crisis only for me to realize it was also the starter of it
We just read about this in bio two days ago and I was hoping you guys would make a video about it, since it was such and interesting, though tragic, incident. My wishes have been granted :)
I really like Stefan as a host. He really does seem incredibly enthusiastic about what he's reading and doesn't seem forced at all (looking at you, Olivia).
Trolls. Ignore them or calmly debate them and they'll get bored and move on to another site to spew ignorance and their mis-placed anger. They are like whiny spoiled children who get to ruin a nice event.
2:17 The small end of the cone should be attached on the C atom. N-atoms are in rare cases a center of chirality. Only in strained conformation. Nevertheless i adore this channel.
Winds_Of _Night you have to count the atoms from the biggest to the most little. If you have to move clockwise to count them, the molecule is the R enantiomer. Otherwise is the S. The hydrogen needs to stay under the plane of the molecule
I remember thalidomide babies from when I was growing up in the 60's the ones who lived were hideously deformed on the outside as well as internally. The one thing they all seemed to have in common were "flippers" where their limbs should have been. To a child, seeing someone like that was absolutely terrifying.
My uncle actually was lucky to only be born with one kidney because of this drug. He is currently fighting cancer and doing all he can to live his best life.
Clearly R-vs-S is ignoramic-associativity-coded science where human physio-compatibility with R-vs-S is different for different molecules, and neither doctor, knows what the other is doing.... And, _the in_ situ R-vs-S interchangeability looked obvious because of free-spinning-radical and weak NH asymmetries of your C₂NCH kink/bend, and more cis-trans-versions.
Tim Murphy Yea, it was a lot harder to determine molecular geometry in the sixties. In the 40's we had just determined that DNA was a helix, it's a stretch to think that a mere 20 years later medical scientists had not only applied similar methods to organic compound, but rigorously tested then in what was thought to be a proved compound.
I would love to hear you guys talk about the Accessory Navicular bone. It's a bone that apparently many people are born with that has apparently no purpose- the only way I found out about it was because it was even causing me extreme pain in my feet. I've never once in my life heard it discussed and there's no information on it really anywhere
