Another unscientific poll just to see if this is well known, especially in disability circles and to spread awareness.
In short the Thalidomide Scandal had to do with a medication prescribed to pregnant women for morning sickness. It was pushed without proper studies and resulted in the births of thousands of “seal” babies. Essentially, their limbs were affected. Some had no limbs, some had short limbs, some had only arms affected, others only legs. At the time many of these babies were left to die after birth. However many brave parents and foster parents took care of these babies who are now entering their elderly years. The biggest part of this scandal is that the safety regulations and alarm bells were ignored to push this drug. I had never heard of this drug until I watched Call the Midwife which had thalidomide baby named Susan and they brought her back throughout the years to show how she was getting on.
However now I’m watching a documentary now on Prime called No Limits, which focuses on this scandal and tells the story of its victims. It’s so wonderful to hear from the victims themselves about what it’s like to be a thalidomide baby. I’m only a quarter through it and already moved tears watching footage of a thalidomide baby just being happy with a family. Meanwhile in another story, mothers got off murder charges for getting rid of their disabled child.
This story is such an important part of disability history, I think everyone should know.
How the burden of proof was flipped — and why children are paying the price.
By: Leanne Owen
Published: Aug 19, 2025
Yesterday, I was watching one of Exulansic’s videos when she said a phrase I hadn’t heard in years: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” It took me straight back to my college logic class — and to the long list of logical fallacies we learned to spot.
Once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere. And nowhere are they more blatant, more dangerous, or more willfully ignored than in the medicalization of gender-distressed children.
In medicine, the burden of proof is supposed to rest on those promoting an intervention. You have to prove it’s safe before you roll it out — especially if it’s irreversible. But in the gender medicine debate, that burden has been turned upside down. Activists and clinicians demand that skeptics prove these interventions are harmful before they’ll consider stopping. In other words: “If you can’t show us definitive proof of harm, we’ll keep doing it.” That is the exact inversion of medical ethics — and it rests squarely on the fallacy Exulansic named.
We’ve been here before. History is littered with tragedies that began the same way. In the 1950s, thalidomide was given to pregnant women because there was “no evidence” it caused birth defects — until thousands of babies were born without limbs. For decades, asbestos lined homes and schools because there was “no evidence” it caused cancer — until mesothelioma patients filled hospital wards. Lobotomies were hailed as cutting-edge psychiatric care because there was “no evidence” they destroyed lives — until tens of thousands were left permanently disabled. In each case, the absence of evidence wasn’t proof of safety. It was proof no one had looked hard enough, long enough, or honestly enough.
Today, we are told that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors are “safe and effective.” We are told there’s “no evidence” these treatments cause harm. What we aren’t told is that there’s also no high-quality evidence proving they are safe — and no long-term research on what happens to the children who receive them. There is no national system in the United States to track regret or detransition rates. There have been no randomized controlled trials on minors. There is no comprehensive follow-up into adulthood to monitor physical or mental health outcomes. There is no systematic data on fertility loss, bone damage, or cardiovascular risk.
Meanwhile, the limited evidence we do have points toward extreme caution. Eleven long-term studies show that most gender non-conforming children, if left alone, will grow up to be gay or lesbian, not trans. Independent reviews in Sweden, Finland, and the UK’s Cass Review have all concluded that the research is too weak to justify routine use of these interventions on minors. Even WPATH’s own leaked files reveal internal admissions that they simply don’t know the long-term risks — and are proceeding anyway.
And this isn’t just about what’s missing. It’s also about what’s hidden. Hospitals lose follow-up data. Clinics refuse to publish internal audits. Detransitioners are ignored or erased from studies. When you suppress inconvenient facts, the absence of evidence stops being an accident — it becomes a deliberate choice. Yet activists cling to slogans like “detransition is rare” and “there’s no proof of harm” as if they are shields. But that’s not science. It’s salesmanship. It’s the exact logical trap my old professor warned us about — dressing up ignorance as certainty.
History will not be kind to this moment. In twenty years, when the lawsuits mount and the damage is undeniable, it will not absolve anyone to say, “We didn’t know.” Because the truth is, we do know: we haven’t looked, we haven’t measured, and we haven’t told the whole story.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It never has been. And when the stakes are as high as a child’s healthy body, the absence of evidence should stop us cold — not speed us forward.
We cannot wait for the damage to be done before demanding answers. If you believe children deserve better than untested, irreversible medical experiments, join us. Speak up at your school board. Contact your legislators. Share the stories the media buries. Support whistleblowers and detransitioners. The only thing more dangerous than acting without evidence is staying silent while it happens.
It’s time to stop experimenting on children and demand real evidence before another generation pays the price. The Courage Coalition is fighting for that future. Stand with us.
Apropos of a recent post, I want to talk a little about Francis Oldham Kelsey.
Born in Canada in 1914, she studied pharmacology at McGill University in Montreal, and went to a PhD program at the university of Chicago.
When she arrived in Chicago the FDA was dealing with a national emergency; a series of deaths had followed the use of the antibiotic "Elixir Sulfanilimide" made by Massengill Co., and as a grad student she worked in the team that identified diethelyne glycol (DEG) as the toxin. This wasn't malicious on the company's part; it wasn't widely known that DEG was toxic at the time and safely testing new drugs or preparations wasn't required prior to 1938. Over 100 people died in that incident, and the owner of the company denied that they had any responsibility because they "not once could have foreseen the unlooked-for results". And that was precisely the problem; you SHOULD look and make sure you aren't producing poison before you sell a medication to the public.
That's why we require safety testing. Federal regulations are often written in blood; remember this the next time someone tells you they are "burdensome to innovation."
Dr. Kelsey went on to medical school, taught pharmacology, worked as a primary care physician for awhile, then was hired by the FDA as chief of the Division of New Drugs. Her job was to decide whether to approve new medications for use in the US, and as we noted, this was a relatively new concept at the time and there were no formal requirements around how safety testing was done. Companies just submitted an application and expected it to be taken at face value. Kelsey received an application for thalidomide from F. Joseph Murray, an executive from the William S. Merrill Co. that looked on paper like a wonder drug for insomnia and treatment of morning sickness in pregnancy (among other things). It was already approved and in use in Europe and Australia, where it was becoming wildly popular, but some parts of the application stood out; they claimed it had no side effects and no lethal dose (even water has a lethal dose). The "data" was a collection of anecdotes (data is not the plural of anecdote). She denied it. They resubmitted.
She noticed an article linking thalidomide to nerve damage in England and asked why they hadn't addressed that, and requested safety data for the fetus since this was supposed to be given to pregnant women. Denied. Resubmitted (still without safety data).
Murray went on to pressure Kelsey by writing an angry letter to her boss, and resubmitting the application a total of five times. Around the same time he was pushing for approval, reports of birth defects involving missing or deformed limbs started emerging in Europe and Australia. It took some time to connect these to thalidomide.
Kelsey had rejected the approval of thalidomide four times and it was withdrawn on the fifth. Around 8,000 babies were born with severe birth defects, and thousands more were miscarried. Only 17 of these were in the US, from samples Merrill gave out as an "investigative trial".
One result of this was that now safety trials have to be based on adequate, controlled studies and the FDA can inspect labs to ensure that this is happening. It also requires any human participants in those trials to give informed consent; if you are taking a drug that isn't approved you have to be told, and understand the risks. This was not the case before 1962!
Again for the folks in the back: Federal regulations are often written in blood. The reason we require safety testing is 100+ deaths from an antibiotic elixir and 8,000 babies with no limbs. Also, if you were born in the 60s with all 4 limbs, thank Frances Kelsey.
In 1937, Frances Kelsey, at the age of 23, witnessed the tragic consequences of an unsafe drug during the "Elixir Sulfanilamide incident." Over twenty years later, in 1960, she joined the FDA and faced her first task: reviewing the morning sickness drug Thalidomide.
Thalidomide was touted as a safe option for pregnant women, but Kelsey, aware of potential risks, demanded thorough safety data, ultimately preventing its approval in the U.S. Despite global tragedies caused by Thalidomide, Kelsey's steadfastness spared the U.S. from similar devastation, earning her recognition as a silent hero.
Sylvia Plath, from “Thalidomide,” Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath’s Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (HarperCollins, 2004)
