Dr.
Kelsey played a key role in preventing thalidomide from being sold to
pregnant mothers in the United States. She received her PhD from the
University of Chicago, and then became a doctor of medicine at the same
institution. Later, Kelsey worked for the FDA reviewing applications for
new drugs coming in, one of which was thalidomide. Thalidomide is a
drug that was said to help with nausea, so the manufacturers felt a good
target audience would be pregnant women, even though they did not
complete thorough experiments to determine if the drug would affect a
developing fetus. Kelsey noticed this, and refused to approve the drug
without further research, despite intense pressure from the drug makers'
company and from her bosses. It was later found that thalidomide caused
2,000 children to die, and caused 10,000 children to be born with
deformities. Thanks to Dr. Frances Kelsey, there were only 17 of the
babies born with deformities were born in the US. -Natalie