Thalidomide survivors on cusp of apology and compensation

Lynette Rowe and Lisa McManus are the twin faces of a tragedy. Neither was expected to survive infancy, much less childhood.

Thalidomide victims Lynette Rowe and Lisa McManus. Picture: David Geraghty

Lynette Rowe and Lisa McManus are the twin faces of a tragedy. Neither was expected to survive infancy, much less childhood. Yet nearly 60 years after the thalidomide scandal, they may live to see something once unimaginable: a national apology for what was done to them.

McManus is an “original’’ thalidomider — one of 35 surviving Australians identified in 1974 as having malformed limbs due to their mothers taking a drug in pregnancy then prescribed as an anti-nausea tablet for morning sickness. Rowe is one of 87 Australians who, despite her mother taking the drug and her severe deformities, had to go to court just five years ago to prove she was a thalidomide baby.

“I was just a person with no arms and no legs,’’ she says. “It didn’t have a name. I was a ship without a rudder.’’

The two women met for the first time this week in the Melbourne home of Peter Gordon, a lawyer who, having previously taken on big tobacco and asbestos company James Hardie, has championed the rights of thalidomiders for a decade. They will meet again tomorrow, in the office of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, as the Senate hands down a report into the failure of successive governments to provide adequately for their needs.

Mr Shorten yesterday declared Labor’s support for a national apology to Australia’s thalidomide survivors and for the establishment of a government compensation scheme.

In a letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Mr Shorten sought bipartisan support for both measures. He told The Australian that if elected, a Labor government would act regardless.

“There is so much that can be done here and it is so overdue,’’ Mr Shorten told The Australian. “Considering the way thalidomide survivors and their families have been treated over the years, it is just appalling.

“Those people were badly let down, and their parents. It is shocking, shocking negligence, in my opinion.’’

The Coalition has formally recognised thalidomide survivors but has so far rejected the idea of an apology and government compensation. The Greens, who helped establish the Senate inquiry, are backing both remedies.

Mr Shorten sent the letter to Mr Morrison after meeting in Perth with Monica McGhie. Like Lynette Rowe, Ms McGhie’s body was too deformed for her to be ­accepted as a thalidomide victim in 1974.

She was born entirely without arms or legs. At the time, doctors argued that she needed to have some limbs to be classified as a thalidomide child.

Ms McGhie was born in October 1963, nearly two years after the then federal health minister, Harrie Wade, received a letter from the Australian distributors of thalidomide, Distillers Australia, citing birth defects associated with the drug and urging a withdrawal of its products. The letter was received in November 1961. Thalidomide products were not banned from sale in Australia until August 1962. No effort was made to retrieve drugs already sold to unsuspecting women.

“The government did nothing,’’ Ms McGhie said.

“They didn’t tell anyone. They didn’t demand it was taken off the shelf. It is their fault I was born this way.’’

Lisa McManus was also conceived after the Distillers letter was received by Wade. For the past five years, she has led the push for the government to acknowledge its failure.

“An apology is really important, not just to us as survivors but to our mums and dads,’’ she says.

“I also think we deserve a little packet of money, a little pot of gold. Pain and suffering doesn’t do justice to what this did to us and our parents and families.’’

Mr Gordon estimates that about 30 thalidomide survivors were conceived after the government knew the drug was poisoning pregnant women. Those affected lived disproportionately in rural areas.

He said government neglect went beyond its failure to act decisively on the letter. It didn’t help or support thalidomide families who sought redress from drug companies in the 1970s. It didn’t establish an inquiry or royal commission into the scandal. It has never pursued Grunenthal, the German inventor of thalidomide which knew the drug was linked to serious health problems across Europe before it licensed it for distribution in Australia.

Mr Gordon will put a case today to Mr Shorten for the ­Australian government to pursue Grunenthal for costs in the same way it tackled tobacco companies. Mr Shorten, who has previously met thalidomide survivors through Mr Gordon, indicated that he was up for a fight.

“That is a decision in government but my personal inclination is we do need to muscle up and take them on,’’ Mr Shorten said.

A national compensation scheme will need to be carefully tailored to recognise the vastly differing circumstances of thalidomide survivors.

Lisa McManus and the original thalidomiders accepted a modest compensation payout from Distillers in 1974 and have since benefited from an annual pension provided by Diageo, the corporate successor of Distillers.

The pension is not pegged to inflation and is due to run out in 2028. In accepting the initial ­compensation, albeit grossly ­inadequate, they signed away their legal rights to further ­redress.

Ms Rowe and the class action thalidomiders sued Distillers and accepted a settlement of $100 million — enough to provide for the rest of their lives.

Due to the size of the settlement, a case prepared against Grunenthal was not pursued.

The class action thalidomiders are seeking more practical matters from a national redress scheme such as a single point of contact when dealing with health departments and more efficient access to the NDIS.

“I just want them to say sorry and to be accountable for what has happened to us,’’ Ms Rowe said.

It is likely that there are other thalidomide survivors who didn’t join the class action and have never been properly diagnosed.

“Harrie Wade has this fawning uncritical attitude to the whole thing and Lisa has been denied a massive entitlement that was legitimately hers because the government abandoned her,’’ Mr Gordon said.

“Lynette got a very significant damages settlement but 50 years too late because there was no inquiry into the real range of injuries. Together, they make this eloquent statement that is unified by the fact that the government profoundly let both of them down in different ways.’’

All survivors expect their medical complications to get steadily worse from here. Living with deformities takes a physical toll and a secondary outcome of thalidomide is accelerated, physical degeneration.

Ms McManus is not yet 60 but has been told her internal organs are like those of an octogenarian.

Then there are those who never lived. Gordon believes the most frequent outcome of thalidomide poisoning was foetal death. Those lives lost and the impact on their parents has never been formally recognised.