Thalidomide

Thalidomide was developed by a German firm called Chemie Grunenthal. It was first developed as an anticonvulsant drug. Through early trials they discovered it would not be suitable for this purpose. The drug thalidomide became widely prescribed in the 1960’s and was mainly prescribed to pregnant women for morning sickness. Thalidomide beforehand had however been prescribed as an antidepressant, it was thought to be effective for both morning sickness and depression. After a short time it became obvious to doctors that there was a major problem, pregnant women who were taking thalidomide during their pregnancy were getting a horrible shock after giving birth. Their babies were being born with severe birth defects. Some of these defects included “congenital heart disease, microphthalmos and coloborna, intestinal atresis, renal malformations, abnormal pinnae and facial naevus.”
One isomer was the correct medication and was effective, the effective isomer. Unfortunately the other isomer was causing these horrible defects this was the mutagenic isomer. Both isomers do have the same molecular formula and also the same atom to atom connectivity, this therefore means they are not constitutional isomers. Constitutional isomers means compounds that with the same molecular formula but they have different connectivity. The two forms of thalidomide were known as stereoisomers. Stereoisomers are isomers with the same molecular formula and constitution but have different three dimensional orientations of their atoms in space. Thalidomide is a chiral molecule. A molecule can be called a chiral molecule if it is