Sir Tom Jones backs Thalidomide campaign

Sir Tom Jones is backing a national campaign to force the maker of the Thalidomide “wonder drug” to finally compensate the victims crippled by its catastrophic side effects.

The Voice judge has added his name to the “Show Your Hands” website, which is aiming to collect more than 100,000 names calling on pharmaceutical giant, Grunenthal, to pay damages to the 469 surviving British Thalidomiders.

Thalidomide was administered to pregnant women to combat the effects of morning sickness, However, in May 1962 the drug was withdrawn after it was linked to crippling side effects in new born babies.

A least 2,000 in the UK were born with deformities brought about directly by Thalidomide, and more than half of them died within their first year. An unknown number also died in the womb.

Common deformities included missing or shortened limbs, blindness, brain damage, missing sexual organs and missing internal organs. There a total of 469 Thalidomiders still alive in the UK today.

Harrogate Thalidomide victim Guy Tweedy said:

Grunenthal has never paid a single penny to the British, Canadian, Swedish and Australian victims of their drug.

The Show Your Hands campaign has been created to shame them into finally admitting their culpability in this long running saga.

One question I would like to ask is why should the ordinary British worker, via their taxes, pick up the tab for the shocking mistakes made by foreign pharmaceutical companies?

Having Sir Tom show his hands in support will give our campaign a real boost and hopefully it will spur the public into following suit.

To help win this campaign we need as much public support as possible.

All we are asking is that they go onto our new website, www.drugjustice.eu, and register their name.

The campaign is set to get a further lift when it is featured on the BBC’s Panorama programme tonight, (June 24).