Help for Thalidomide Victims

It was a grim harvest for West Germany: 3,000 babies dead shortly after birth and another 3,000 with grotesque malformations, because their mothers had taken the sleeping-pill tranquilizer thalidomide during early pregnancy. What was to become of the little victims? With legs and arms deformed or missing, some of the babies promised to be lifelong basket cases. All seemed unequipped to face their uncertain future.

Many of the parents, particularly young couples whose deformed child was their first, did not even want to accept their babies. Others, who had larger families, argued that to keep their thalidomide child at home would be too great a strain on their other children. A few even went so far as to say that distribution of the drug had been the government's fault; therefore it was also the government's responsibility to provide for the children. Then, last year, Dr. Gustav Hauberg, an energetic orthopedist from the state of Lower Saxony, produced a comprehensive plan for taking care of thalidomide babies. Today that plan is a working reality, and throughout Germany, despair for the thalidomide victims has given way to understanding and hope.

No Lepers. An experienced medical administrator, Dr. Hauberg swiftly disposed of mountains of tangled red tape as he converted a former male TB ward on the outskirts of Hanover into Abteilung

Dysmelien.*There, he has been working with some of the worst thalidomide cases in Lower Saxony. Results are so gratifying that similar wards are already being started elsewhere in Germany.

Abteilung 10 was founded on the principle that deformed babies should not spend their lives in institutions. Collecting the children in "Thalidomide Towns," a frequently heard proposal, has also been rejected. "Such a town," says Dr. Hau-berg, "would be like a leper colony. Seclusion of deformed victims could not help appearing to them as expulsion from society. Psychologically it would be extremely dangerous."

Dr. Hauberg and his colleagues also reject the theory that it is best not to fit children with artificial limbs until after the period of their most rapid growth is over. "Our little patient," says Dr. Hauberg, "grows up with his prosthesis, so that he feels as if it were a part of him." On the other hand, operations to remove seemingly functionless protrusions of tissue are avoided as long as possible, since most contain muscles that may be invaluable in manipulating artificial limbs.

At first, the infants are strapped to specially molded plaster stools on which they learn the sensation of sitting upright. Then, after being fitted with their first artificial limb, the children learn that a small movement of a muscle can trigger the hook fingers of an artificial arm. They learn how to use a prosthesis to reach rattles that hang on their beds. Gradually, dexterity improves until they are able to pick up objects and pull themselves upright in their cribs. Even those with deformed feet are taught to walk.

Guilt & Anxiety. Set up to treat 196 serious cases, Abteilung 10 admits the children in batches of 30. Each child lives in the clinic for periods of two to three months. During the last two weeks of treatment, the mother also becomes a resident of the clinic, wearing the same style blue coat that is worn by the 30 specialized .uses and therapists. The children learn to identify their mothers in the same category as the clinic staff, and the parent provides what Dr. Hauberg calls "nest warmth." She becomes an ob ject of treatment herself, sitting in on group psychotherapy sessions to talk over her guilt and anxieties with other mothers.

Because the thalidomide babies have above average intelligence, Dr. Hauberg and his colleagues are already theorizing about "some mysterious process of natural compensation." Parents, too, are invariably impressed by the progress of their children. Last week one mother watched proudly as her two-year-old son Kurt, who has only tiny arm stumps and whose feet are attached to his buttocks, reached for a ball with his new, artificial arm. "He's never done this before," she marveled. In another room, a four-year-old boy earnestly practiced opening and closing belt buckles. "At first we thought everything was hopeless," said his mother. "Now we see what progress can be made."

*Ward 10--Deformed Limbs.

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