Orthopedics: Help for Thalidomide Victims

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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.