Uncertainty and Informed Choice: Unmasking Daubert

Here is a company [Merrell Dow-the manufacturer of Bendectin] who has been in thalidomide, involved with thalidomide, and they know that the only animal that had the identical deformity to man was one species of macaque monkey... They never went to higher animals. Here's a company who knows all about thalidomide, yet they haven't got the money to go to higher animals... I feel like there were certainly enough [adverse reactions of limb reduction in children born after their mothers had taken Bendectin to alleviate symptoms of nausea] reported, given our bad reporting system... to have warranted some kind of acknowledgment of this on the labeling and to physicians. I think I should have had the choice to make up my mind whether I wanted to take this drug based on the fact of what you had in your files and what the FDA had. Then if I wanted to go ahead and take it and take my chances, we wouldn't be sitting across from each other. But, it's not fair to you to have this knowledge, whether or not you have established in your minds this causal relationship, and not share it with the medical community and with the public who is going to be consuming this stuff.