FDA Heroine Frances Oldham Kelsey Died Aged 101

Kelsey died at the age of 101 on Friday, June 7 at her home in London, Ontario.

It was in the 1960s when Thalidomide was popularly used by pregnant women; the drug was later discovered to cause serious birth defects such as damaged internal organs, undeveloped limbs, blindness, and deafness.

This award recognized her importance in preventing tragedy from befalling babies in twenty countries including Canada where mothers were having thalidomide for nausea and insomnia.

Although the drug is already widely used in Europe, some data on the safety of the drug troubled Kelsey, whose job was to review requests to license new drugs so she asked the drug’s manufacturer, the William S. Merrell Company of Cincinnati to provide more information.

The side-effects of the drug then became apparent as the battle of wills dragged on. Thousands of babies in Europe, Canada, and the Middle East were born with severe birth defects, called phocomelia.

Thalidomide was produced by the German company Chemie Grunenthal, and was approved for use in Britain, Japan, and Canada.

Dr. Kelsey was revered as a heroin for her involvement in the movement to oppose thalidomide, a drug promoted as a harmless sedative for pregnant women, in the 1960s. Along with being a full-time contributor to several well-known websites, she offers writing workshops twice a month to up-and-coming professionals.

Kelsey had played a very crucial role in preventing the drug thalidomide from being distributed in the United States.

As the new federal law was being hammered out, Kennedy rushed to include Dr. Kelsey in a previously scheduled White House award ceremony honoring influential civil servants, including an architect of NASA’s manned spaceflight program. She’s also a featured cat blogger for CatTime, runs a post-apocalyptic themed blog, and is a guest writer for a number of publications.