Plastic Mesh Surgically Implanted in Mothers: What Could Go Wrong?

“I was rotting from the inside”: The vaginal surgery secretly destroying mothers’ lives.

MICHELLE ANDREWS

April 28, 2017  FiDA highlight

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Kim Blieschke had no idea her life would change irreparably when she was advised to undergo a “straightforward” surgery to correct pelvic organ prolapse – a complication from childbirth that results in surrounding organs to bulge or sag down into the vagina.

But moments after waking up from her transvaginal mesh implant procedure in 2006, where a web of polypropylene plastic was embedded into her vaginal wall, the mum-of-four knew “something wasn’t quite right”.

“I was in intense pain that they couldn’t control,” Kim told me over the phone from her Port Pirie home, in the South Australian countryside.

“I woke up with quite substantial bruising all over my buttocks and perineum and upper thighs. The bruises were the size of my hand.”

"I had necrotic flesh in there." (Image supplied)

"It was a pain like you wouldn't believe," she said. "Doctors said I'd be in the hospital for two or three days, but I was there for seven. On the three-hour car ride home, sitting was almost unbearable."

From there, Kim's condition spiralled.

"My doctor kept saying it will be better, it will be better, but I ended up taking three months off work," she told me. "I couldn't drive, I couldn't lift, I couldn't even sweep the floor."

Doctors made Kim feel like she was imagining the pain, but as a seasoned paramedic, she knew something was awry when her vagina developed a "foul smell".

"I told my GP something wasn't quite right, and it turned out I had necrotic flesh in there."

The polypropylene - a material used to create everything from plastic chairs to water bottles - had ignited Kim's natural foreign body reaction. Her body wasn't just trying to fight the mesh, it was trying to kill it.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration says transvaginal meshes were approved by "conformity assessment certification either from a EU certification body or the TGA".

By 2014 the TGA admitted its assessment process for the mesh was not “mature” and lacked “rigour”, and subsequently announced there was “little evidence to support the overall effectiveness of these surgical meshes as a class of products”.

By 2015 - a decade after mesh was first approved for embedding within the vaginas of thousands of Australian women - 72 of the 100 mesh products on the Australian market were delisted.

Despite this, where the TGA acknowledged shortcomings of the devices, it mostly blamed "the skill and training of the surgeon and the patient selection".

While the TGA said in a statement to Channel 10 it has only received 205 adverse event reports, and "the reported rate of complications was low", Kim argues this is because the channels of reporting post-surgical problems is convoluted and lacks transparency.

The implant that Kim was told to not worry about, the one she was told was simple and straight forward, was eroding away, and destroying her body with it.

"I felt like I was rotting from the inside," she describes.

By the time 2013 rolled around - some seven years after Kim's surgery - her surgeon had retired. The South Australian mum had developed chronic nerve damage which consumed her right hip, knee and two of her toes.

The fetid mesh was deeply affecting her sex life with longterm partner Jared, too.

"When I had intimate relations with my partner, he could feel the hard and brittle arms of my implant against him. It was unbearable.

"A lot of women's partners and husbands have just walked away and left them because of the impact it has on their sex lives, but thankfully my partner has been wonderfully supportive."

The "disastrous" effect the mesh has had has seen Kim spend "hundreds of thousands of dollars", take months at a time off work, and use up all of her long service leave just to find some relief from the constant pain.

Because the real clincher is this: While Australian surgeons are more than happy to insert mesh into women's pelvic floors, they're not so willing to remove it. In fact, there are only two doctors in the world who offer to take out transvaginal mesh, and both live in the United States.

To have the toxic mesh removed requires a six-month stint off work to visit the US, and an upfront payment of $50,000, something Kim pursued and succeeded with.

There are only two doctors in the world who offer to take out transvaginal mesh. (Image supplied)

While the mesh might be out of her body, the havoc it wreaked is irreversible and will stay with Kim forever.

"My mesh was embedded in my bowel, my rectum, and my urethra," Kim told me. "Now, my whole pelvic floor is just a massive scar tissue. I am now incontinent, my nerve damage and muscle damage is permanent, and I live on medications."

Kim also lives with a level of anxiety she likens to post traumatic stress disorder.

"I'm certainly not the woman and I am not the mother I once was," she said. "I feel like I've lost a big part of myself. I can't be with my kids as much as I'd like, I can't play or do all the things I wanted to do with them. There are some days when I can't get out of bed."

If there is any solace in this tragedy, it's that Kim Blieschke can find comfort in the other Australian women who have also lived this hell. In fact, hundreds have reported serious health complications as a result of transvaginal mesh implants to the TGA, and a medical review predicts there are 4000 more silently suffering in the shadows behind them.

When Kim found someone who had experienced what she had online, she was overwhelmed.

"I just burst into tears because I honestly thought that I was on my own," she said. "I was told that it was all in my head, and to find that there was someone else, and for all these women to come forward was incredible.

"It's something that nobody really wants to talk about because people feel embarrassed, but as far as I'm concerned I want everyone to know about it."

"I want everyone to know about it." (Image supplied)

Kim is now one of the handful of women who are leading the charge to have transvaginal mesh implants banned. Her meeting with Victorian Senator Derryn Hinch last year proved pivotal in pushing discussion forward about what Hinch describes as "one of the greatest medical scandals and abuses of mothers in Australia's history".

It falls in line with the opinion of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who state that "very little robust information is available on the efficacy and long term safety" of polypropylene mesh to treat pelvic organ prolapse, warning women of "adverse" effects.

Thanks to women like Kim, and Senator Hinch, there is now a Senate inquiry into the mesh, which has a reporting date of November 30.

But the aim is to do more than just have the mesh banned - it's to get justice.

"We would like someone to be answerable to this," Kim explained. "Because none of the surgeons are mandated to report the complications, they don't. We want women to have informed consent, because a lot of women are just told this is a straight forward operation when it's not, it can ruin lives."

And on behalf of Mamamia, we dearly hope Kim, and the many women beside her, succeed.

If you are a victim of transvaginal implants, Mamamia encourages you to lodge a complaint by clicking on your state: 

Victoria; New South Wales/ACT; Queensland; South Australia; Western Australia; Tasmania; Northern Territory.

 http://www.mamamia.com.au/transvaginal-mesh-implants/

US Senate Must NOT Pass 21st Century Cures Bill

How Not to Fix the F.D.A.

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD      JULY 20, 2015

A bill passed by the House and ostensibly designed to streamline the Food and Drug Administration is loaded with bad provisions and may not even be necessary. The Senate should either eliminate or rewrite the flawed provisions before passing its version of the legislation.

The bill would weaken the F.D.A.’s already flimsy regulation of medical devices, posing a threat to future patients who have devices implanted that cannot easily be removed if found defective. It would allow a drug to be tested on humans based on only limited evidence that it is safe and effective.

It would expedite the use of new antibiotics by providing financial incentives to hospitals to use them — benefiting manufacturers but also driving up costs and encouraging overuse, potentially breeding resistant superbugs. It would extend exclusive rights for manufacturers to market high-priced, brand-name drugs if they gain a new approval to treat a rare condition. And it would open a wide loophole in rules requiring companies to report payments they make to doctors to get them to prescribe their drugs.

While the bill has some valuable provisions — like making experimental drugs available more quickly to patients who have illnesses that cannot be cured, and promoting the development of treatments based on an individual’s genetic data — those elements don’t justify the bill’s passage in its current form.

The F.D.A. was once routinely vilified for sluggishness and timidity, but with the help of industry funding it has made enormous progress in speeding up its reviews and approvals. The agency testified in April that its drug review times are consistently faster than those of all other advanced regulatory agencies around the world, with the result that American patients receive new drugs sooner than people elsewhere. In 2014, the F.D.A. approved the largest number of new drugs in almost 20 years and also reduced the review times for devices.

A big reason the bill won bipartisan support in the House is that it would increase funding for the National Institutes of Health by $8.75 billion over the next five years, ending a decade of mostly stagnant funding. And any improved Senate version should certainly include new money.

Special interest money also played a role, with many of the top supporters of the legislation having received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry and the medical device industry last year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The Senate will take up a similar bill later this year. When it does, it needs to cure its many flaws, while also providing sufficient funds to the F.D.A. to meet its ever-increasing workload.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/opinion/how-not-to-fix-the-fda.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150720&nlid=50639700&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Surgical Mesh Harmed Patients call on Attorney General: Dangerous Product

Injured Women Call on WashingtonAttorney General to Investigate

Posted: Monday, June 9, 2014 12:33 pm

Injured Women Call on Washington Attorney General to Investigate

Johnson & Johnson:

Washington Women Cite Injuries and Public Health Care Costs in Letter to AG Ferguson

Olympia, WA – Washington women who have been seriously injured by pelvic mesh implants asked Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson to investigate Johnson & Johnson for its dangerous pelvic mesh implants, citing their personal health problems and costs incurred by Washington taxpayers.

“We ask that Attorney General Ferguson investigate Johnson & Johnson and its CEO Alex Gorsky for selling dangerous products to women throughout the state of Washington. The damage this product has caused already has cost taxpayers too much money through Medicaid and other state public health systems,” stated Jane Akre, who has been organizing survivors of pelvic mesh implants for more than five years.

“Across Washington, women are being hurt by Johnson & Johnson’s dangerous products, and the company’s top executive, CEO Alex Gorsky, needs to be held accountable for the women he has hurt,” added Akre. “Pelvic mesh implants are perhaps the most dangerous product to women’s health on the market today. Gorsky should immediately take this dangerous pelvic mesh product off the market.”

More than 70,000 separate lawsuits have been filed against manufacturers of pelvic mesh implants. Local survivors in Washington signed onto today’s request for an investigation.

"Johnson & Johnson should be investigated because too many have suffered too long, and they need to bring a stop to it,” stated survivor Danyelle Robinson of Washington. “Something has to be done to assure there are substantial penalties."

See the letter to Attorney General Ferguson directly below.

# # #

June 9, 2014

By Facsimile: 206-587-5636

The Honorable Bob Ferguson

Attorney General

Washington State Office of the Attorney General

1125 Washington Street SE

PO Box 40100

Olympia, WA 98504-0100

Dear Attorney General Ferguson,

As survivors of pelvic mesh implants and Washington taxpayers, we request that your office immediately begin investigating whether Johnson and Johnson should be held liable for expenses incurred by the state as a result of dangerous and defective pelvic implants.

Johnson and Johnson is the largest producer of pelvic mesh implants in the world. This product is creating a health crisis among women across the state of Washington, which in turn is resulting in significant costs to the states' public health systems.

Specifically, we ask for you to investigate Johnson and Johnson and its Chairman Alex Gorsky for possible violation of section 19.86.20 of the Revised Code of Washington for deceptive and fraudulent business for their knowledge of the danger of the mesh implants and the public health systems’ costs to the taxpayers of Washington.

This request follows the recent revelation by a West Virginia court that Johnson and Johnson destroyed numerous documents relevant to lawsuits filed against the company by thousands of women across the United States who have been seriously injured by the company’s pelvic mesh implants.[1]

It is critical that the Washington State Office of the Attorney General pursue this matter to recoup the state taxpayer dollars Medicaid and other public health systems have been and will be forced to spend to treat women who have been injured. Action by the state attorney general will also demonstrate that a major U.S. corporation should not destroy evidence in judicial proceedings. The destruction of this evidence undermines the ability of Washington women who have been hurt by Johnson & Johnson to receive justice.

Background

In the last few years, medical device manufacturers including Johnson & Johnson have come under fire for marketing dangerous medical devices, drugs and other consumer products, often without receiving proper regulatory approval. Many of these companies, including Johnson & Johnson, have paid billions of dollars in fines in litigation and settlement costs and made repeated pledges of reform, yet continue to display an indifferent attitude toward the harm they have caused as well as a willingness to evade the law.

Currently, Johnson & Johnson faces thousands of product liability lawsuits relating to the company’s pelvic mesh implants, marketed most commonly as treatment for pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence. There are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of women that have been – and continue to be - implanted with these dangerous products. Women have suffered severe pain and injuries due to ineffective and dangerous implants.

Investigations into the pelvic mesh products produced by several companies, including Johnson & Johnson, date back to before October 20, 2008, when the FDA first issued a Public Health Notification.[2]

Beginning in March 2005, Johnson & Johnson sold one of its most popular devices, the Gynecare Prolift, without alerting the Food and Drug Administration for three years. When the FDA was made aware of the Prolift device, the agency informed Johnson & Johnson that the device required government approval.[3] In May 2008, the Prolift was cleared for sale under the 510(k) process under the claim of “substantial equivalence” to devices already on the market. It had never been rigorously tested nor demonstrated effective in clinical trials.[4]

Further indicating Johnson & Johnson knew how harmful pelvic mesh implants were but nevertheless continued marketing the defective product to unsuspecting women, the company destroyed thousands of documents regarding the implants. Although top company executives initially denied it, a magistrate judge found that Ethicon, a wholly owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that manufactured the implants, destroyed documents pertaining to their effectiveness and safety as far back as 2007.[5] Alex Gorsky, the current Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson, was named head of Ethicon in 2008, before most of the documents were destroyed, and has continued to oversee it in his climb through the company’s ranks.[6]

Apparent Violation of Law

Johnson and Johnson and its CEO Alex Gorsky may be in violation of section 19.86.20 of the Revised Code of Washington for unfair or deceptive business practices concerning both his corporation’s knowledge of the inherent danger of the mesh implants as well as the document destruction.

The Washington State Office of the Attorney General has the authority to conduct a comprehensive and thorough investigation into whether Johnson & Johnson, in the course of advertising, soliciting, selling, promoting and distributing pelvic mesh implants, has engaged in a course of trade or commerce that constitutes unfair or deceptive acts or practices, and is therefore unlawful under the Washington consumer protection laws by misrepresenting the safety of pelvic mesh implants.

The fact that Johnson & Johnson has offices and conducts business throughout Washington only adds to the importance of your office pursuing this matter.

Johnson & Johnson also may have violated Washington Case Law pertaining to destroying physical evidence in an official proceeding.[7] In Pier 67, Inc. v. King County, the Court held “where relevant evidence which would properly be a part of a case is within the control of a party whose interests it would naturally be to produce it and he fails to do so, without satisfactory explanation, the only inference which the finder of fact may draw is that such evidence would be unfavorable to him.”[8] Culpability turns on whether the party acted in bad faith or whether there is an innocent explanation for the destruction.[9]

After initial denials by top executives, it is now clear that Johnson & Johnson destroyed thousands of documents related to Ethicon’s development and marketing of pelvic mesh implants.[10]

Johnson & Johnson is one of the world’s largest corporations whose products are used not only by women but also children and men. This investigation is urgently needed as the lives and safety of so many women in Washington and across the United States depend on it.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can provide any further information. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Patricia Buchanan – Seattle, WA

Danyelle Robinson – Spokane, WA

Mary Wakefield – Colbert, WA

Elizabeth Weber – Spokane, WA

Orthopedic Surgeon Tony Nargol: Failed metal on metal hips

Allies: Let's Make Progress Together!

 http://www.takejusticeback.com/about

We are trial lawyers.  We do not fight for powerful corporations. We fight for people just like you when they are the unfortunate victims of corporate malfeasance or negligence.

The Constitution gave you the right to pursue justice in court when you believe you’ve been harmed. But well-financed corporations circling in Congress are working every day to undermine your rights. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars scheming up ways to avoid accountability when they hurt someone. Chances are, this is the first you’ve heard of it.

We launched Take Justice Backbecause nothing concerns us more than the erosion of our civil justice system. We are not anti-corporate; business built this great country into what itis today. But when corporations act irresponsibly they must be held accountablejust like anybody else.

As trial lawyers we represent clients. But look around this website and you will see no advertising. No solicitations. This is not about money. It is not about us. It’s about you, your rights and the gift of democracy that some powerful corporations are working hard to undermine.

Please join our effort to Take Justice Back. Sign up. Join our Twitter conversation. Engage us through Facebook. Learn how to make a difference – because you can.

Remember.  If no one is accountable, no one is safe.

What is torture? What is criminal? Australian women sue J&J.

ABC News 7.30 Australia
Click on the link and watch this short news video. It is essential to understanding the story below.

Johnson & Johnson facing massive class action

10/15/2012 By Matt Wordsworth   ABC News 7.30 Australia (FiDA highlight added.)

Medical giant Johnson & Johnson is facing its third class action in Australia in as many years.

The case filed in the Federal Court yesterday relates to a product called transvaginal mesh.

It has helped many women who have suffered prolapsed organs by assisting their muscles with support, but for a significant number it has caused life-changing harm.

Lawyers believe it could be the largest product class action in Australian legal history.

It has also cast fresh light on the system of approvals because the mesh was introduced without any pre-market testing, with surgeons leading the call for change.

When Julie Davis was younger she had a plan to travel the world, meet the man of her dreams and settle down to have a family.

She succeeded, but along the way she endured a traumatic birth and some terrible consequences.

"I'd had a very bad forceps delivery with my first child who's now 10 and I had to wait until all my children were born to fix a very significant bladder prolapse," Ms Davis said.

"From my understanding it was the worst kind of prolapse because the bladder was actually outside my body."

It is a common problem, but there was a relatively new product to Australia - transvaginal mesh - that could be stitched in near the top of the vagina to help the pelvic floor muscles support the internal organs, much like a sling.

"The surgery itself was way more traumatic and devastating than I had imagined," Ms Davis said.

"I just felt unwell all the time, I was in pain, a lot pain, discomfort down below. I also had this feeling - lack of energy, like my body was fighting something all the time."

While her husband shouldered the load of earning an income and running the household, Julie, who was only in her 40s, was forced to use a mobility scooter.

For her, walking was painful, so too was sex, and the emotional toll was almost too much.

"It did get to the point where I just actually was chronically depressed and I had to go to see a GP and go on antidepressants," she said.

"There was one point [when] I was driving my car and I was just thinking, 'jeez, it would be easy just to turn the wheel at Curl Curl headland and just go off' because I felt that desperate."

'Adverse events'

It was after this that Ms Davis sought out a new surgeon, urogynaecologist Richard Reid.

He says the mesh was acting like a cheese grater in her body and had literally rubbed a hole in the wall of her vagina.

"When the mesh is put underneath the bladder, the bladder moves back and forth as it fills and it moves back and forth during intercourse," Dr Reid said.

"Because mesh scar is fundamentally quite fibrous and the bladder is very soft, we call this compliance mismatch, which means the same as rubbing a piece of cheese over a metal grater; the metal grater is obviously harder than the cheese."

Research published last May in the New England Journal of Medicine found mesh kits had "higher short-term rates of successful treatment" but also "higher rates of surgical complications and post-operative adverse events".

Two months later, in July 2011, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States issued a formal warning saying they were a "greater risk" with "no evidence of greater clinical benefit".

Johnson & Johnson removed its product from sale earlier this year and class actions are already underway in America and Canada, and now Australia.

Rebecca Jancauskas, who is representing Ms Davis as the lead plaintiff in the class action, estimates as many as 20,000 Australian women may have had transvaginal mesh implanted, and that is despite the product having undergone no clinical trials.

"This prolapse mesh class action that we've commenced in the Federal Court today has the potential to be the biggest product class action that Australia has ever seen," Ms Jancauskas said.

Certain classes of medical devices may be sold without adequate testing if they are going to be used in a similar way to existing products.

Mesh kits had already been very successful in treating urinary incontinence, an area where there is not the same friction from internal organs.

"So the system was set up and the device companies have used the system," Dr Reid said.

"I think that with the wisdom of hindsight, it would have been more prudent for them to have done more testing before it was released, but in many I see the primary fault is the system didn't think out what was going to happen."

Previous class action

It is not the first legal trouble for Johnson & Johnson in Australia.

Last year a class action was launched over its DePuy hip replacement device which left hundreds of patients poisoned and seriously disabled.

In 2010 the company faced similar legal proceedings over its knee replacement products.

Just like the mesh kits, neither product had undergone pre-market clinical trials.

"Given that this is now the third product class action that Johnson & Johnson has faced in three years, it should raise some serious concerns about their product safety standards," Ms Jancauskas said.

The company has issued a statement saying:

Johnson & Johnson Medical continues to have confidence in the safety and efficacy of these products.

The decision to discontinue these products was based on their commercial viability in light of changing market dynamics, and is not related to safety or efficacy.

This is not a product recall, and based on this notification it is not necessary for women who have received one of these products to take any action.

For more than a decade, our organisation has invested in the research, development and clinical study of products to treat a wide range of pelvic disorders.

We remain committed to advancing the standard of care for women's health and will continue to offer safe and effective treatment options for women.

Some are angry at the Australian regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

Senator Nick Xenophon, who was part of a parliamentary inquiry into the hip devices, says he is concerned that similar problems are still happening.

"Well this is another instance of regulatory failure. The TGA is meant to be a watchdog of these devices but it's failed time and time again," Senator Xenophon said.

"This is the third serious instance in the last 12 months. After the problems with hip replacements, breast implants and now this, [it] indicates there are some serious systemic problems with the TGA."

And while America's FDA issued its warning to consumers last year, there has been no such move from the TGA.

In a statement, it explained that it held a detailed review in 2010 and found the complication rate was low and depended on the skill of the surgeon, but that it would continue to monitor the situation.

Ms Davis says "it's been a tough road" and she has now had her mesh surgically removed.

She and husband Tim are desperately hoping that after four years and five surgeries, there is something to look forward to.

"I hope that we're over the hill now and start rebuilding our lives again in the way that we planned to begin with," Mr Davis said.

"We had great plans and great ideas of how we wanted to build our life, with the children et cetera, and I feel that life has been running away from us and we haven't been able to sit back and enjoy some of it."

Statement from the TGA in response to  ABC News 7.30 (Australia) - go to link above, please.

Thalidomide & Failed Implants-Egregious Harm

German Drug Maker Apologizes to Victims ofThalidomide

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: September 1, 2012  New York Times  (FiDA highlight added.)

LONDON — Decades of campaigning by victims of thalidomide, a morning sickness drug, have taken a new turn, with the first apology in 50 years to the victims and their families by the drug’s German manufacturer — and an incensed rejection of the apology as too little and too late from many of those it was intended to placate.

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The apology was issued Friday by Harald Stock, chief executive of the Grünenthal Group, a family-owned pharmaceutical company that marketed the drug in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was withdrawn in 1961 after it was linked to birth defects, including shortened arms and legs, and in some cases no limbs at all, that campaigners say affected 10,000 babies around the world, mostly in Australia, Canada, Europe and Japan.

The apology came in a speech Mr. Stock delivered in the Rhineland town of Stolberg, the company’s base, at the unveiling of a thalidomide memorial, a bronze statue of a limbless child.

Addressing the victims and their families, he said the company wished to “apologize for the fact that we have not found the way to you from person to person for almost 50 years.

“Instead, we have been silent, and we are very sorry for that.”

According to an English translation of his remarks that appeared on Grünenthal’s Web site, he added, “We ask that you regard our long silence as a sign of the shock that your fate caused in us.” As for the company’s delay in moving beyond its previous expressions of regret for marketing the drug to a direct apology to the victims, he said that in recent discussions with victims and their families, “we learned how much it is publicly desired that we express our deep regrets to those affected by thalidomide.”

Although thalidomide was never approved for use by pregnant women in the United States, some victims are American.

One is Berrisford Boothe, 51, an associate professor of art at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., who described himself in a telephone interview as one of 26 known American thalidomide victims. He said he had been born with severe disabilities in both hands and one arm, and described his life as a “long and isolated journey.”

Now, he said, Grünenthal, shaken from a half century of denial by a class-action lawsuit in Australia, had made “some kind of statement that they are emotionally connected to our suffering. They’ve had 50 years to make billions of dollars while we struggled and our parents committed suicide. And now, they’re apologizing for not saying anything. How dare they do that and think it’s going to be enough?”

Mr. Stock said the company had carried out all the tests on thalidomide before it was marketed that were possible given the scientific knowledge available in the 1950s.

But the storm of protest the apology provoked from thalidomide victims and groups that represent them suggested that it had done little to assuage the anger and hurt accumulated over decades of campaigning for a full acknowledgment of thalidomide’s harm, and for more generous compensation.

“It is over 50 years on since the thalidomide tragedy — why now?” said Freddie Astbury, chief consultant at Thalidomide U.K. Agency, which represents people in Britain, where nearly 500 victims survive. He said British victims had received some compensation from the government and from distributors of thalidomide, but not enough.

Mr. Astbury, 53, who was born with no arms and no legs, said he believed that one reason for Mr. Stock’s speech was greater global awareness of issues affecting the disabled, manifested by the success of the Paralympic Games in London.

He pointed, too, to the Australian lawsuit, which legal experts say can result in new compensation awards for thalidomide victims running into tens of millions of dollars.

“We are glad the apology has been made,” he said. “But when you are disabled, it costs a lot of money. We are in our 50s, we need care. We need adaptations in our houses and cars, for starters. So if they’re serious, let’s get around the table and talk financial help.”

He added: “We didn’t ask to be born this way.”

Sandy Macaskill contributed reporting.