How a 'stubborn' Canadian saved thousands of American babies from birth defects

Frances Kelsey's first big break as a world-changing scientist may only have occurred because people assumed she was a man

Author of the article: Anna J. James,

 Special to National Post
Publishing date:Aug 17, 2021 • 

Frances Oldham Kelsey, is shown working in the lab in the mid to late 1930s with Dr. E.M.K. Geiling. She would later become instrumental in barring Thalidomide from the U.S. market. 

PHOTO BY MIKE HENSEN/THE LONDON FREE PRESS/QMI AGENCY

While you were busy memorizing interminable details about Responsible Government or Laura Secord, you missed out on some of the best parts of our national story: Secret Nazi weather bases, Mackenzie King’s extremely weird sexuality or the fact that Canada has been a surprise bit player in everything from the breakup of the Beatles to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to the fall of Communism. Hopefully we can rectify things somewhat in a new occasional series, The Secret History of Canada, documenting the little-known (and often R-rated) parts you missed. Today, how a Canadian scientist averted an American medical disaster.

It’s been called the worst manmade medical disaster in history: An estimated 10,000 children born with stunted or non-existent limbs, and as many as 100,000 so chemically deformed that they were never born at all.

The culprit was an over-the-counter German-made sedative that once came close to rivalling aspirin in total sales. As thalidomide sowed disaster in worldwide maternity wards throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, only one developed country would be spared — and it would be thanks almost entirely to a Canadian.

Approving thalidomide for the U.S. market was to be Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey’s first assignment with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Born on Vancouver Island in 1914, Kelsey had come from a family that expected her to get an education equal to her brothers. Although she had a master’s in science from McGill University by 1935, one of Kelsey’s first big breaks into the medical field — a research assistant position at the University of Chicago’s new pharmacology department — may have occurred only because recruiters assumed she was a man.

Frances Kelsey, pictured in the 1960s. 

PHOTO BY FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

She received an offer addressed to “Mr. Oldham” — which she never corrected based on the advice of her professor. As the professor said, “don’t be stupid. Accept the job, sign your name and put ‘Miss’ in brackets afterward.”

Years later, Kelsey mused “that had her name been Elizabeth or Marie-Jane her career might have ended there.”

By the fall of 1960, Kelsey was in Washington, D.C., as one of seven full-time medical officers hired to review human drug applications at the FDA. Their caseload was heavy — about 300 applications per year.

The thalidomide approval was meant to be a straightforward one. Being a woman, a foreigner and new to the agency, the drug manufacturer William S. Merrell assumed Kelsey would be a pushover, even eager to please in her new role.

At that time, drugs could go to market only sixty days after a manufacturer had filed an application with the FDA. If no decision was reached by then, the drug was automatically approved. At the time, drug manufacturers also had “open door” access to the FDA officers assessing their applications, which allowed for coercion and pressure.

Kevadon, the thalidomide drug that was intended for the U.S. market. 

PHOTO BY NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY

By the time the application for thalidomide hit Kelsey’s desk, it was already being prescribed to pregnant women in Europe and Canada as a miracle cure for morning sickness and insomnia. Intended to be marketed as Kevadon in the United States, its selling point was that it was a safe alternative to barbiturates.

It wasn’t as easy to overdose on the drug, and it was thus pegged as an ideal medication for vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly and pregnant women. Merrell even claimed it was “suicide-proof,” stating in its FDA application that one man had taken 140 tablets and woke up days later with a mere hangover.

Merrell had applied to the FDA to distribute it across the U.S. in time for Christmas 1960.

In Kelsey’s position, denying this application in her first month at the FDA — even on solid scientific grounds — could attract labels of “skepticism” and “stubbornness” (the exact words later used to commend her decisions on thalidomide).

A 1968 photo of German thalidomide victims. 

PHOTO BY D.P.A./ ARCHIVE PHOTOS

The pill was already being sold in more than 20 countries. At the time of application, almost 2.5 million thalidomide pills had already been administered to about 20,000 patients, many of whom were pregnant.

But Kelsey, along with two other FDA officers held out their approval, citing a lack of clinical data to support the claims that the drug was safe and effective.

“It was just too positive; this couldn’t be the perfect drug with no risk,” she once said. Kelsey then ran the application by her pharmacologist husband, Fremont Ellis Kelsey, who worked at the National Institutes of Health.
In December 1960, he confirmed her suspicions, calling the submission “an interesting collection of meaningless pseudoscientific jargon apparently intended to impress chemically unsophisticated readers.”

Alvin Law, a drummer and Canadian motivational speaker who was born without arms due to thalidomide. PHOTO BY CHRIS EAKIN/QMI

Over the course of nine months (which was then an unheard of length of time to review an FDA application), the team reviewed a growing spate of data proving the horrifying effects of thalidomide on pregnant women.

In February 1961, Kelsey was thumbing through a copy of the British Medical Journal when she saw a letter to the editor from a physician who reported cases of nerve damage among four of his patients who’d taken thalidomide.

Kelsey and her team also reviewed several studies attesting that if a child lived long enough to make it out of the womb, many were born with severe deformities including atrophied limbs, missing toes and fingers, and even absence of the anus and organ damage. Kelsey even met with pediatrician Dr. Helen Taussig at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, who had seen the effects of thalidomide first-hand in Europe.

Frances Oldham Kelsey at 100 years old.

 PHOTO BY MIKE HENSEN/THE LONDON FREE PRESS/QMI AGENCY

Meanwhile, Merrell executives hounded Kelsey for a favourable outcome through the phone, fax, and in person. They went so far as to complain to her FDA bosses up to three times per week, calling her a bureaucrat, irresponsible, and unreasonable. “Most of the things they called me, you couldn’t print,” Kelsey later told reporters.

It was ultimately denied by Kelsey and her team, citing that thalidomide’s safety was unproven. Furthermore, it caused significant harm, particularly to the unborn fetus. Within months, growing evidence of the toxic effects of thalidomide would ensure Kelsey’s title as “the most famous government regulator in American history.”

Had thalidomide taken root in the U.S. at the same rate with which it did in the U.K. or Germany, thousands of Americans — now in their 60s — would still be carrying the signs of thalidomide deformity. Instead, just 17 “thalidomide babies” were born in the U.S.

Frances Oldham Kelsey, is shown receiving the President’s Award for Distinguished Civilian Service in 1962 from then-president J.F. Kennedy. 

Kelsey’s home country would not be so lucky. Thalidomide was released in Canada on April 1, 1961 and officially pulled from shelves three months later after the damage had become apparent across Europe. In 2015, the federal government admitted fault and granted pensions to the nearly 100 thalidomide survivors still alive.

Kelsey would live to 101 and for a brief period in the 1960s was hailed as a hero across the U.S. In 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy awarded her the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. She was only the second woman to receive the honour. Scores of mothers who had been pregnant in the early 1960s mailed Kelsey directly to thank the physician for sparing them the likely fate of being prescribed thalidomide.

An asteroid is named in her honour. In 2015, she was presented with the Order of Canada only hours before her death.

And her influence would not be limited to thalidomide. Her refusal of Merrell’s application put a spotlight on the FDA’s flaws, and in 1962, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 was amended to abolish the 60-day time limit for FDA reviews and require manufacturers to prove a drug’s efficacy as a non-negotiable criterion for approval.

Throughout her century-long life, however, Kelsey was always quick to deflect personal praise, saying she couldn’t have done it without the full support of her FDA superiors.

In 1962, Kelsey gave this staid assessment of the bureaucratic decision that staved off a human catastrophe: “They (Merrell) certainly thought I was unreasonable, but I didn’t feel the material to back it up was very adequate.”

Australia to apologise half a century after 'Thalidomide tragedy'

Renju Jose
Sun, November 12, 2023 

U.S. President Biden hosts Australia’s Prime Minister Albanese for official State visit at the White House in Washington

By Renju Jose

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia will issue a national apology to all citizens affected by the "Thalidomide tragedy", Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday, more than half a century after babies were born with birth defects when mothers took the morning sickness pill.

Thalidomide was the active ingredient in a sedative widely distributed to many mothers in Australia and around the world in the early 1960s. It was found to cause malformation of limbs, facial features and internal organs in unborn children.

"The thalidomide tragedy is a dark chapter in the history of our nation and the world," Albanese said in a statement. "The survivors, their families, friends and carers have advocated for this apology with courage and conviction for many years. This moment is a long overdue national acknowledgement of all they have endured and all they have fought for."

The thalidomide scandal triggered a worldwide overhaul of drug-testing regimes and boosted the reputation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which proved a lone voice in refusing to approve the drug, although it was distributed in the United States for testing. The British government in 2010 apologised to the victims.

Thalidomide, developed by the German firm Gruenenthal, killed an estimated 80,000 children around the world before they were born, and 20,000 more were born with defects.

An Australian woman, who was born without arms and legs after her mother took Thalidomide, in 2012 won a multi-million dollar settlement from Diageo Plc, the local distributor. In 2010, Diageo agreed to make an A$50 million ($32 million) payment to 45 victims in Australia and New Zealand.

Albanese will deliver the apology in the Parliament on Nov. 29. There are 146 Thalidomide survivors registered with the government, though the exact number of affected is unknown.

"In giving this apology, we will acknowledge all those babies who died and the families who mourn them, as well as those who survived but whose lives were made so much harder by the effects of this terrible drug," Albanese said.

($1 = 1.5716 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Tom Hogue and Gerry Doyle)

Trump pushes 'warp speed' effort on coronavirus vaccine, ignoring lessons from a long-ago drug calamity:
THALIDOMIDE
Jerry Adler Senior Editor,Yahoo News•May 16, 2020


Along with everyone else in the world, President Trump wants a coronavirus vaccine now.

Or, if not now, then “prior to the end of the year,” as he said at the White House on Friday, which Moncef Slaoui, the drug company executive the president tapped to head the effort, called a “very credible” timetable. By historical standards, it is an extraordinarily ambitious goal. Some vaccines have taken a decade or longer to develop, test and manufacture. The most optimistic time by which a coronavirus vaccine might be ready, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease specialist on the president’s coronavirus task force, is 12 to 18 months.

Underscoring his sense of urgency, Trump has compared the vaccine effort to the Manhattan Project to develop an atom bomb during World War II, and dubbed it “Operation Warp Speed.”
President Trump speaks in the Rose Garden on Friday. (Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty images)

Warp speed is an invented term for travel faster than light, which is possible only in the fictional universe of “Star Trek.” Whether it will work for the creating a vaccine for a lethal disease remains to be seen. But there are a few hundred, possibly thousands, of people now in their 60s who are living reminders of the unintended consequences of putting a drug into people’s bodies without adequate testing.

Genetic engineering greatly speeds the process of developing a vaccine. But public health experts are still sorting through how to test it for safety and efficacy. The primary measure of safety, of course, is that a new vaccine doesn’t make people sick, which is easy enough to verify, although it would need to be tried in a large and diverse population to catch possibly rare side effects.

Efficacy is more complicated: Researchers can detect if people inoculated with the vaccine produce antibodies to the coronavirus, but how do they know if they are actually immune from future infection. One way, obviously, is to just watch them and see if they get sick (technically, if they get sick less often, or less severely, than an unvaccinated control group). But that’s a slow process. The other way, which is gaining support among researchers, is a “challenge trial,” in which volunteers receive an inoculation and then are exposed to an infectious dose of the virus — which clearly poses risks of its own. Challenge trials are usually done for diseases that are not as lethal as the coronavirus, or for which other therapies exist.

Quoted in The Hill, Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, said he did not see how an institutional review board that oversees research would approve a human challenge trial for the coronavirus.
 

Children born with malformed limbs getting used to using prostheses, July 1962.(Stan Wayman/The Life Picture Collection via Getty Images)

But Operation Warp Speed is proceeding along numerous tracks simultaneously: the genetic engineering of potential vaccines, testing in animals, trials in humans, and ramping up the production of the syringes, vials and other equipment necessary for mass inoculation. On Friday, Trump said “we’re gearing up” to begin manufacturing vaccines even before one (or more) is approved, so that there will be a stock on hand in advance. “That means they’d better come up with a good vaccine,” he said. “It’s risky, it’s expensive,” but it could cut a year off the time that might otherwise be required to put a vaccine into distribution.

Vaccines, of course, are suspect to a dismayingly large segment of the population, but for other reasons. Many Americans believe that they cause autism in children, an assertion that has been investigated and declared spurious by virtually the entire medical profession. That’s not what this is about.

Trump has boasted frequently about his success in speeding up the approval process for drugs, a move long urged by pharmaceutical companies, which regard it as a costly obstacle to getting their products to market. And in the coronavirus emergency, epidemiologists and bioethics experts generally are going along with steps that could make a vaccine available sooner.

After all, what could go wrong?

The FDA’s website itself holds a possible answer, in the form of a tribute to a now-forgotten hero of bureaucracy, a physician and pharmacologist named Frances Kelsey. In 1960, she joined the FDA, where her job was to review applications for drug approval.

The first application she handled was for a sedative called thalidomide, which was used in the treatment of leprosy and was being marketed to prevent “morning sickness,” the nausea and vomiting that affects some women during pregnancy. The drug company presented data that it said proved its safety. It was already being sold over the counter in other countries.

Kelsey was unconvinced and asked for more data. The company sent in more studies, but she was adamant. Among other red flags, the manufacturer hadn’t proven that thalidomide was safe when taken by pregnant women. This was, of course, a period in American history when government regulations were more commonly referred to as “life-saving” than “job-killing,” and the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations appear not to have interjected themselves into the debate.

President John F. Kennedy stands with Dr. Frances Kelsey, the medical officer who prevented the sale of the birth defect-causing drug thalidomide in the United States. (Bettmann Archive via Getty images)

A year later, with FDA approval still pending, reports began to circulate of a peculiar, and devastating, syndrome of birth defects among the children of mothers who had taken thalidomide early in their pregnancies. The children, some of whom were miscarried or stillborn, had damage to various organs and, famously, malformed, missing or greatly shortened limbs, in the most severe cases with hands and feet that grew directly out of their torso. Some 10,000 babies were born that way in Germany, Britain and other countries. There were a few dozen cases in the United States, believed to have resulted from a loosely supervised trial, but nothing like the thousands that might otherwise have resulted.

Kelsey later was honored by President John F. Kennedy with the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. Thalidomide was eventually approved, under restrictions, for use in treating some cancers. The episode led to the Kefauver Harris Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, which was adopted in 1962 and greatly tightened regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.

Of course, while COVID-19 is a lethal and highly contagious disease, morning sickness, though unpleasant and sometimes debilitating, is not fatal and goes away by itself. So the standards for approving a vaccine or treatment for the coronavirus should be set with that in mind.

Still, it would be nice if Kelsey, who died in 2015, at age 101, was around to take a look at the paperwork. One can hope her successors will do as good a job.

PS CANADA IGNORED HER ADVICE AND DID NOT FOLLOW THE AMERICANS RESULTING IN MANY MORE THALIDOMIDE BABIES IN CANADA THAN IN THE USA

PER POP SIZE

Anti-nausea drug used in pregnancies decades ago linked to colon cancer

By Cara Murez, HealthDay News

The drug, dicyclomine, was initially included in Bendectin, a drug prescribed during pregnancy starting in the 1960s to prevent nausea and vomiting.

 Photo by Pexels/Pixabay


The children of women who took a common anti-nausea drug for pregnancy in the 1960s and 1970s may be at higher risk of colon cancer, according to a new study.

The drug, dicyclomine, is used to treat spasms caused by irritable bowel syndrome. It was also initially included in Bendectin, a drug prescribed during pregnancy starting in the 1960s to prevent nausea and vomiting.

"Our findings suggest that events in the earliest periods of life -- including the womb -- can affect risk of cancer many decades later," said study first author Caitlin Murphy, an associate professor at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health.

"As many as 25% of pregnant women received Bendectin through the mid-1970s, and there may be long-lasting consequences for offspring that continue today," Murphy said in a university news release.

RELATED High blood pressure during pregnancy linked to cognitive issues later

Incidence rates of colon cancer are increasing among adults born in and after the 1960s, according to the study. This suggests that pregnancy-related exposures introduced at that time may now be risk factors.

To study this, researchers analyzed data from Child Health and Development Studies, a multi-generational cohort that enrolled more than 14,500 pregnant women. These women gave birth to more than 18,700 babies in Oakland, Calif., between 1959 and 1967.

About 5% of those offspring, or a total of 1,014 children, were exposed to Bendectin while in the womb.

Incidence rates of colon cancer were about three times higher in those exposed to Bendectin than those not exposed.

Researchers suspect that dicyclomine may target the developing gastrointestinal tract of the fetus. Some studies suggest infants born to women who received Bendectin during pregnancy are more likely to have gastrointestinal birth defects, Murphy said.

The manufacturer of Bendectin removed dicyclomine from the drug's formula in 1976, after reports of birth defects and concerns in the wake of the thalidomide drug tragedy. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, many pregnant women were prescribed the drug thalidomide to ease morning sickness. More than 10,000 of their babies were born with severe deformities.

The findings were published recently in the journal JNCI Cancer Spectrum.

Experimental studies are needed to clarify these latest findings and identify mechanisms of risk with dicyclomine, Murphy said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on medications in pregnancy.

Copyright © 2023 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Celebrating muckraker Morton Mintz’s 100th birthday

By

 Dan Froomkin

 -

January 26, 2022 

Morton MIntz

Morton Mintz is turning 100 today, a good excuse to briefly review his extraordinary career as a pioneering hero of investigative reporting in medicine and public health.

As a reporter at the Washington Post for 30 years – from 1958 to 1988 – Mintz relentlessly exposed corporate crime and misconduct, particularly in the drug, tobacco and automotive industries.

In 1962, Mintz broke the story of the consequences of using thalidomide, the sedative/tranquilizer that caused thousands of babies to be born armless, legless or limbless to women who had taken the drug during the first trimester of pregnancy.

As he wrote in a 2013 essay, “The story dealt a lasting blow to the then widely-held notion that science and technology always or nearly always produce benign results.”

His continued to report on unsafe medicines and medical devices, most notably the Dalkon Shield, an intrauterine birth control device that seriously injured tens of thousands of women.

In his book, “AT ANY COST; Corporate Greed, Women and The Dalkon Shield” Mintz wrote that he saw the Dalkon Shield story as proof of “the chasm between the flesh-and-blood person and the paper corporate person.”

He famously concluded: “The human being who would not harm you on an individual, face-to-face basis, who is charitable, civic-minded, loving, and devout, will wound or kill you from behind the corporate veil.”

After leaving the Post, Mintz became a powerful critic of the corporate media. In a 1991 essay, he wrote about how a “built-in, chronic tilt chills mainstream press coverage of grave, persisting, and pervasive abuses of corporate power.” He called out “pathetically inadequate coverage of life-threatening corporate misconduct.”

In an email to a fellow journalist, Mintz wrote: “It’s long seemed to me that, in my experience, too many reporters, too much of the time, failed to ask themselves a simple two-word question: ‘What’s important?’”

He was one of the founders of NiemanWatchdog.org, a website that operated between 2004 and 2012. It posed questions that journalists should ask to hold the powerful accountable. I was deputy editor.

The most lasting lesson I learned from Mintz was about the value of congressional oversight – and the terrible cost of its absence.

I once asked him how he was able to break so many incredible stories.

“I stayed until the end of the hearings,” he said.

He spoke nostalgically about the virtuous circle that used to exist between journalists and the heads of congressional committees, one playing off the other to advance important investigations.

And he explained how much the country was suffering from the collapse of congressional oversight.

At the Post, Mintz was a real reporter’s reporter – and distinctly not an editor’s reporter. He was a proud union member, at one point writing a series of Guild bulletins documenting the Washington Post Co.’s own corporate greed under the headline “The Fruits of Your Labor.” He once wrote a letter to then-editor Ben Bradlee complaining that his editors had subjected him to “morale-crushing discouragement and nibblings to death.”

I posted a note on the Washington Post alumni Facebook page about Mintz’s upcoming birthday.

Eugene L Meyer, a former longtime Post reporter, wrote:

Mort is an exemplar and an inspiration. He always spoke truth to power, was an important voice in our Wash Post Guild unit. He was a bottomless pit of (appropriate) outrage. His achievements were hall-of-fame monumental. We are all in his debt.

John Schwartz, now a science reporter for the New York Times, wrote:

They say never meet your heroes, but meeting Mintz was a joy. I’d taken up the FDA beat at the Post and marveled at his work on thalidomide and on the early smoking lawsuits. He missed nothing. We talked and emailed and he was helpful and provided insights that helped me immeasurably on tough topics that he knew more about than I ever would. When we finally did meet, he startled a little and said, “John, I had a completely different mental image of you!”

“I know,” I said. “I write taller.” And we had a good laugh.

And Nell Henderson, economics editor at the Wall Street Journal, emailed:

Happy Birthday Mort!

Hope you’re well and enjoying your long life surrounded by family, friends and fans.

When I joined the Washington Post’s Business Section in 1984, your desk was between our section and Woodward’s office overlooking the Russian embassy.

I was in awe of your work, exposing defects in the making and selling of public dangers like the Dalkon Shield and defective arthritis medicines and heart valves.

Thank you for being tireless, persistent and stubborn in your determination to make the world safer for us all.

And thank you for inspiring all the journalist around you, including me.

All the best,

Nell Henderson

Happy birthday from me, too, Mort. You’re one of the greats.

 

RIP John Pilger

by K.J. Noh / December 31st, 2023

A bright star in the firmament of justice has gone out.  One of the greatest journalists of our era has passed away.

John Pilger was always on the side of the oppressed. He denounced Imperialism and all its violent predations–war, genocide, exploitation–as well as its endless lies and propaganda.  Till his death, he fought tirelessly for the freedom of Julian Assange, and his last article was a call to solidarity.

John gave voice to the invisible and the voiceless: the hungry, the poor, the handicapped, the conscripted, the sanctioned & bombed,  the dispossessed, refugees, the chemically experimented on, the structurally adjusted, the coup’ed, the famine-expendable, the colonized, the genocided, the silenced, shining a light in the hidden, dark recesses of the hell of Empire and Capital.

He denounced and fought racism, war, privatization, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, globalization, propaganda, advertising, nuclear madness, US coups,

His filmography and writing is a rap sheet of the unceasing criminality of Empire.

Arguably giving him the best homage it could render, the British Television Authority described him as “A threat to Western Civilization.”

John was also prophetic: in 1970, he chronicled the insurrection of troops against the Vietnam war in The Quiet Mutiny.  In 1974, and again in 2002, he spoke out that “Palestine was still the Issue,” demanding that “the occupation of Palestine should end now”.  He warned about Japanese militarism and revisionism. In 2014, he warned that Ukraine, a “CIA theme park”, was preparing  “a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself”. Seven years ago, when only a few were aware, and even fewer were speaking out–in short words and articles–he released a full-length, full-throated documentary warning the world that the US was escalating catastrophically to War with China.

John was not only a powerful critical journalist and world-changing filmmaker–Cambodia Year Zero is considered one of the most influential documentaries of the 20th century.  He was also a craftsman, a poet, artist–he understood the power of language but also understood that in a medium restricted by word counts, what it meant to make every word count.

But it was John’s rich, resonant delivery–like a Shakespearean actor–that always struck me.  It contained the unmistakable, unimpeachable courage of moral integrity: a voice that knows it is speaking the truth.

You will hear many things about him in the days to come–as we speak, the MSM are retrieving their pre-written, canned obituaries from the deep freeze–but John’s own words are most insightful.

On the form of journalism:

In all these forms the aim should be to find out as many facts and as much of the truth as possible. There’s no mystery. Yes, we all bring a personal perspective to work; that’s our human right. Mine is to be skeptical of those who seek to control us, indeed of all authority that isn’t accountable, and not to accept “official truths”, which are often lies. Journalism is or ought to be the agent of people, not power: the view from the ground.

On making a difference:

… the aim of good journalism is or ought to be to give people the power of information – without which they cannot claim certain freedoms. It’s as straightforward as that. Now and then you do see the effects of a particular documentary or series of reports. In Cambodia, more than $50 million were given by the public, entirely unsolicited, following my first film; and my colleagues and I were able to use this to buy medical supplies, food and clothing. Several governments changed their policies as a result. Something similar happened following the showing of my documentary on East Timor – filmed, most of it, in secret… Did it affect the situation in East Timor? No, but it did contribute to the long years of tireless work by people all over the world.

On Social Media:

Ironically, they can separate us even further from each other: enclose us in a bubble-world of smartphones and fragmented information, and magpie commentary. Thinking is more fun, I think

On US Foreign Policy:

seldom use the almost respectable term, US foreign policy; US designs for the world is the correct term, surely. These designs have been running along a straight line since 1944 when the Bretton Woods conference ordained the US as the number one imperial power. The line has known occasional interruptions such as the retreat from Saigon and the triumph of the Sandinistas, but the designs have never changed. They are to dominate humanity. What has changed is that they are often disguised by the modern power of public relations, a term Edward Bernays invented during the first world war because “the Germans have given propaganda a bad name”.

On the economy:

With every administration, it seems, the aims are “spun” further into the realm of fantasy while becoming more and more extreme. Bill Clinton, still known by the terminally naive as a “progressive”, actually upped the ante on the Reagan administration, with the iniquities of NAFTA and assorted killing around the world. What is especially dangerous today is that the US’s wilfully and criminally collapsed economy (collapsed for ordinary people) and the unchallenged pre-eminence of the parasitical “defence” industries have followed a familiar logic that leads to greater militarism, bloodshed and economic hardship.

On peace activism:

The current spoiling for a fight with China is a symptom of this, as is the invasion of Africa….I find it remarkable that I have lived my life without having been blown to bits in a nuclear holocaust ignited by Washington. What this tells me is that popular resistance across the rest of the world is potent and much feared by the bully – look at the hysterical pursuit of WikiLeaks. Or if not feared, it’s disorientating for the master. That’s why those of us who regard peace as a normal state of human affairs are in for a long haul, and faltering along the way is not an option, really.

On the future:

I’m confident that if we remain silent while the US war state, now rampant, continues on its bloody path, we bequeath to our children and grandchildren a world with an apocalyptic climate, broken dreams of a better life for all and, as the unlamented General Petraeus put it, a state of “perpetual war”. Do we accept that or do we fight back?

John Pilger, Presente!

*****Read and watch more of John Pilger’s work on his website:

 https://johnpilger.com/

https://johnpilger.com/videos

https://johnpilger.com/filmography

John Pilger, Australia-born journalist and filmmaker known for covering Cambodia, dies at 84

Journalist John Pilger, a supporter of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrives at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London where Julian Assange is in court for his bail hearing, Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010. John Pilger, the Australia-born journalist and … more >

By Associated Press - Sunday, December 31, 2023

LONDON — John Pilger, an Australia-born journalist and documentary filmmaker known for his coverage of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, has died, his family said Sunday. He was 84.

A statement from his family, posted on X, formerly Twitter, said Pilger died on Saturday in London.

“His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved dad, grandad and partner,” the statement said.

Pilger, who has been based in Britain since 1962, worked for Britain’s left-leaning Daily Mirror newspaper, broadcaster ITV’s investigative program “World In Action” and for the Reuters news agency.

He won an International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences award for his 1979 film “Year Zero: The Silent Death Of Cambodia,” which revealed the extent of the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities. He followed that with a 1990 documentary titled “Cambodia: The Betrayal,” which examined international complicity in the Khmer Rouge remaining a threat.

He also won acclaim for a 1974 documentary looking into the campaign for compensation for children after concerns were raised about birth defects when expectant mothers took the drug Thalidomide.

Pilger was known for his opposition to American and British foreign policy, and he was also highly critical of Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous population.

In more recent years, he campaigned for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has fought a lengthy battle against extradition to the United States.

Kevin Lygo, managing director of media and entertainment at ITV, described Pilger as “a giant of campaigning journalism” who offered viewers a level of analysis and opinion that was rare in mainstream television.

“He had a clear, distinctive editorial voice which he used to great effect throughout his distinguished filmmaking career. His documentaries were engaging, challenging and always very watchable,” Lygo said.

“He eschewed comfortable consensus and instead offered a radical, alternative approach on current affairs and a platform for dissenting voices over 50 years,” he added.

Campaigning journalist John Pilger dies aged 84


By AFP
December 31, 2023

John Pilger at a 2021 rally in London to mark WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's 50th birthday - Copyright AFP/File JOHN WESSELS

Australian-born investigative journalist and documentary maker John Pilger, known for his support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his coverage of the aftermath of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia and the Thalidomide scandal, has died in London, his family said Sunday.

Pilger, who had mostly lived in Britain since the early 1960s, had worked for Reuters, Britain’s left-wing Daily Mirror and commercial channel ITV’s former investigative programme World In Action.

In 1979, the ITV film “Year Zero: The Silent Death Of Cambodia” revealed the extent of the Khmer Rouge’s crimes, and Pilger won an International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences award for his 1990s follow-up ITV documentary “Cambodia: The Betrayal”.

Pilger also made the 1974 documentary for ITV called “Thalidomide: The Ninety-Eight We Forgot”, about the campaign for compensation for children after concerns were raised about birth defects when expectant mothers took the drug.

He received Bafta’s Richard Dimbleby Award for factual reporting in 1991.

“It is with great sadness the family of John Pilger announce he died yesterday 30 December 2023 in London aged 84,” it posted on X.

“His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest In Peace.”

Kevin Lygo, managing director of media and entertainment at ITV, called Pilger a “giant of campaigning journalism”.

He had always “eschewed comfortable consensus” in favour of a “platform for dissenting voices over 50 years”, he said.

Pilger also campaigned for the release of WikiLeaks founder Assange, who has been embroiled in a lengthy battle against extradition to the United States, and put up the cost of his bail.

Former Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters paid tribute, calling him a “friend” and a “great man”.

– ‘Truth to power’ –

On X, WikiLeaks called Pilger a “ferocious speaker of truth to power, whom in later years tirelessly advocated for the release and vindication of Julian Assange”.

During his career, Pilger made a series of remarks criticising American and British foreign policy, and the treatment of Indigenous Australians.

Former leader of Britain’s Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn wrote on X that he had given “a voice to the unheard and the occupied: in Australia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, East Timor, Palestine and beyond. Thank you for your bravery in pursuit of the truth — it will never be forgotten”.

Pilger had also expressed controversial views on Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.

In 2018, Pilger called the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and an ex-police officer in the UK were a “carefully constructed drama” in an interview with Russia Today (RT).

The UK Government and Scotland Yard believe members of a Russian military intelligence squad carried out the attack in southwestern England.

Pilger told RT: “This is a carefully constructed drama as part of the propaganda campaign that has been building now for several years in order to justify the actions of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), Britain and the United States towards Russia. That’s a fact.”

In 2014, in The Guardian, he also said that “Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe”, and last year called in The South China Morning Post for scepticism on the reporting about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

His most recent documentaries included “The Coming War On China”, broadcast in 2016 on ITV.

Assange’s wife pays tribute to John Pilger as ‘consistent ally of dispossessed’

Stella Assange, the wife of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (Ashlee Ruggels/PA)

By Charlotte McLaughlin, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

Today at 09:15

The wife of Julian Assange has paid tribute to campaigning journalist John Pilger as a “consistent ally of the dispossessed”.

Stella Assange, whom the WikiLeaks founder married while in prison, was among those who called the ITV documentary maker “one of the great” journalists.

Pilger had pushed for the release of Assange, who has been in the high-security Belmarsh Prison in London since he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy, and criticised his friend’s imprisonment.

John Pilger has died aged 84, his family has announced (Ian Nicholson/PA)

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) also called the 84-year-old documentarian, who died on Saturday according to his family, “a giant of journalism”.

On X, formerly Twitter, Stella Assange wrote: “Our dear dear John Pilger has left us. He was one of the greats.

“A consistent ally of the dispossessed, John dedicated his life to telling their stories and awoke the world to the greatest injustices.

“He showed great empathy for the weak and was unflinching with the powerful. John was one of Julian’s most vocal champions but they also became the closest of friends.

“He fought for Julian’s freedom until the end. ‘We are all Spartacus if we want to be’, he wrote in his last published piece. This was John, challenging us until the end. Let’s always seek to rise to the challenge. Thank you, dear friend.”

Next year, the High Court will hear Julian Assange’s final appeal against being extradited to the US, where he fears a sentence of 175 years.

Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the NUJ, said: “John Pilger was a giant of journalism who in his reporting career witnessed momentous historical events such as the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Biafra.

“He was also a pioneer of television as a vehicle for investigative journalism, producing groundbreaking work across the BBC and ITV.”

The NUJ member was also a “most redoubtable supporter of progressive campaigns creating work that was the embodiment of journalism that managed to be simultaneously fair and balanced, whilst unequivocally on the side of the underdog”, according to Ms Stanistreet.

Pilger worked to bring to light atrocities in Cambodia, the thalidomide scandal and various conflicts.

Senior BBC journalist John Simpson wrote on X: “Very sad to hear of the death of John Pilger. I was fond of him, and I think it was mutual, even though we disagreed on many things over the years.

“But I admired the force of his writing, even when I often didn’t support what he wrote, and he was always warm when we met.”

Pilger had been outspoken about his views on American and British foreign policy.

Lindsey German, of the Stop the War Coalition, who have organised pro-Palestine protests, called Pilger’s death a “very sad loss to the whole movement”.

She added: “He was a fearless and honest journalist who was a major critic of western imperialism, and whose experience of covering successive wars gave him a real insight into who benefits from the horror of war.

“He was a great friend of the anti-war movement in Britain and lent his powerful voice to a number of campaigns.”

Stop the War has also claimed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was partially caused by “Nato expansion” in eastern Europe.

'A Giant of Journalism Has Left Us': John Pilger Dead at 84

"He was a fearless challenger of imperialism and colonialism and used his talents behind the camera to expose genocide and war crimes, including the deceit of mainstream media," said one British MP.


Journalist John Pilger addresses a crowd of Julian Assange supporters demanding his release in London on August 11, 2021.
(Photo: Guy Smallman/Getty Images)

JESSICA CORBETT

COMMONDREAMS
Dec 31, 2023

Legendary Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger died Saturday at the age of 84—news that was quickly met with a flood of tributes from fellow reporters, friends, and fans of his impactful work.

"It is with great sadness the family of John Pilger announce he died yesterday 30 December 2023 in London aged 84," says a statement shared on his social media Sunday. "His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved dad, grandad, and partner. Rest in peace."


His son Sam Pilger said Sunday that "he was my hero."



As The Guardian detailed Sunday:

Born in Bondi, New South Wales, Pilger relocated to the U.K. in the 1960s, where he went on to work for the Daily Mirror, ITV's former investigative program "World in Action," and Reuters.

He covered conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Biafra, and was named journalist of the year in 1967 and 1979. Pilger had a successful career in documentary filmmaking, creating more than 50 films and winning a number of accolades.

"His last film, The Dirty War on the National Health Service, was released in 2019 and examined the threat to the NHS from privatization and bureaucracy," the newspaper noted. "It was described by The Guardian's film critic Peter Bradshaw as 'a fierce, necessary film.'"


British Member of Parliament Claudia Webbe, an Independent who represents Leicester East, declared Sunday that "he was a fearless challenger of imperialism and colonialism and used his talents behind the camera to expose genocide and war crimes, including the deceit of mainstream media. His documentaries are epic and are required viewing for a more civilized world."


Fellow MP Jeremy Corbyn, a former Labour leader who now serves Islington North as an Indepedent, said: "I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of John Pilger. John gave a voice to the unheard and the occupied: in Australia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, East Timor, Palestine, and beyond."


"Thank you for your bravery in pursuit of the truth—it will never be forgotten," Corbyn added.

The U.K.-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament said that "CND is saddened to hear about the death of the great John Pilger. He blazed a trail for so many through his work as a journalist, filmmaker, and anti-war campaigner. Rest in peace."



Attorney and human rights defender Stella Assange—the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is jailed in the U.K. while battling his extradition to the United States—called Pilger "one of the greats."

"A consistent ally of the dispossessed, John dedicated his life to telling their stories and awoke the world to the greatest injustices," she said. "He showed great empathy for the weak and was unflinching with the powerful. John was one of Julian's most vocal champions but they also became the closest of friends. He fought for Julian's freedom until the end. "


"'We are all Spartacus if we want to be,' he wrote in his last published piece," she noted. "This was John, challenging us until the end. Let's always seek to rise to the challenge. Thank you, dear friend."

Honoring the veteran journalist as "a ferocious speaker of truth to power, whom in later years tirelessly advocated for the release and vindication of Julian Assange," WikiLeaks contended that "our world is poorer for his passing."



Australian journalist Peter Cronau proclaimed that "a giant of journalism has left us—John Pilger, a heroic truth-teller. Banned by much of the mainstream media, his amazing work is his great permanent legacy."

Cronau praised him for "calling to account the intelligence agencies, the generals, and the governments alike that run the world their way" while also "giving voice to the unheard, the Indigenous, the poor, the occupied, the displaced—and giving hope, courage, and solidarity to the international family of activists."

Pilger was "such a strong role model to so many journalists especially in Australia—a country he loved, but whose media shunned him for his relentless uncompromising stand against imperialism and Australia's slavish obedience to it," he added. "Telling the seldom-heard 'people's history,' his books and films inform our democracy, and it was a pleasure to have had the chance to have worked with him."

British journalist Johnathan Cook said that "John Pilger was an inspiration to young journalists like myself. For decades, he managed to publish searing reports, even in establishment media, that exposed the lies justifying the brutalities of Western foreign policy. We need his voice now more than ever."


Mark Curtis, director and co-founder of Declassified U.K., shared a link to Pilger's website and said that " I cannot believe John has gone. His lifetime's work is a treasure—look at his filmography and articles to remind yourself. "

"A towering figure. Irreplaceable. Authentic and committed. Someone to look up to. Fearless," Curtis concluded. "Thank you, John. Farewell, friend."

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JESSICA CORBETT is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.