
It took two pills to shape Lisa McManus’ life. A life as a thalidomide survivor, deformed by a drug her mother took while pregnant, unaware of the damage it could do to her unborn daughter.
Lisa, 56, is one of thousands of “thalidomide babies” born in the late 1950s and early 1960s after pregnant women all over the world were prescribed the “safe” drug for morning sickness. She was born with severely malformed arms and hands – a sight which caused the midwife assisting at her delivery to scream and flee the room in tears – before her concerned mother Beryl was wheeled out of the ward without her newborn.
