In this limited series based on true events, six very different people around the world in the early 1960s – doctors, scientists, mothers, fathers -- are confronted with the birth of deformed babies and struggle to find out why this has happened, eventually pitting them against the pharmaceutical giant whose prescription medication caused the epidemic.

SYNOPSIS:

Finalist Sundance Episodic Lab and CineStory TV Fellowship.

Why are thousands of babies suddenly being born with flippers instead of arms and legs?

This urgent real-life question was being asked around the world in the early 1960s, first in Australia, where Dr. William McBride has to comfort one too many distraught parents and demands an explanation.

But how will anyone comfort parents or doctors when the answer turns out to be something so simple, a onetime decision made so idly, in the moment, with no thought as to the consequences?

McBride’s cloak-and-dagger pursuit exposes a chain of isolated but growing reports in many other countries—everywhere but the United States. And that’s where newly hired FDA scientist Frances Kelsey, under the gun as the first woman in her job, is crossing every t and dotting every i to hold up approval of a German-made sleeping pill called thalidomide, the wonder drug that’s sweeping Europe fueled by bogus claims generated from the drug manufacturer’s headquarters in Stolberg.

And as the clock ticks down, unknowing pregnant mother after pregnant mother takes the pill—including Ginny Robinson, wife of frustrated London Times reporter Paul Robinson; Evie Becker, wife of driven Mad Men–era advertising executive Walter Becker; overworked and underappreciated “Miss Sherri” Finkbine of Phoenix, Arizona, Romper Room fame; and repressed Belgian newlywed Suzanne Van de Put.

Until finally, after a massive worldwide effort spearheaded by Drs. McBride and Kelsey, Grünenthal relents and thalidomide is taken off the market.

But how then will each of these characters face the future?

Dr. McBride allows his hero status to go to his head in a deepening paranoia and suppression of the truth that his nurse was the one who first solved the mystery. Frances resists the fame thrust on her as she moves seemingly overnight from lowly FDA employee to feminist heroine.

“Miss Sherri” faces worldwide condemnation when she seeks an abortion for her “thalidomide baby,” while Suzanne is pressured by her family to kill hers in the cradle, because they see it as a sign of the devil.

Times reporter Paul fails to recognize the “big story” that’s landed on his doorstep—the disabled son he can’t accept—and Walter must face a wife who’s now carrying incontrovertible proof of his culpability in fueling the greatest pharmaceutical disaster of all time.

Until all these lives converge on a courtroom in Germany, to bring the drugmaker finally to task.