Australia doctor and researcher William McBride, who alerted the world that the popular prescription drug Thalidomide was causing birth defects, has died at age 91.

In December of 1961, Dr. McBride published a letter in the British medical journal The Lancet noting the large number of birth defects in children of women who had been Thalidomide.  The drug was frequently given to women as a sedative or a means to alleviate morning sickness. 

But from 1957, it was sold over the counter in West Germany.  During those years 7,000 infants were born with phocomelia, malformations of the limbs.  Other effects included deformed eyes and hearts, deformed alimentary and urinary tracts, blindness and deafness.  Only 40 percent of these children in West Germany survived.  Worldwide, the survival rate was only 50 percent.

McBride's 1961 Lancet piece set off red alerts around the world and doctors largely stopped prescribing Thalidomide to pregnant women.  A prestigious French institute awarded him a cash prize for the letter, which he used to establish Foundation 41, which investigated the cause of birth defects.  Today, the drug is still manufactured by used as a cancer drug.

Later, McBride would meet with disgrace when he was found to have used falsified research to make claims about other pregnancy drugs.  He was struck from the Australian medical register from 1993 through 1998.