William McBride (doctor)

Dr. William Griffith McBride CBE AO (born 25 May 1927 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), is an Australian gynecologist and obstetrician, and currently holds the position of professor. He discovered the teratogenicity of thalidomide, which resulted in the reduction of the number of drugs prescribed during pregnancy.

Dr McBride published a letter in The Lancet, in December 1961, noting a large number of birth defects in children of patients who were prescribed Thalidomide. Dr. McBride was awarded a medal and prize money by the prestigious L'Institut de la Vie, a French Institut, in connection with his discovery, in 1971. Using the prize money, he established Foundation 41, a Sydney-based medical research foundation concerned with the causes of birth defects. Working with Dr P H Huang, he proposed that thalidomide caused malformations by interacting with the DNA of the dividing embryonic cells. This finding stimulated their experimentation, which showed that thalidomide may inhibit cell division in rapidly dividing cells of malignant tumors. This work was published in the journal "Pharmacology and Toxicology" in 1999 and has been rated in the top ten of the most important Australian medical discoveries. (The Sydney Morning Herald - 2005)

McBride's involvement in the Debendox case is less illustrious. In 1981 he published a paper indicating that the drug Debendox (marketed in the US as Bendectin) caused birth defects. His coauthors noted that the published paper contained manipulated data and protested but their voices went unheard. Multiple lawsuits followed by patients and McBride was a willing witness for the claimants. Eventually, the case was investigated and, as a result, McBride was struck off the Australian medical register in 1993 for deliberately falsifying data. An inquiry determined "we are forced to conclude that Dr. McBride did publish statements which he either knew were untrue or which he did not genuinely believe to be true, and in that respect was guilty of scientific fraud." He was reinstated to the medical register in 1998.

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