William McBride (doctor)
William Griffith McBride (25 May 1927 – 27 June 2018) was an Australian obstetrician. He published a letter on the teratogenicity of thalidomide following the findings of a midwife named Pat Sparrow, which resulted in the reduction of the number of drugs prescribed during pregnancy. Later in his life, McBride was found guilty of separate counts of medical malpractice and scientific fraud for falsifying data in a paper that claimed that the drug Debendox was also responsible for birth defects. Early life McBride was born in Sydney, Australia. Career Thalidomide case 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, after a midwife named Sister Pat Sparrow first suspected the drug was causing birth defects in the babies of patients under his care at Crown Street Women's Hospital in Sydney. McBride was awarded a medal and prize money by , a prestigious French institute, 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 P H Huang, he proposed that thalidomide caused malformations by interacting