![]() Not much, it seemed, but the tax imposition was downright cruel, and exacted by a government that was itself partly to blame for the disaster. I studied the resources of the Trust closely, to see what financial latitude we had. I started to understand how very unjustly these people had been treated, and that “if we could double what we paid out, it would still not be enough”. On the day I first met Tina I also met a woman with no arms or hands who was struggling to live and support her 6 children with the paltry amount we were able to provide – then about £12,000 a year less tax at 34%. She became one of the founder members of our “Volunteer Visitor” team. ![]() I may not have much, but I’ve got two ears and a mouth, and with those I can help people”. “So what are you studying?” “A level Psychology and Sociology” “Why those subjects” “So I can train to be a counsellor. As a girl she’d been told to expect not to live beyond her ‘20s, so she’d not bothered. Tina operated her mobile phone with a pencil held in her teeth, and when we met she told me she was trying to catch up with her education. The worldwide total was probably over 100,000 babies destroyed or injured by this drug, which left the survivors with damage ranging from brain, eye, ear, and face damage, loss of limbs, down to shortening of arms and removal of thumbs. Thalidomide was a sedative medicine, advertised as “completely safe”, which came on the market in UK in April 1958, and was withdrawn in December 1961, leaving at least 2,000 babies in UK with severe deformities, and causing the miscarriage or stillbirth of thousands more. This put her in the most severely-damaged section of our thalidomide survivors. ![]() Her name was Tina Gallagher, and she had no hands or arms, and only two “flippers” for feet. ![]() In September 2000 I met a woman who would have a profound influence on the lives of many people. ![]()
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