'The baby started to come out. Head first, everything OK. But then I saw that there were no arms. And then no legs. The little girl had only a torso and a head.'


IN 1962 Lyn Rowe was born in Melbourne, entirely without limbs. Months earlier, her mother Wendy was given a new wonder drug for morning sickness called thalidomide.


IN 2012, after almost fifty years of struggle and poverty, Lyn won a multi-million-dollar settlement from the drug's distributor, Distillers. It was the first compensation she ever received.

In Silent Shock, Michael Magazanik tells Lyn Rowe's story - and lifts the lid on how the thalidomide tragedy was allowed to happen. He shows how the guilty did their best to get away with it. He explodes the myth that the whole scandal was just a tragic accident, unavoidable within the safety standards of the time. And he exposes the disgraceful cover-up at the heart of Distillers' Australian thalidomide operation

Silent Shock is an epic account of corporate wrongdoing against a backdrop of heroic personal struggle and sacrifice. It is crucial, compelling reading.