Okay, this is terribly sad. I need to make absolutely sure everyone understands that I find birth defects of any kind painfully sad. And I know what I’m talking about.
My oldest son was born with a fused suture in his head. This is called Cranial Synostosis and necessitated some ridiculously serious cranial surgery at the ripe age of ten months. In effect, the talented team of doctors at the Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto pulled his face down like a rubber mask and took his skull apart like a puzzle and rebuilt it. I know, they showed me the pictures.
That aside, I just read a story about a child that was born with one eye in India. A cyclops. In fact suffering from a condition knows as cyclopia.
It appears that the cause was a chromosomal shift caused by exposure of the mother to a drug that is considered a possible cancer treatment.
And this is the part where I go to hell, because I find this ironic in a way that normal irony cannot come close to. This has the hand of the godess Irony (but not her twin sister Poetic Justice) written all over it.
The drug is called, and I do NOT make this up, Cyclopamine.
How can the doctors be so stupid as to give a pregnant women a drug that is known to cause problems with babies.