Since 1959 Grünenthal had been receiving reports on nerve damage and other serious health issues in increasing numbers. By fall of 1960 at the latest, Dr. Heinrich Mückter (head of Grünenthal’s research department) and other senior Grünenthal employees later indicted must have assumed that Thalidomide can cause nerve damage. That’s what the German prosecutors, who investigated the scandal after the drug had been taken off the market, concluded in their indictment in 1967.

Nevertheless Grünenthal continued marketing Contergan (Thalidomide) as a “non-toxic” drug.

Source: Anklageschrift (indictment) from 1967, today archived at the National Archives of North Rhine-Westphalia in Duisburg, Germany (Rheinland Division, Gerichte Rep. 139, No. 1–396), p. VII.