Thalidomide is a drug that was used in the late 1950s to treat morning sickness. In early pregnancy, several women experience the irrepressible urge to throw up. For some, it's a minor symptom felt while cleaning the mouth on waking. Others go on to vomit one, two or more times. A few experience intractable vomiting so bad that they need to be admitted in the hospital a few times in the first three months of pregnancy for suppression of nausea and replacement of fluid losses (rehydration).
For the latter group, thalidomide was a wonder drug. Take the medication, and see nightmare vanish from sight. If you have ever had any form of food poisoning, where you had to vomit repeatedly (and probably stool), retching violently...you might understand the need for a drug like thalidomide. There were other drugs that could suppress that discomfiting urge, but this one gained widespread use because it was very effective. It was also a good sedative.
Well, doctors do not prescribe that wonder drug anymore. A woman with morning sickness may just have to make do with Phernegan or Maxolone. In fact, thalidomide has since been banned, except for a select number of illnesses. You cannot get the medication over the counter today. You see, what was not known at the time was that the medication had a most alarming and distressing side effect, on the unborn child.
Thalidomide is a teratogen. It harms unborn babies by disrupting their growth. The incidence of babies with short arms was noticed to suddenly increase. Some were born without arms- as though the hands were joined directly to the body. Blindness, deafness, and other bodily disfigurements were caused by thalidomide. Over 20,000 babies were affected. The number of stillbirths and miscarriages and unrecorded cases are not known. It took several years to trace the increased incidence to the advent of the antiemetic- thalidomide, and the drug was immediately withdrawn. Nearly 5000 survivors of the thalidomide era are alive today.
The interesting thing about thalidomide is that it is racemic. The physical chemists know what this means: chiral carbon, stereoisomeric molecules- enantiomers. A racemic substance contains two identical units (molecules), that exist in equal amounts. The subunits are exact mirror images one of the other, much like identical twins or like the two palms of your hands. They are so alike that they are differentiated by how they reflect light. When plane polarised light falls upon thalidomide molecules, half reflect the rays to the right (like your right hand)- these half are the dextrorotatory molecules; and half reflect light rays to the left (like your left hand)- the laevorotatory ones.
Enough of chemistry. These two can be separated. If the chemists who did the early work on thalidomide knew this, they would have separated the two identical fractions, laevo- from dextro- and a keen follower would already have guessed why. One half was responsible for suppressing morning sickness i.e the good effect of the drug; and the other half that was the evil twin. The drug was not separated into pure enantiomeric forms or anything. The whole thing was banned. Maybe it is because either half retains the ability to interconvert in-vivo (inside the body), and laevo could 'twist' to become 'dextro' and vice versa; maybe not- the drug was discarded from obstetric pharmaceutics in entirety.
This is nonetheless, not about thalidomide; but about duality-something that seems to have one purpose or meaning, but when observed closely will be seen to be more complex-the other meanings or implications having or bringing consequences that had not been envisaged. The fact that thalidomide cures morning sickness today is not enough to compensate for disfigurement of children tomorrow. Bottomline: throw the drug away.
Another story is the 19th century American Civil War- Abraham Lincoln, the most renowned American president give or take a few, such as Benjamin Franklin- fought to preserve the Union, and he broke the backbone of slavery by the same stroke. The south was to secede from the northern states, to form a new nation. America said no. What was the major issue? Blacks were free in the north, but slaves in the south. The south would not give up slavery and wanted slavery expanded into free states; all the other reasons they drummed up to secede were balderdash. That was the main grouse. The Union consisting mainly of republican northern states refused to expand slavery into free states because they viewed it as untrue to the spirit of the Constitution. They knew that without expansion, slavery would suffer a gradual but sure extinction. When Lincoln, a republican, was elected in the fall of 1860- certain southern states, drawing their conviction from the Constitution, seceded and declared themselves a Confederate, separate from the Union.
The unity of a nation was at stake. It was an impossible situation- save the Union, by allowing the south to keep their slaves and expand their agricultural economy thereby as they see fit; or insist on abolishing slavery and risk losing the south. See, Lincoln hated slavery with a passion. Nonetheless, he was now president and had a duty to perform. Fighting to abolish slavery was a matter of conscience, and fighting to save the Union was a matter of presidential duty. An activist would face the one, a politician the other, but a great leader is answerable both to the law of the land and to conscience.
The majority could be wrong; the law is imperfect. Everyone ought to abide by it; however, one of the greatest demands of leadership is to recognize when conscience calls for a higher level of decision making than provided by the its blind counterpart. Men with open consciences have done more good in this world than the entire battery of the legislative and judiciary- which systems can only be made to deliver justice if this third invisible component is alive and uncorrupted in the occupants of such offices. Abraham Lincoln was a great leader, who saw the destiny of the United States as paramount: a great undivided nation where all men were free- and he held true to the test of duality, literally killing two birds with one stone.
Allow this illustration a little more stretch of paper: real politicians would not have belabored the issue of slavery, it was not a politically expedient stance. And real activists would not have bothered with the Union- they would have counted the obstinacy of the other party as good riddance to bad rubbish. Either party might have started out with noble intentions, but the difficulties and oppositions that would follow would streamline them to do what was either politically expedient or what appealed to conscience. The man on the seat at the time was prepared to take the unusual path. It was a difficult and many a time lonely path, filled with criticisms and misunderstandings and plain oppositions from allies and foes alike. People only returned to cheer him post civil-war and of course, post-mortem.
Nonetheless this is neither about the whys and wherefores of a foreign civil war, nor slavery, nor morning sickness. Rather, it is about Section 29 (4) of the Nigerian Constitution. On 16 July 2013, Nigerian senators gathered to consider recommendations made to them by a committee tasked with reviewing the country’s Constitution. One of the recommendations made by the Senate Committee on the Review of the Constitution concerned section 29 of the Constitution which refers to situations in which Nigerian citizens may renounce their citizenship. Section 29 stipulates that citizens must be of full age to do so. The section adds that “full age means the age of eighteen years and above” S.29 (4)(a), and specifies that “any woman who is married shall be deemed to be of full age” S.29(4)(b).
The Committee recommended to senators that section 29(4)(b) be deleted from the Constitution. In an initial vote a majority of senators voted in favour of deleting this section. This vote, however, was challenged by one Senator on the grounds that the deletion of the section 29(4)(b) discriminated against Muslim women, who are considered “of age” once they are married. The Committee's recommendation was put to vote for a second time and on this occasion it did not receive two thirds of the votes required by the Constitution to make a change to the same. The issue caused a stir in the nation, widespread criticism from various quarters.
Those who read laws, make laws and modify laws keep pointing out that the senators did not vote to legalise child marriage in Nigeria. The clause in question has been part of the Constitution since 1979, and its scope has always been limited to the question of renunciation of citizenship. The law seeks to give married girls a certain liberty. Some thought it was an unnecessary addition to the body of written provisions, that it should be removed; and it was. One senator spoke up, saying married females less than 18 ought to be given specific mention, adding that his religion had a provisional niche that recruited such citizens. The issue was revisited, and 29(4) was left in place- for now.
We have females who are underaged by the general (constitutional) definition of 18 years, but who are married, and have no more the status conferred upon the underaged- therefore the Constitution here refers to them as 1.of full age and 2.able to renounce their citizenship (as can other full aged nationals). Such girls are specifically allowed to retain such rights as to renounce citizenship. And that is in itself a good thing. Period. It does not refer to unmarried girls who are in a culture that betroths them. Rather, it refers to the said category of citizens, and seeks to mention their assess to certain rights specifically.
Why therefore has the child,not bride campaign begun in earnest? Is there smoke without fire? The senators' decision to retain the clause, particularly in view of the arguments that convinced them to do so, has been considered by many as an implicit legitimization of child marriage. Now, behold the duality: on the one hand is a political matter where the issue of citizenship is concerned, and on the other hand is a humane matter, where the issue of age is concerned. Is it not evident that where the law is finished, conscience is just stirring? Is it not clear that this provision is enantiomeric? And while it purports to cure one matter, there is a very real and deleterious side effect, that must be identified in the laboratory of leadership?
One may say that removing or leaving that clause has nothing to do with underage marriage, that the senators did not have the matter of age before them; and by law they would be right, but not by conscience. Taken superficially, the matter is finished politically- Taken in whole...a different and closely related matter is immediately evident. The contentious clause begins by saying 'married females shall be deemed of full age...' And conscience hears nothing further...that matter has to be dealt with, it is the very ?laevorotatory half of the 29(4), and the problematic twin. While it may cure the morning sickness of married girls less than 18 years, there is an implicit provision that causes much disfigurement and prevents youngsters from reaching out with full length limbs, in order to grasp destiny. The whole clause ought to be dealt with, separating one implication from the other does not solve the problem; for like our stereoisomers from the 1950s, both implications are interconvertible.
When, in the final analysis: the politics has long forgotten the matter, and activism has been doused by the passing of time, and distracted by more heated matters in the kiln of our national drama; it is my hope that we shall have true leaders, whose philosophies espouse a national identity with frames though built by law, has foundations of conscience, who thus have the temerity to control the forces that divide us, maintain the democratic principles that should be the bedrock of the nation, and achieve a victory for those unspoken for.
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