Thalidomide reaches the UK market as a treatment for morning sickness, sold as a wonder drug in a Germany still rebuilding after the war, where the pill was first invented. The film traces how roughly 10,000 babies worldwide are born with severe deformities after their mothers took the drug, sometimes only once, before evidence of the side effects forces its withdrawal from sale in 1961. Most of the affected children are born in Germany, and the film follows survivors and families still living with the consequences decades later. It examines the response from Grunenthal, the company behind the drug, which pays just over 100 million Deutschmarks, roughly £100 million in today's money, into a compensation fund for victims. Fifty years on, the film finds that fight unresolved: some survivors are still pursuing further compensation, while in other countries people are campaigning to access thalidomide itself, now used to treat other conditions. It is a story of a drug rehabilitated for new uses while its original victims are still arguing over what they are owed.