By the time the connection showing that Zika caused GBS and microcephaly was confirmed less than a year after its arrival in the Americas, the virus had taken on the persona of a twenty-first-century thalidomide tragedy; thalidomide was the German sedative and morning sickness antidote of the late 1950s and early 1960s that led to babies born with missing, short, or flipper-like limbs, vision and hearing problems, and deformed hearts and other organs. For decades, the mere mention of thalidomide struck fear into the hearts of pregnant women. Now the same was happening with Zika. The difference
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