Lancaster Paul A L
Menzies Centre for Health Policy, School of Public Health and Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Congenit Anom (Kyoto). 2011 Mar;51(1):2-5. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-4520.2010.00311.x.
Environmental causes of birth defects have increasingly been recognized since the mid-20th century. The teratogenic effects of maternal infections such as rubella and therapeutic drugs such as thalidomide were first reported by alert clinicians. Among clinicians and researchers who have contributed significantly to our knowledge of these environmental causes, Norman Gregg was a Sydney ophthalmologist whose seminal study in 1941 identified maternal rubella as a cause of birth defects. The teratogenic effects of thalidomide were first noted in 1961 by William McBride, a Sydney obstetrician, and independently confirmed by Widukind Lenz, a German pediatrician. Marsh Edwards, an Australian veterinary scientist, showed experimentally that maternal hyperthermia caused birth defects in various animal species. While it is likely that alert individual clinicians or researchers will continue to signal the first clues about new environmental causes of birth defects, especially therapeutic drugs, it is now usually teams of laboratory researchers and epidemiologists who are more likely to provide definitive evidence of these new teratogens.
自20世纪中叶以来，出生缺陷的环境成因日益受到认可。风疹等母体感染以及沙利度胺等治疗药物的致畸作用最早由警觉的临床医生报告。在对这些环境成因的认识有重大贡献的临床医生和研究人员中，诺曼·格雷格是悉尼的一位眼科医生，他在1941年的开创性研究确定母体风疹是出生缺陷的一个成因。沙利度胺的致畸作用于1961年首先由悉尼产科医生威廉·麦克布赖德发现，并由德国儿科医生维杜克ind·伦茨独立证实。澳大利亚兽医科学家马什·爱德华兹通过实验表明母体体温过高会导致多种动物物种出现出生缺陷。虽然可能仍会有警觉的个体临床医生或研究人员继续率先发现有关出生缺陷新环境成因（尤其是治疗药物）的最初线索，但现在通常是实验室研究人员和流行病学家团队更有可能提供这些新致畸物的确凿证据。
