Foundation 41 was a medical research organisation, principally investigating the causes of mental and physical handicaps in babies, and was based at the Crown Street Women's Hospital, Sydney, Australia.
McBride created Foundation 41 using prize money given by France's L'Institut de la Vie in connection with his discovery that thalidomide (N-α-phthalimidoglutarimide) caused malformations by interacting with the DNA of dividing embryonic cells.
[3] In 1981 McBride published a paper indicating that the drug Debenox (marketed in the US as Bendectin) caused birth defects.
Eventually, the research was investigated and, as a result, McBride was struck off the Australian medical register in 1993 for deliberately falsifying data.
[5][6] An inquiry determined, "we are forced to conclude that Dr. McBride did publish statements which he either knew were untrue or which he did not genuinely believe to be true, and in that respect was guilty of scientific fraud."