Untitled

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24903, 17 June 1946, Page 4

The Tetanus Deaths There will have been many who agreed with Dr. Tweed that the public should be given the information he called for in his statement on Friday on the recent deaths of infants from tetanus. It must be hoped, however, that as many as agreed with Dr. Tweed will ha*ve realised that his questions seek to serve too narrow a purpose. They are designed to fix blame, if there is blame to be fixed, and to ensure that the fault is not condoned. More is wanted—to ensure that tragedies such as these cannot happen again. • The public has been told, in the account of the manufacturers’ conference at Wellington on 6, that the manufacturers of baby powders were voluntarily withdrawing from retailers and wholesalers all their proprietary brand stocks, that these would be destroyed, and that no supplies would again be offered for sale until the talcum required had been sterilised. All further consignments of talcum brought into the country to be used in the manufacture of dusting powders would, it was added, be tested bactcriologically in conjunction with the Health Department, and, if found to be infected, would be sterilised. As it is offered, it is an unsatisfactory assurance. It prompts at least three questions. First, does the <erm “dusting powders” apply to baby powders only? Second, however wide the definition, is risk eliminated if sterilisation is made contingent on a reaction to bacteriological test? Third, is the arrangement based in a gentleman’s agreement, or is there legal authority defining an obligation on the manufacturer and sanctions to enforce it? The third question helps to prompt another. The decision to call in all stocks of baby powders appears to have rested with the manufacturers, meeting seven days after the first deaths were announced. In that period the department seems to have done nothing except to warn the public that all powders might be dangerous and to instruct the makers of particular brands of baby powders to withdraw their product; and even after the manufacturers had met, it was possible for one firm of manufacturing chemists to announce that it did not intend to withdraw its powder, because tests “ so far ” had not given positive results. The department, obviously, need not have waited for most of the manufacturers to decide to move voluntarily, and should not have waited. The risks of incomplete action, even if it had left the public free to buy only face powders, may have been slight, or even “ remote ”. But they were risks; and, to quote an early remark by the Minister of Health, tetanus is “too serious a disease to “ take risks with The affair cannot be thought closed at least until it is made clear that the department is prepared to treat any similar emergency as an emergency should be treated.