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Hokitika Guardian, 21 July 1928, Page 2

The “Australian Medical Journal” devotes sijrty-one columns to the “Bunda-

berg Tragedy” of January of this year, when twelve Queensland children died from poisoning after receiving .subcutaneous doses of toxin-antitoxin to render them immune from diphtheria. The responsibility for these deaths must be divided, for although the Royal Commission charges the operating doctor with causing the contamination of the serum used, and claims to have proved this by experiment (assisted by the doctor himself) it lias been shown that had the bottle of serum issued to the doctor contained antiseptic, or been accompanied by a warning that this particular serum was suitable only for immediate use and not for storage and repeated use on separate successive occasions, the methods of the doctor would have caused no harm. That diphtheria has of late slightly increased in Australia is said to be due to the rapid increase in population, Including tbe flow of immigrants with families. The problem of ‘‘carriers’’ could be dealt with only by isolation if methods of protection bad not been devised. The combination of unfortunate and exceptional circumstances which caused tbe Bundabcrg tragedy, will, of course, do much to discredit the use of serum upon children who nro normally, if not bacteriologically, healthy. Mothers do not resent any apparently reasonable medical treatment when disease is present or imminent, but if it is suggested to them that protective measures not altogether free from risk are advisable they naturally prefer to ‘‘wait and see.” This event, at first shrouded in mystery, is now no longer “news,” and when a tragedy such as this is no longer a subject for discussion it is usual to draw attention to the value of the inquiry, and say that “the lives have not been sacrificed in vain,” because the warning of previously unforeseen dangers may save many lives in future. This is small comfort to anyone directly concerned. Bacteriologists, like makers of explosives, are in constant danger themselves, and are less liable to err than others, but from earliest steps in preparation until the moment of clinical use the handling of biological agents should lie confined to exports and hot entrusted to anyone inexperienced, in or out of the medical profession.