POISONOUS SERUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 39, 16 February 1928, Page 7

POISONOUS SERUM.

Kept In Bulk Loses Its Equilibrium. AUTHOBITIES' MISTAKE. BRISBANE, February 15. The Serum Commission appointed to inquire into the deaths of several children at Bundaberg after they had been inoculated, resumed its sittings to-day. The analyst to the Queensland Commissioners of Health, Mr. Christanson, stated that in his opinion the danger attending the use of serum : in bulk Bhould be a matter of common knowledge to any trained doctor even without a note of warning, and he would be to blame if he kept the serum longer than the time generally accepted as a | safe margin.

Witness declared that if the scrum in the fatal bottle were examined it would be found that the balance had been up&et, making the serum a poison. He submitted a statement showing that the content of,• toxin and antirtoxin in tho serum was prepared in the most correct proportions between the two acting agents 1 and bdw If this' were upset the serum would become poison. This could be possible, said witness, by drawing the serum through a rubber tube. This would cause an expulsion of air and encourage the production of and multiply diphtheria bacteria. It would also upget the equilibrium of the serum. The chairman of the Commission said the members were making extensive experiments by means of which they hoped not only to throw light on the deaths of the children concerned, but to ensure that a similar tragedy should never occur again in this or any other country.