DANGER IN INOCULATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 25, 31 January 1928, Page 6

DANGER IN INOCULATION.

With deep sympathy for the unhappy mothers of the Queensland children poisoned by diphtheria toxin-antitoxin (apparently), injected as a method of producing immunity to the disease, and i sympathy also for the unfortunate medical practitioners who were the instruments in the disaster, one refers only guardedly to the cause or causes of death. The report issued states that successful and fatal results both followed the use of the same "batch" of serum. Until we know the mode in which this serum is packed by the Federal Health Department and the sense' in which the word "batch" is intended to be construed, it is not possible to do more than gMess at the origin of tlio poison. Serum dispensed in bulk and not in separate ampoules or tubes might conceivably become infected, but exposure to air or heat usually causes nothing worse than a loss of potency. The extreme care with which sera are prepared is alone responsible for their free use by the medical profession. Slight rashes and mild reactions arc attributed rather to the condition of the patient at the time of injection than to any defect in or dangerous addition to the serum, and the fact that many varieties of sera are used in hundreds of thousands of cases without harmful effect and the guarantee implied in the source of the injection give the profession a feeling of security for which they cannot well be blamed. Carl Browning, professor of bacteriology, says that a dangerous quality is given to a serum prepared for immunising purposes by the addition of acid, but says nothing of the possibility of a serum becoming dangerous by automatic action or inherent instability.

It is to be hoped that no hasty conclusions will be drawn by the public. Immunity procured at the risk of life is too costly to be faced and the protection which has been given to thousands without mishap must be the assurance given for the future. The use of antitoxin for diphtheria when patients have acquired the disease has reduced the diphtheria death rate from 25 and more per cent to less than three per cent, and as its curative influence lessens as the disease progresses and cannot be relied upon after the fifth day of illness, in a widely-scattered population where medical attention cannot be obtained without great delay it is most important that immunising methods should be adopted rather than that one should await the onset of disease and then apply for the remedy. It is improbable that any peculiarity about the local conditions or in the children can contribute to the explanation of the tragedy. It may never be explained. A serum is not open to analysis, as a drug is, and its actual composition may defy bacteriologists themselves. —H.A.Y.