DOCTORS DISAGREE ON DRUGS' DOSAGE

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 2

DOCTORS DISAGREE ON DRUGS' DOSAGE

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, August 5. British doctors disagree over the new hormone treatment which allows infertile women to have children.

In Hamburg, Dr. Arthur Crooke told a congress of 350 hormone specialists that his Birmingham research team had now controlled the preparation, gonadotrophin, reducing the risk of multiple births. However, in London Dr. Peter Bishop, head of the Guy’s Hospital hormone clinic, denied that any safe general dose had yet been discovered. He said: “I have the greatest possible admiration for Dr. Crooke. But it must be emphasised that there is disagreement.” German doctors were also critical of Dr. Crooke’s “correct dose” theory based on sensitivity tests. Dr. Gerhard Bettendorf, of Hamburg University, said his scientists experimented with dose control techniques but failed.

An Edinburgh expert, Dr. John Loraine, chairman of the Hamburg meeting, said the Crooke method might work only with a limited number of women, carefully

selected and investigated. But he called the Birmingham research “very useful” as tlie first step towards control. Dr. Crooke and a biochemist, Dr. Wilfred Butit, claimed that of 22 sterile

women treated under the controlled method at Birmingham hospitals, 20 had or will have single babies. “We do not claim outright preclusion of multiple birth, but we get the desired results more often than others have,” Dr. Crooke said.