Duck diet no laughing matter

Press, 4 March 1982, Page 9

Duck diet no laughing matter

NZPA London Thanks to the intervention of Geoffrey Dickens, a Conservative member of Parlia-. meat, the British' House of Commons may soon find itself debating whether duck and venison should be available on the National Health Service. Jocular as the subject may sound, it is no laughing matter for Mrs Shirley Senior, a Huddersfield housewife, aged 46, whose plight has' attracted Mr Dickens’s attention. She is allergic, apparently, to every food but duck and venison. With Harrods selling f duck at $2.04 a pound and

venison for $7.42 yesterday; it is clearly an expensive - complaint, and one so far unrelieved by financial support from the NILS. . Dr Julian Kenyon, who has been treating Mrs Senior, said yesterday that she reacted to other foods even in a double blind test — one in which neither doctor nor patient knows the true identity of the substance being 1 tested. Duck and venison genuinely seemed to be the only nourishment Mrs Senior can , take, Dr Kenyon said. 1 Mrs Senior, who is 1.52 ; metres tall and weighs only I 36.3 kg, is nearly 9kg under

weight. She says that she spends more than $46 a week on private treatment and $23 a week on her ; expensive diet. “Those foods are to me what medicine is to other people,” she said at her home in Huddersfield. “Some of it at least should be paid for by the National Health Service and surely all the treatment I get should also be paid for by the service. It is crippling us financially and we have to make a lot of sacrifices. I have asked Mr Dickens if he can persuade the Government to help thousands like me in the country who are

having to endure untold misery, not only from illness or lack of treatment, but from lack of understanding from friends, relatives and doctors who think it’s all in the mind,” Mr Dickens tabled a parliamentary question yesterday asking Norman Fowler, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, if he would consider setting up a specialist unit to undertake allergyresearch and treat sufferers. Mr Dickens, who has applied for a debate on the subject, is pressing to have allergy recognised as a medical condition.