INQUIRY CHALLENGED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22512, 16 December 1947, Page 8

INQUIRY CHALLENGED

SISTER KENNY'S STATEMENT (P.A.) AUCKLAND, Dec. 16. The New Zealand Health Department memorandum to medical practitioners concerning the "Kenney treatment" did not state the true position, said Sister Elizabeth Kenny, in an interview yesterday. She said she was willing to assist the Health Department and the doctors, but if the pamphlet represented the official view of the department and the medical profession she could obviously do nothing. The pamphlet states that the claims made by Miss Kenny and the publicity and support given them in some parts of the United States over a period of time induced the American Medical Association to set up a special committee to investigate and evaluate the Kenny treatment of poliomyelitis. The committee made a painstaking study of the claims for the Kenny treatment, the pamphlet continued. The committee, in its report, in general commented adversely on the claims by Miss Kenny. The committee recognised, however, that the ideas advocated by Sister Kenny had caused specialists to review the treatment of poliomyelitis and avoid careless routine procedures. Miss Kenny said that it was stated that this committee visited 16 clinics in six cities. However, she personally had had no association with them whatsoever. They were never inside a ward in the Kenny Institute, Minneapolis, and this was the only institute in..the United States at that time using the treatment or understanding it. Miss Kenny then dealt with other matters in the pamphlet which she claimed were incorrectly stated. She said she had accepted an invitation to meet Health Department officials and doctors in Auckland tonight. She sincerely described their invitation as "very gracious."