A cup of tea, a Bex, and a good lie down

"This book contains a compelling study of a shameful episode in the recent medical and social history of Australia. It is one from which few of the organisations and institutions that became involved emerge with credit unimpaired. Many individuals and teams, on the other hand, played an honourable, and some a distinguished, part. A pair of doctors in Townsville were the first in Australia, and among the first in the world, to draw scientific attention to the enormous scale of analgesic consumption which was the root of the problem. Australian scientists were quick to extrapolate from European findings in order to predict the appearance in this country of severe health problems before they had yet been detected. An Australian research team identified by laboratory experiment the chemical responsible, at a time when most overseas research was still heading in a different and mistaken direction. Yet for fifteen years after European countries started banning the sales of the deadly compounds, they remained abundantly and cheaply available in Australia, promoted by aggressive commercial advertising. As a direct result of this time-lag some hundreds of Australians died from an acutely painful and readily preventable disease." -- foreword, page v.