The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7415 p248
26 August 2006

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· Department of Health
· Work pressures (2)
· Homoeopathy (2)
· Controlled drugs
· Safety
· Oxygen service
· Compliance aids
· Needle exchange
· Paracetamol
· Smoking cessation
· The profession (2)
· Retention fees (4)
· The Society (2)
· Public image

Letters to the Editor

Paracetamol

Restricting pack size will not prevent suicide

From Dr M. Rasburn

I am not a pharmacist, only a humble chartered chemist, who has spent some 35 years in and around the pharmaceutical industry. But I, too, had a small part in a near-miss paracetamol tragedy some 30 years ago. In that case, a female colleague foolishly dashed down a quantity of tablets at work while under some stress. Luckily, disaster was averted by a fast drive down to casualty and the usual, and happily timely, use of stomach lavage.

That is an example of the type of overdosage carried out in a moment of haste and regretted instantly, I should think, in many cases. But even a low pack size of 16 tablets would not be able to be ignored in such cases.

Contrast that with the other sort of intended suicide. Those who are not familiar with the careful planning, calculation and orderliness of such cases can familiarise themselves by reading the final chapter of Browne and Tullet’s ‘Bernard Spilsbury — his life and cases’, a comprehensive biography of the great pathologist who took his own life in 1947.

The point is this — if the action of self harm is of an instantaneous, reactive sort, then any small pack of paracetamol will do and would still involve a need for medical intervention. If planning is involved, then the small packs, be they of four or eight or 12, would be garnered together for the final plan. And if not paracetamol, something else would be used. Spilsbury used coal gas. These days a car exhaust might be chosen.

M. Rasburn
Gainsborough, Lincolnshire

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