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involved were not prejudiced by the setting up of a com-mission, which might take years to report. Mr. Heath

gave his assurance that no other action in the thalidomidecase would be prejudiced by the setting up of the com-mission, and also that it would not be made a reason fordelaying the Government’s implementation of the otherrecommendations in the Robens report. He added that theGovernment had in mind a commission of 14 or 15 mem-

bers, including lawyers, insurance actuaries, doctors,economists, and members representing employers andtrade unions.

Support for Free ContraceptionAn amendment was carried during the committee stage

of the National Health Service Reorganisation Bill in theHouse of Lords on Dec. 19 to provide that medicalexamination, treatment, and contraceptive substances orappliances should be provided free of charge. Movingthe amendment for the Opposition, Lady LLEWELYN-DAVIES said that many people felt it was wrong to havefree abortion and free vasectomy, but not free contracep-tion. No woman should be allowed to undergo the traumaticexperience of an abortion if it could, by any means, beprevented. The amendment was concerned with thephysical, social, and psychological health of families. TheOpposition wanted a service which gave counselling,made supplies available, and gave free practical help andsupplies. Lady YOUNG, speaking for the Government,said that the Government’s statement on family-planningservices last week was not a statement of population policy;it was made because of the concern about the number ofabortions being carried out. The Government wanted to

provide a choice of advice on contraception. They wouldshortly be entering into discussions with the medical andpharmaceutical professions to see whether arrangementscould be agreed by which the general practitioner couldundertake a large role in the provision of contraception.Special training courses in family planning would be setup for health visitors, and in hospitals more advice andtreatment would be offered, particularly to maternityand abortion cases. The cost of the expanded family-planning services in Britain was expected to be S12 million,and if three-quarters of the women at risk of unwantedpregnancy used the service, ultimately it would cost

E17 million a year. If free contraception were to beprovided now, the money would have to come from someother part of the health service. A considerable proportionof people in Britain were able and willing to pay for theirsupplies. The Government had taken big steps forwardand were now embarking on a further trebling of thetotal N.H.S. expenditure on contraception over the nextfour years.

QUESTION TIMEFund for Congenitally Handicapped

Children

In answer to a question in the House of Commons onDec. 15, Sir KEITH JOSEPH, Secretary of State for SocialServices, said that the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trustwould administer the E3 million fund which the Govern-ment had decided to set up for the benefit of congenitallyhandicapped children. The fund would help the parentsof these children (including the thalidomide children)by complementing the services already being provided byvoluntary and statutory bodies. The Joseph RowntreeMemorial Trust was now taking steps to make the neces-sary administrative arrangements with a view to beginningoperations not later than April 1, 1973. A further an-nouncement would be made when the Trust was ready toreceive applications.

Obituary

KATRINA RHODESM.D.St. And.

Dr. Katrina Rhodes, senior registrar in the depart-ment of physical medicine, St. Thomas’s Hospital,London, died on Dec. 11.Born in Prague in 1920, she came to England in 1938

after Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland, and enteredthe University of St. Andrews, where she graduated in1945. Her first husband was killed in the R.A.F. In 1946she married Greville Rhodes, an architect, and the followingyear they went to work in Jamaica. She was engaged as aresearch assistant by Prof. K. R. Hill, who was setting upthe department of pathology in the newly establishedUniversity College of the West Indies. She was an activemember of the team, with Hill, Bras, and Stuart, whichunravelled the clinical and pathological features of veno-occlusive disease of the liver. Her monograph " Twotypes of liver disease in Jamaican children ", publishedin the West Indian Medical_7ournal, is a classic of its kind.

In 1954 the Rhodes’ returned to England, and Katrinacontinued to work with Professor Hill in the department ofpathology at the Royal Free Hospital. Later she moved tathe department of rheumatology, and became increasinglyinterested in the immunological aspects of rheumatic

disease, and particularly of rheumatoid arthritis, on whichshe published a number of papers. From 1969 she wassenior registrar in the department of physical medicine atSt. Thomas’s, and was about to be appointed to a consultantpost in Hampshire when her last illness began.

Katrina Rhodes could have had a distinguished career inresearch, but she refused to be deflected from clinicalwork. She was probably right in this, because she had amost remarkable gift of sympathy and understanding.This enabled her to, combine an active professional careerwith an extremely happy family life. We can ill afford talose so young one whose gaiety and charm were matched byintelligence and courage.

She leaves a daughter and a son.

J. C. W.

Diary of the Week

DECEMBER 31 TO JANUARY 6

Tuesday, 2ndROYAL ARMY MEDICAL COLLEGE, Millbank, London S.W.1

5 P.M. Dr. D. L. Davies: Art and Mental Illness.MEDICINE TODAY

1.15 P.M. (B.B.C.-2) Dr. Charles Fletcher, Dr. Ian Cregg, Dr. JamesPaterson: Late-onset Asthma.

Wednesday, 3rdINSTITUTE OF PSYCHIATRY, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London

S.E.55.30 P.M. Prof. R. A. Hinde: Mother/Infant Separation in Rhesus

Monkeys.

Friday, 5thUNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

6.30 P.M. (Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.) Dr. M. Moore: TumourImmunology.

Saturday,6thUNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

8.30 A.M. (Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.) Dr. M. Moore: HumanSarcomas and their Antigens.

9.45 A.M. (Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.) Prof. R. B. Duthie: GeneralProperties in Musculoskeletal Tumours.