Advertisement and Opinion A page advertisement which appeared in last
week's Spectator and a few other papers is the subject of a rather curious controversy. The advertisement, which was inserted by the British Medical Association, asked the question Is All Milk Safe to Drink ? and returned the answer that only pasteurised milk is really safe. A large number of newspapers have declined to insert this advertisement, on the ground that it would alarm the milk-drinking public and so conflict with the efforts of the Milk Marketing Board— which, incidentally, is a fairly large advertiser itself. The reasoning is hard to follow, unless what is meant is that to accept the one advertisement might involve the risk of losing the other. That may possibly be the case, and this iournal and others may suffer to that extent. But no adequate ground for refusing the B.M.A. advertisement reveals itself. The B.M.A. is completely disinterested—doCtors are not inilk-vendors—and concerned simply with the public health. The medical view being that epidemics and individual illnesses can be avoided by the use of pasteurised milk, the doctors are doing a public service in making that view, honestly held, whether right or wrong, publicly known.
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