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Good morning everyone and welcome to this presentation. Before we hear from our guest
speaker, Professor Bruce Robinson, it is tradition for The University of Western Australia to
acknowledge that it is situated on Noongar land and that the Noongar people remain the
spiritual and cultural custodians of the land, and continue to practise their values, languages
beliefs and knowledge. Winthrop Professor Robinson from our School of Medicine and Pharmacology
is an internationally renowned asbestos diseases specialist. Earlier this year he was awarded
West Australian of the Year, and prior to that made a member in the General Division
of the Order of Australia in recognition of his significant service to medicine in the
area of research into asbestos-related cancers, and to the community, particularly through
the support of fathers. At Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Bruce co-leads a large research
team studying cancer, immunology and asbestos diseases. This team has made many discoveries,
including the first blood test for mesothelioma, and has conducted many world-first treatments
including Australia's first cancer gene therapy trial. Bruce is also the director of the National
Centre for Asbestos-Related Diseases, and in this role pioneered the world's first effective
chemotherapy treatment for mesothelioma. In addition to his work in the medical field,
he has consistently contributed to the community by supporting men in their roles as fathers.
He is the co-founder of the Fathering Foundation, and the best-selling author of a series of
books on fatherhood. Deeply saddened by the number of Indonesian tsunami victims, Bruce
also spent time learning Indonesian and worked in Ache, returning to Indonesia more than
20 times. There, he co-founded a course which provides train-the-trainer programs in the
region. Bruce is a lung specialist, a researcher, and makes significant contributions to the
community. His personal philosophy is to turn compassion into action. His presentation today
will address his three journeys in his areas of passion and expertise. Please help me welcome
Bruce. Thanks, Suze, and thanks, people for coming. Can I advance the slides from here?
Sorry? Sorry, Mike, I didn't ask that from the start -- just pause for a moment. Ok,
so I'll just have to put my finger up; which the Australian Test team have seen quite a
bit lately. [Laughter] No DRS on this.I just walked through the campus today and it's a
great pleasure for me to walk through the campus that gave me my head start actually,
a long time ago now. So I did medicine here, and like a lot of people in my era, was the
first person in my family ever to go to university. Today is about three journeys actually beyond
the consulting room. (Thanks Mike.) So I just thought I'd tell you how I chose medicine.Anyone
recognise this guy? John Newcombe -- yeah, he won Wimbledon that year -- 1967; oh, it
says it up there. And this is will give you an idea how incredibly immature I was, I was
going to do nuclear physics, quantum cosmology and all that sort of stuff when I was a Year
12 student. I used to love physics, and I still do, but this is how fickle I was; I
watched an episode of Doctor Kildare and I saw the attractive nurses gazing adoringly
at the doctor, so I said to my parents, "I might switch to medicine." See? Pathetic.
I'm sure the kids walking around the campus today are much more sophisticated than that. Anyway,
I did that and now I'm a doctor, a lung specialist mostly at Charlie Gairdner's, a bit of Hollywood,
and here I am looking at a CAT scan. That's my regular job, but that's not what I'm going
to talk about today. I thought I'd talk about three very interesting journeys, and the principle
of my discussion is to talk about how a UWA career can create opportunities to change
lives. You can just be a doctor -- which is fantastic, I love it; thank God for the profession
I have -- but these are three extra things I've been able to do. I begin by talking about
cancer. This is a chest x-ray of a patient; where you see black is the lungs. Is there
a pointer? I'll just walk over here... That white thing on the left of the patient -- your
right -- is fluid. That's actually a patient who has a cancer and the fluid has oozed out
of the cancer, causing what's called an effusion. When you take those cells out, those brown
stains that look like a bunch of grapes -- they're cancer cells; and cancer's been a very difficult
enemy to cure. Everyone around the world is studying all sorts of cancers. We have a particular
interest in Western Australia, which is asbestos cancer. You can see in this rock a vein of
blue metal marked with "Asbestos"; that's blue asbestos; and WA has the highest incidence
of asbestos-related cancers in the world. About a hundred cases a year in WA come to
our hospital; there are about 15,000 around the world -- we haven't got all of them -- but
they all funnel through Charlie Gairdner's so we have a lot of expertise in that.But
why would you bother using asbestos? Everyone knows it's really dangerous. Well, it's really
good stuff. It's great for insulation; you put it around hot pipes and they stay hot;
houses stay hot. It's heat-resistant so it fireproofs buildings. That's why ships have
got it everywhere, so they don't burn to the waterline. And you can make it into sheets
for buildings, which you can't do with stones and things. So it's brilliant stuff. It was
used everywhere in Australia; we don't have pine forests and things, so we just dug asbestos
out everywhere. Three thousand different uses, and we still haven't hit the peak of asbestos
cancer. So we have a particular interest in that.Just for your education, there are two
main sorts of asbestos, blue asbestos and white asbestos. You can see the blue stuff
is long and skinny, and the white stuff is more curvy and what we call "feathery". Just
turn your attention to the top one again, the blue one. You can see that some of those
things look like spears, and that's exactly why it's so dangerous. You breathe in blue
asbestos like a spear, it spears its way through the lung, into the cells, causes cancer right
the way through the lung to the lining. Here's a cartoon of a lung. The light blue is the
bronchial tubes, the blue is the lung, and you can just see the little blue fibres at
the top as you breathe them in. They penetrate the lung and then they work their way.You
can get two sorts of cancers: one is the cancer of the lung itself, which we call lung cancer;
and then it can go right through, as you can see there, to the outside -- to the pleura,
which you'll be familiar with from pleurisy etc; it's the casing of the lung. That causes
what's called mesothelioma. Two different lung cancers: one of the actual lung tissue,
one of the casing of the lung. Lung cancer; mesothelioma. You know, mesothelioma is kinda
famous, and there was a mini-series on recently -- some of you may have seen it -- about Bernie
Banton the asbestos campaigner. Remember the guy who used to come on the news with oxygen
in his nose. Who can remember seeing Bernie Banton on the news? So he eventually died
of mesothelioma and it's not one of the very good cancers. [Next]So just to show you some
of the research we've done in that, this is a cartoon of cancer cells -- the light blue
cells are the cancer cells -- and those little green things are proteins. Tiny tiny amounts
of proteins that escape into the blood. But there's only tiny, tiny amounts it's like
a needle in a hay stack. But we've developed some tests, by some very sophisticated technology
to discover these cancers, not by doing an x-ray but by testing the blood. And here is
an example, this is a graph showing mesothelioma on the left, MM malignant mesothelioma and
the amount of this stuff in the blood. The little blue triangles. And all the other patients
control etc. are shown in yellow. And you don't have to be a scientist to realise that
that is a spectacularly successful experiment.You know, this is a very good blood test which
we discovered maybe ten years ago now, and it's now used throughout the world. So we
published this in the lancet, which is one of the most famous journals in the world,
and then we got all of this media, because this asbestos is very topical, and Aussie
breakthrough, all that sort of stuff. And then it's been commercialised and used around
the world. Just an example of West Australian research that just, helps the world. This is
actually a cartoon, this isn't actually a cartoon, this is actually a scanning EM image.
You wonder, it's all very well to make a diagnosis of cancer, but doctor's aren't all just about
making a diagnosis, we want to fix it. So now I'll just tell you some current research,
about one way of fixing it, and what we're interested in is getting the immune system
to attack cancer. In this picture here, the purple cell, or a pinky-purply cell is the
cancer cell, and the yellow cell is a killer T cell. We all have killer T cells, they run
around the body all the time, that's how we get protected from influenza and all that
sort of stuff. And those killer T cells can kill cancer cells, I mean they can see a cancer
cell, almost like a virus, because of mutations. So I went off to America at one stage and did
a doctorate in Washington DC. I wasn't in this particular building but, I never got
invited, but I was down the road. And came back with this technology and just for fun
I thought I'd show you this. We translated this into, you can see now twenty five years
ago our first patient we tried with our new immunotherapy. We've tried maybe 10 different
sorts. And what you can see there is the size of a skin deposit, a cancer deposit that is
growing, growing, growing until it got to be more than fifty centimetres squared, we
gave it this recombinant, particular molecule that stimulates the killer cells, and you
can see it that shrunk. And even when we stopped the treatment it continued to shrink. And
if you look carefully you can see on the bottom line that the patient who had a life expectancy
of about three months lived for another five years. And this is one of our first immunotherapy
clinical trials, and it's one of the reasons why we're really focused on getting the immune
system to fight cancer.But how does this killer cell know it's a cancer cell? Well cancer
is full of abnormalities in DNA. Anyone know what they're called? Those little abnormalities
in DNA, starts with M, Mutation that's right. Who knows who these guys are? Watson and Crick
right? So sixty years ago they identified DNA as the carrier of genetic material and
the structure of it. There are, you get three billion letters in your genetic code, three
billion from your mum and three billion from your dad. So you got six billion letters in
your DNA code, every cell in your body has six billion letters. And if you just type
them out, at ten bases a second twenty four hours a day it would take you nine and a half
years to type out your genetic code. So it's not surprising that people haven't been able
to discover what these mutations are. And in particular from our point of view, to discover
what mutations might be targets for these killer cells.Just to point it out, so you
got your DNA, makes RNA, protein. There's a mutation in green and there's one little
mutation on that protein, and that is the mutation that we need to identify, to get
the immune system to attack the cancer. Sounds easy but I've already told you, six billion
bits of information. You're trying to find a needle in a hay stack and of needles. So
I'm not going to go anymore into that because it's complicated but what you end up with,
we're sequencing the cancer you get sequences of those six billion bases and you work out
where the mutations are and which ones might be antigenic and you end up with this massive
bit of information. It's called a circus plot, you identify a bunch of mutations, and out
of all of that, with very clever people doing very clever things, you find at the bottom
there 15 potential antigens for a vaccine.So going back to our patient now, you take the
cells out and then you DNA sequence it; you identify the mutations, make a vaccine and
force the immune system to attack the cancer. Everybody's cancer is different. Everybody
has different mutations, has to be personalised. That's the exciting part of this work.So my
point is, I mean I could just go see those patients and do the best I can, but, my point
is a UWA career creates extraordinary opportunities to change lives. And we're not the only ones
in the world trying to do this, but it's very exciting work. Very exciting indeed. And it
is the cutting edge, this is technology out of the human genome project. So that's one
thing we do, go inside the cancer cell. OK, and that's the end of journey number one. Now,
journey number two. Now here I am back in my consulting room, nice bow tie. I only put
it on for the photo (laughs), well I think I did anyway. Ok so I'm a lung specialist
and lung cancer is the commonest lethal cancer and patients who come to see me, men and this
is one of them, Peter who doesn't mind me showing his photo, and he, like many of them
said to me, when I chat to them. "You know, I've only got six months to live, and I wish
I'd spent more time with my kids." That's what men say. Well I'm going to show you what
the next one said; "I wish someone had helped me see that when I was young and busy." When
you're young and you're driven, work and everything seems a lot more important to you, than when
you look back at what it really was. If only someone had helped me. And of course, in the
olden days we had elders and tribal elders and our grandfathers to help us but now we
live in suburbs and flats and things and there's no one there to tell us so we just end up
getting cancer at fifty or sixty and living with regret. So we set up the fathering project. And
that's because, it wasn't just to help dads it was to help kids. Kids are a huge risk
nowadays, risks that people in the audience aren't even aware of. Substance abuse, binge
drinking, teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, loss of values. When everyone used
to go to boy scouts and they had scripture classes at school, maybe went to Sunday school.
You know all sorts of inputs. Kids hated listening to it, yap yap yap but at least they had a
lot of values. But nowadays kids have this so called "loss of a values compass." Teenage
depression, suicide. I don't know if you know but forty eight percent of West Australian
seventeen year old have used illegal drugs, and just in case you think that's marijuana
sixteen percent have used amphetamines just to pick one. So if you just think of all those
kids out there, all those seventeen year old in Western Australia, sixteen percent. So we
set up the fathering project. And people say to us, Oh its great Bruce, you set up the
fathering project to help dads, because as I said you don't want to have guys living
with regrets. But I remind people that we didn't set it up for the dads, we set it up
for children. Because if you look at a father and their effect on a child, well actually.
We're trying to help fathers to help the children. It's all about the children and their future.
Like to be honest and blokes I'm sorry to say this, mum's on average do a pretty good
job. Working mums, non-working mums, disabled mums, you know, sole parent mums they do a
pretty good job. There's something about mothers and children, that on average, their performance
is way up here. And whilst there are plenty of dads who do a good job, on average, well
it's certainly variable or so we say. So we're trying to help dads. Because, statistically,
just to summarise, there's about a fifty percent reduction in risk of substance abuse, depression,
bad school attitudes and behaviour -- that's bad attitude to the school, teachers and other
kids -- and to learning itself, and crime. On average a fifty percent reduction if they
have a strong and appropriate father figure. Let's just think about that for a moment.
All of the risks our children face, getting worse and worse in Australia. If every child
in Australia -- which is our vision- had a strong and appropriate father figure, fifty
percent reduction in all of those things. I mean how exciting is that? That's why we're
doing it. Now I won't just talk about dads because some kids either don't have a dad,
or the dad's just not interested so we focus on father figures. Like grandfathers, we give
them skills, how they can speak into a child's life, uncles, step fathers, school teachers
and sports coaches. The power of a father figure, especially when the regular dad isn't
interested or not there, is very, very strong. So, we've written a few books, made some DVDs,
we've got a whole project based here at UWA trying to get out and talk to dads. So we've
actually talked to thirteen thousand dads, live audience. And if anyone knows men here,
it's very hard to get men into a room. They always say to their wives or partner, "well
you go honey and tell me what I need to know, you read the book, you read the book and tell
me what I need to know." I mean I did that too. So we've had thirteen thousand dads live,
plus so many more through the website and emailing. Six different countries, social
media, fathers groups, camp outs, it's already been very powerfully effective. So what do
we do? We roll it out to schools. So we do a lot of stuff in schools, they get their
dads together and they form a dads group and the aim is to have it in every school in the
country and we have special target groups as well. FIFO workers, big problem there, we're
doing some stuff with FIFO dads. Aboriginal father figures, very exciting project because
of the power of the father figure in aboriginal culture, speaking to young people. Dads and
health. There's an obese child eating chips and watching TV. Obesity in children is a
problem, we're doing things about exercise and healthy lifestyle. Education I mentioned,
commonest relationship for a kid who's a bully for example is a father figure who is not
speaking appropriately into his life, absence or a father figure, speaking appropriately.
The goal is everywhere in Australia. So, we have all sorts of tips but one of them, one
of our best tips is how to create special times with kids and here you see a dad with
his kid at the beach, top right is dad on a dad-date with their child and we push that,
and that's been miraculously effective. Camping trip, and bottom right is a longer trip, we
talk about taking your kids on trips and so many stories of wonderful outcomes. I'll just
tell you one. Well there's hundreds of them but this happened to be in my profession,
I went to a conference in the east but I can't remember where, but the president of this
society -- this is my pulmonary society -- saw me at the registration desk and came running
up to me and he said "oh Bruce I gotta tell you something, I've been waiting for you to
come in." He said "I read that section in your book about taking your kids on trips.
I had a conference in Paris. "No, He said "My fourteen year old daughter and I were
all, you know, it can happen with fourteen year old girls, and I read that chapter and
so I said I'll take her to Paris with me. And because it was Paris she said yes. Five
days conference, total two weeks, So five days and then another nine days."He said
"You know Bruce, ever since then she and I have been like this. We've got our own secret
stories about silly things we did." And here's the thing, he said "She's been telling people
it was the best two weeks of her life. "And he said? "You know what Bruce? Best two weeks
of my life too." That's one of many stories where people's fathering has been changed.
And here's the thing. Here's the thing. It's not about the father it's the fourteen year
old girl I think about. You know, when they go through that angry phase, they can do all
sorts of things, as an act of rebellion. And there's a very thin line between having fun
and having a catastrophe, in adolescent life. So I think about her. And I remember, I'll
tell you another story too. Just thinking about these stories, but I interviewed a girl
who was a recovering drug addict. She was mid-twenties but she described her life as
-- and what made me think about it was that she was also an angry fourteen year old -- she
said "I got really angry when I was fourteen, I don't know why I got angry," She just got
angry with everybody, started to rebel. She said "I started to go out drinking and started
smoking pot and I ended up on ***." And then she said, "I don't blame my dad, I don't
blame him it's my responsibility I'm not that sort of person now, I'm an adult I don't blame
him. I knew he loved me but he just didn't know what to do. If only he'd reached out
and hugged me I probably wouldn't have been a drug addict." It's the difference between
one thing and another those two stories. And that's what the fathering project does, it
tells dads what to do, before there is a catastrophic outcome. So you can see why it's terrific,
anyway. Why do you need a fathering project? Why do you need one? Like there wasn't one,
you know you don't read about one in seventeenth century England, the fathering project based
in the houses of parliament. So why do you need one? Well just to explain, the change
in society. This is the last two hundred years. Our kid's needs and risks have increased that's
the blue line. Kids needs and risks have increased, let's get that really clear. What am I talking
about? Drugs, binge drinking, stuff that really wasn't too much around when I was a kid. Obesity,
god we ran around feral when I was a kid, no one was fat, well maybe one you know. ***
pressure, including ***. 12 year old addicted to ***, because they know
how to get onto the internet. And mostly it's accidental. They get trapped by the people
who push ***. For example the website "thewhitehouse.com" *** peddlers use
all sorts of tricks and that's one. "thewhitehouse.com" is a pornographic site. They bought that domain
name. Because kids who are doing their homework, well the correct site is "thewhitehouse.gov"
so they figure, they capture kids that way. And then when the kid tries to back out of
it, it's called mouse trapping and they can't get out of it. Because they won't let them
get out of it, then they lose all their homework. Anyway.School behaviour, bad, I'm sure you
know this you read about it in the paper, school teachers are quitting because of the
bad attitude of children. Cyber bullying, teenage depression, suicide, I've mentioned
the values. So these are massive challenges to our kids, it's quite a dangerous world
for our kids. At the same time, a father's capacity to respond to those needs has declined.
Why? Fathers are spending more time at work now, dads used to work nine to five, come
home. They might not have been that great but at least they were home. Less help from
the family, as I said people live in the suburbs. So, families used to live near each other,
I mean for the whole of human existence people have lived in tribes. You are near your brothers.
In other words the kids had uncles and grandfathers all around. Well who here lives within one
kilometre of their parents? Well probably in the same house over there, you know what
I mean. No it's just that people move. So that sort of tribal sense that kids have other
people to listen too is gone. You're isolated so that dads have less help from the family.
And let's face it, if their dad was no good how are they going to learn to be a dad? It's
just a repeating cycle. And obviously divorce and separation -- twenty six percent of kids
in Western Australia go to sleep without one parent in the house, and less good role models.
This is that same repeating cycle. So there's a gap between what kids need and what fathers
can deliver. That's why we do what we do, so the fathering project closes that gap.
You can see why there's a compellingly strong case to do this.Ok, does it make any difference?
I'm just going to play a little bit of
a DVD. We go out to schools right, does it make any difference? I've told you a couple of stories so I'll just play a DVD
now Mike thanks. (DVD Starts at 28:35, ends at 31:06, video inaudible)Thanks Mike. What
I love about that is, and you would have noticed this straight away, like sometimes when you
do things with men, and women are a little bit touchy, but women love what me do, they
love their kids and they want their kids to have -- even sole parent mums who maybe have
a bit of aggro with their ex -- want their kids to have the best chance. When I think
about this guy, I look at his kids again, the stats on those kids, have just, the risks
have gone down dramatically because of the dramatic change in that family. We have lots
of those stories and it makes a big difference. So, as I said, a UWA career can create extraordinary
opportunities to change lives. That's the second journey.So the final journey now, well
here I am again. This all comes out of being a doctor you see. So you wake up in the morning,
and this is the sort of thing you find out. Indonesian earthquake, if you read the news
this morning or heard it, there's another volcano going off in Indonesia as we speak.
Every year there is something going on. Here's a tsunami, in our time-zone most of these
things happen. And they affect people. Actually this picture on the right reminds me of how
I got involved in the Indonesian, in the tsunami. I was camping with my family. So it happened
on Boxing Day but I didn't volunteer. I mean you never quite know in the beginning and
we were camping and the statistics just continued to go up, I mean we ended up at a quarter
of a million people, but it got to about sixty thousand. But I heard an ABC report talk about
all the kids and this little kid. Kids can swim in Indonesia, often the parents can't,
so there was a massive number of kids who had been made orphans. And when the water
subsided and they let go of the tree and everything, in Indonesia but also in Sri-Lanka and all
the other places that were affected, they went back and their whole family was dead.
And that's because they all live together in the same little area - Grandparents, parents,
brothers, sisters whatever. So there were a lot of orphans and I just wept actually,
and I do have a tropical medicine and a public health diploma from when I was young so I
put my hand up and volunteered. And as I said I've been back more than 20 times, but anyways. People
think, what's wrong with a tsunami? Can't you just like swim? Everyone's been to the
beach so just play that one Mike, thanks. So you can see, it's full of dirty water and
people inhale all this water and, look at all the bits of water, that's flowing fast
down the main street of Banda Aceh, cars coming you just can't survive in that. And you don't
actually see much footage out of Banda Aceh but you do. Mostly it's tourist that let you
know when there's a disaster because they get affected, not in such great numbers but
of course they're all texting their mums or dads. Just play that one thanks Mike. So this
is a tour in Thailand now and you can see this is now a tourist area, and you can see
they're also being affected. And I used to think that, like no they're just tourists
but in fact they're the ones who create the interest in the news and get donations to
help the poor people who have no other way of letting anyone know. So here's a tourist
again, and they get affected in numerous ways, and you know, we respond. But responding,
remember, isn't about the dead people. It's about the survivors. And we respond because,
when you think about a disaster, its people. The survivors are people and you respond out
of compassion, and remember Indonesia is our neighbour. When you think about loving your
neighbour, I could just about stand on the beach and if I could see over the horizon
I would have seen the tsunami smashed shores of Aceh, they are our neighbour. It didn't
seem morally right that I would sit around my campsite, people drinking wine and playing
with the kids and not helping so I went. So, I went and helped because not only are people
suffering you know but their health system is hugely smashed, hospitals and clinics and
so on. In Aceh a third of all doctors and nurses were actually killed in the tsunami,
so I mean you just couldn't mount. There are a lot more sick people; they ran out of antibiotics
straight away, people were dying everywhere.The right hand side is actually in Haiti, I went
there as well after their earthquake. And this is actually an example. It's actually
a picture from Padang in Sumatra where I worked after their earthquake and you can see the
health clinic behind is collapsed and all the bricks and rubble is around. So I'm part
of a team that goes and looks, most of what you do to be honest is ordinary health care
because people are still getting pneumonia and everything. They would have got it if
there was no tsunami, so some of it -- well, earthquakes -- early on you're dealing with
inhaled tsunami water and fractures from buildings going down and you know, terrible things.
But then after a while you're just helping the people until they can get back on their
feet. And that's what this picture illustrates. This is actually a place called locruut? The whole
town was smashed, here I am actually landing on a road, no cars or anything on the road
fortunately. Tsunami water either side, and it's actually a bit of fun. Mostly to be honest
its emotionally draining to do this sort of stuff but it's quite exciting as well, jumping
in helicopters and all that sort of stuff.That's just responding to disasters. In addition
we also go and help poor people in a non-disaster situation. In other words where every day
is a disaster, because they just don't have good health care. And I just thought I'd tell
you about this girl. This is up in Indonesia, in a poor village, dirt poor. And I remember
this day because we had six hundred and seventy six patients and there were only three doctors.
Anyway this cute little girl came to see me, she had a sore ankle, and sometimes they're
just nothing but I had a look at her ankle, and you can see me holding her ankle and you
don't have to be a doctor to realise that's a very swollen ankle joint. In fact it was
hot and red and painful and swollen. She actually had an infected ankle joint. Because she was
running through the grass and a satay stick, a used satay stick had punctured her ankle.
She had a week of amoxil, and this is a month later. Here's the thing. I looked at this
girl and looked at this ankle and thought the following. "I can see her whole life being
played out in front of me now; she has not had adequate treatment. That ankle joint will
be eroded by the white cells and she will become a cripple. If she's a cripple she won't
get a husband -- probably -- and if she doesn't get a husband (this is a Muslim culture) she
won't have kids, and she'll be you know in the village, helping, whatever for the rest
of her life but she will not get a husband and she will not get children, probably. And
she'll limp, and she won't be able to work in the fields, and I could see her whole life
being played out." So I said to the guy she needs the following two antibiotics and she
needs six weeks. And I thought, that's the difference you can make. That is the difference
you can make. Her whole life is changed because of that event.So just as I mentioned, So this
is a map of Western, of Australia and Asia and that's a colour coded thing of all the
natural disasters in the world. Point is that eighty percent of them happen in our time
zone, or roughly within our time zone. See the red dot's Perth and you can see where
the natural disasters are happening. So this gives us an opportunity, a particular opportunity
in Western Australia to help.And so, we can respond as individuals , but the faculty of
Medicine here at UWA and the department of health, state department of health got together,
they're the two main partners and formed a group called -- you can see at the top there
-- The International skills and training institute in health. And we provide help, mostly training
and you can see us providing training there and we train people. So it's sort of what
we call the stone in the pond approach. We go and we train a hundred people, and then
they go and train a hundred people, and that's now ten thousand people trained. But if you
just do one thing yourself that's only one person and that's the stone in the pond approach,
and we set up clinical training in various countries in South East Asia. Bottom right
you see this thing called "Volunteers for health," People who want to volunteer, nurses,
doctors click on there and if, for example they go into Cambodia for a week's holiday
they might take another week or so and do volunteering in some villages, giving TB vaccines
or something. And that's some of the places that we've been working.Various contracts,
all sorts of work we've been doing. Here's training, that's me at the top left, you can
see me teaching some Indonesians how to do bronchoscopy, which is a technique of putting
an instrument into peoples lungs to look in there and various other training courses we've
been running. So let me finish just by saying look, here I am, I'm a doctor, I've got a
UWA medical degree and a bunch other ones as well, and I could spend my life doing that
as well. And you know people who do that, great. But the point of this talk is to say
that I guess, partly because I am, probably because I am a UWA academic, I feel like I
get freedom to do things. How shall I say this? If you're busy, five days a week seeing
patients you don't have the time, energy or freedom to do new things. But universities
are about breaking new ground. Universities are about new knowledge, new ideas and passing
on those ideas which we call teaching, that's what a university is about. I'm in a university
and in my medical career I've been able to have these three journeys in addition to my
regular medical practice. The journey into the cell, trying to cure cancer basically.
The journey into the community, you know the University of Western Australia acting into
the community to try to change the future of our children, and then amongst our neighbours,
our poor neighbours, creating things that help our poor neighbours in a really affective
way.So my kind of take away message here, and this is my last comment is that a UWA
career can create extraordinary opportunities to change lives. I mean I'm very grateful
for having that opportunity, it gives me a very rich and fulfilling life. Thank you for
listening to my three journeys. We're almost out of time, we probably have time for one
question maybe, or two but that's it then we got to clear the room but I will hang around
outside if anyone wants to talk about anything and if you want to volunteer for any of these
things get on the website and volunteer. Any particular questions? (Inaudible Question from
audience) To be honest, that's a great question, and someone asked me on TV the other day and
I said look, I'm not such a noble spirit that I either knew anything about this, I mean
I grew up in Bassendean. When I was in fifty, in medicine I had never been anywhere. One
trip to Bunbury and one trip to Geraldton, never even been outside the state. And some
mentalist sent me off to Nepal to do my elective, to the Himalayas; I didn't even want to go.
I didn't care about Nepal, had a girlfriend at the time it was kind of inconvenient. I
worked in this poor hospital in Western Nepal, changed my life. So, for example there was
an English doctor, who was a surgeon and an American doctor who was a physician, highly
trained. And I said to these guys once, they were very impressive. They were with young
wives and kids and what have you. Very sacrificial caring for hundreds and hundreds of poor people
every day. And I said, guys, for a medical student like me surely, it was very impressive.
You know you've given up lucrative careers to come here and serve the poor. And they
sort of said oh thanks, and so I said, but at least you've got the gratitude of the poor
for your soul. They looked at each other and looked at me and said, "uh-uh, it doesn't
work like that. In order to give them their dignity, the poor people, to give them some
dignity and not to feel like it's charity we charged them the equivalent of two cents
a day. And they actually think we're here to make money out of them." You don't do something
for the gratitude of the poor; you do it because it's the right thing to do. So, fifty in medicine,
changed my life. So it's really people around you, I mean why do I bother talking to audiences,
and yesterday I went down to the fourth year medical student camp and just talked about
the disaster work. I want other people to get a glimpse of what you can do just like
I was lucky enough to have a mentor -- two mentors -- in a sense, push me onto a plane
and they knew what affect it would have, but I didn't. So that's pretty much, I think,
how it happens for most people. I mean we take people with us to the third world, you
know and work with the poor and they sort of don't really want to go, but then I nag
them and then they go. Then after a week they go, "When can I come back?" Anyway I think
we need to finish now but again, thanks very much.