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Chancellor
Vice-chancellor honored guests
Aston graduate Ladies and Gentleman,
we are living in the
age of the old. Peter Pedersen a
statistician working in Copenhagen
estimates that of all human beings
who have ever been on planet earth
and who have reached the age of 65
are on this planet now, and we should celebrate this.
It is an incredible achievement and our thanks should go to those public health
reformers
to science to medicine and the pharmaceutical industry
that has enable all of this to happen.
A man, who was born in London 100 years ago
would have had an expected life of forty-two years.
It is now seventy eight for women it is
over eighty and if we go further a field
to Japan, a little girl born there today
would have a 50-50 chance of reaching
100 years of age. But it's strange in life
when you make an incredible achievement
often in its wake follow
big challenges, it is a fact
that the longer we live there will be
more brain diseases, more Alzheimer's,
more Parkinson's disease, more Stroke.
Illnesses that calls terrible distress
to the person who lives with the disease terrible distress
to the families that are trying so hard
to take care of them and of course it places
an economic burden on health systems
that I don't think anywhere can sustain this. In 2010
across Europe the cost to the brain diseases was
nearly 800 Billion
euros and to put that in context
that is more than is spent on cancer plus
diabetes plus cardiovascular.It's an enormous burden.
And it is another fact
that the longer we live by the time with 65
we have at least 3 or 4 diseases moving on us
you young people you better rejoice because
as Rosenberg said " Good Health is just an incomplete diagnosis"
So with Cormorbidity
comes more challenges it means
Poly-pharmacy it's going to be a challenge to running clinical trials
is going to be a challenge to science to
Unravel all the complications of taking more than one two three or four
medicines,
a challenging world. But our lives
are a journey and it's a journey
that we've been prepared for by our parents'
our spiritual beliefs, our education,
the people we meet along that life's
pathway, the books that we read, that is a part of the journey
that no one has prepared you for and that is the moment when you receive
a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness.
Nobody prepared you for that, and if you talk to the people who have that
they would tell you exactly where they were remember the exact time in the
exact day they were even perhaps
recollect the pattern on the carpet.
It is a watershed in their lives,
they speak of before I had, after I was diagnosed
and when you really speak and listen to them they will tell you
that they have lost control over their lives
and I don't think any of us will understand that, until we lose it.
So how can we reinstate that control
it with" Information, Information and more Information"
to provide them with that map for the for the further journey
and they make that journey and they make it
with courage and dignity
and they have no alternative because that is
their diagnoses, but other people
choose to make that journey
it is their life's work it is the Scientists
and the Doctors and the Pharmacists
and the Health Care Professionals and the Engineers
and the Health Economists and the Humanities
and the Ethicist they make that journey,
because it is their life's work to try to improve the management
all these challenging illnesses,
and you know what they give to the patient's not only the wonderful
management criteria how to make things better for them
but they give those people " HOPE"
and that's what do you personify "You
are our Hope for the future"
it doesn't matter which country you've come from
which nation to which you belong, always remember
"That the Wealth of a Nation is the Health
of it's Nation". I want to entreat
all of you I want you
to really value the greatest
asset that you have that incredible
organ of the " BRAIN"
I want you to preserve it I want you to nurture it
I want you to develop it and above all I want you to protect it
and as you, work forward in your lives
when that superhighway of excellent science is coming down the track
make sure all of you that it is properly
underpinned with the humanities
and ethics. Travel well
here