mesothelioma lawyer california

good morning everyone and welcome to thispresentation. before we hear from our guest speaker, professor bruce robinson, it is traditionfor the university of western australia to acknowledge that it is situated on noongarland 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 robinsonfrom our school of medicine and pharmacology is an internationally renowned asbestos diseasesspecialist. earlier this year he was awarded west australian of the year, and prior tothat made a member in the general division of the order of australia in recognition ofhis 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 gairdnerhospital, bruce co-leads a large research team studying cancer, immunology and asbestosdiseases. 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 therapytrial.bruce is also the director of the national centre for asbestos-related diseases, andin this role pioneered the world's first effective chemotherapy treatment for mesothelioma. inaddition to his work in the medical field, he has consistently contributed to the communityby 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 thenumber of indonesian tsunami victims, bruce

also spent time learning indonesian and workedin ache, returning to indonesia more than 20 times. there, he co-founded a course whichprovides 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 turncompassion into action. his presentation today will address his three journeys in his areasof passion and expertise. please help me welcome brucethanks, suze, and thanks, people forcoming. can i advance the slides from here? sorry? sorry, mike, i didn't ask that fromthe start -- just pause for a moment. ok, so i'll just have to put my finger up; whichthe australian test team have seen quite a bit lately. [laughter] no drs on this.i justwalked through the campus today and it's a

great pleasure for me to walk through thecampus 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 justthought 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 youan idea how incredibly immature i was, i was going to do nuclear physics, quantum cosmologyand all that sort of stuff when i was a year 12 student. i used to love physics, and istill do, but this is how fickle i was; i watched an episode of doctor kildare and isaw the attractive nurses gazing adoringly

at the doctor, so i said to my parents, "imight switch to medicine." see? pathetic. i'm sure the kids walking around the campustoday are much more sophisticated than that.anyway, i did that and now i'm a doctor, a lung specialistmostly at charlie gairdner's, a bit of hollywood, and here i am looking at a cat scan. that'smy regular job, but that's not what i'm going to talk about today. i thought i'd talk aboutthree very interesting journeys, and the principle of my discussion is to talk about how a uwacareer can create opportunities to change lives. you can just be a doctor -- which isfantastic, i love it; thank god for the profession i have -- but these are three extra thingsi'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 hasoozed 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'sbeen a very difficult enemy to cure. everyone around the world is studying all sorts ofcancers. 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 casesa year in wa come to our hospital; there are about 15,000 around the world -- we haven'tgot all of them -- but they all funnel through

charlie gairdner's so we have a lot of expertisein 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 stayhot; houses stay hot. it's heat-resistant so it fireproofs buildings. that's why shipshave got it everywhere, so they don't burn to the waterline. and you can make it intosheets 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 dugasbestos out everywhere. three thousand different uses, and we still haven't hit the peak ofasbestos cancer. so we have a particular interest in that.just for your education, there aretwo main sorts of asbestos, blue asbestos

and white asbestos. you can see the blue stuffis long and skinny, and the white stuff is more curvy and what we call "feathery". justturn your attention to the top one again, the blue one. you can see that some of thosethings look like spears, and that's exactly why it's so dangerous. you breathe in blueasbestos like a spear, it spears its way through the lung, into the cells, causes cancer rightthe way through the lung to the lining. here's a cartoon of a lung. the light blue is thebronchial tubes, the blue is the lung, and you can just see the little blue fibres atthe top as you breathe them in. they penetrate the lung and then they work their way.youcan 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 causeswhat'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 kindafamous, and there was a mini-series on recently -- some of you may have seen it -- about berniebanton the asbestos campaigner. remember the guy who used to come on the news with oxygenin his nose. who can remember seeing bernie banton on the news? so he eventually diedof mesothelioma and it's not one of the very good cancers. [next]so just to show you someof the research we've done in that, this is a cartoon of cancer cells -- the light bluecells are the cancer cells -- and those little

green things are proteins. tiny tiny amountsof proteins that escape into the blood. but there's only tiny, tiny amounts it's likea needle in a hay stack. but we've developed some tests, by some very sophisticated technologyto discover these cancers, not by doing an x-ray but by testing the blood. and here isan example, this is a graph showing mesothelioma on the left, mm malignant mesothelioma andthe amount of this stuff in the blood. the little blue triangles. and all the other patientscontrol etc. are shown in yellow. and you don't have to be a scientist to realise thatthat is a spectacularly successful experiment.you know, this is a very good blood test whichwe discovered maybe ten years ago now, and it's now used throughout the world. so wepublished 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 aussiebreakthrough, all that sort of stuff. and then it's been commercialised and used aroundthe world. just an example of west australian research that just, helps the world.this isactually 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, doctor's aren't all just aboutmaking 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 systemto attack cancer. in this picture here, the purple cell, or a pinky-purply cell is thecancer cell, and the yellow cell is a killer

t cell. we all have killer t cells, they runaround the body all the time, that's how we get protected from influenza and all thatsort of stuff. and those killer t cells can kill cancer cells, i mean they can see a cancercell, almost like a virus, because of mutations.so i went off to america at one stage and dida doctorate in washington dc. i wasn't in this particular building but, i never gotinvited, but i was down the road. and came back with this technology and just for funi thought i'd show you this. we translated this into, you can see now twenty five yearsago our first patient we tried with our new immunotherapy. we've tried maybe 10 differentsorts. and what you can see there is the size of a skin deposit, a cancer deposit that isgrowing, growing, growing until it got to

be more than fifty centimetres squared, wegave it this recombinant, particular molecule that stimulates the killer cells, and youcan see it that shrunk. and even when we stopped the treatment it continued to shrink. andif you look carefully you can see on the bottom line that the patient who had a life expectancyof about three months lived for another five years. and this is one of our first immunotherapyclinical trials, and it's one of the reasons why we're really focused on getting the immunesystem to fight cancer.but how does this killer cell know it's a cancer cell? well canceris full of abnormalities in dna. anyone know what they're called? those little abnormalitiesin dna, starts with m, mutation that's right. who knows who these guys are? watson and crickright? so sixty years ago they identified

dna as the carrier of genetic material andthe structure of it. there are, you get three billion letters in your genetic code, threebillion from your mum and three billion from your dad. so you got six billion letters inyour dna code, every cell in your body has six billion letters. and if you just typethem out, at ten bases a second twenty four hours a day it would take you nine and a halfyears to type out your genetic code. so it's not surprising that people haven't been ableto discover what these mutations are. and in particular from our point of view, to discoverwhat mutations might be targets for these killer cells.just to point it out, so yougot your dna, makes rna, protein. there's a mutation in green and there's one littlemutation on that protein, and that is the

mutation that we need to identify, to getthe immune system to attack the cancer. sounds easy but i've already told you, six billionbits of information. you're trying to find a needle in a hay stack and of needles. soi'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 outwhere the mutations are and which ones might be antigenic and you end up with this massivebit of information. it's called a circus plot, you identify a bunch of mutations, and outof all of that, with very clever people doing very clever things, you find at the bottomthere 15 potential antigens for a vaccine.so going back to our patient now, you take thecells out and then you dna sequence it; you

identify the mutations, make a vaccine andforce the immune system to attack the cancer. everybody's cancer is different. everybodyhas different mutations, has to be personalised. that's the exciting part of this work.so mypoint is, i mean i could just go see those patients and do the best i can, but, my pointis a uwa career creates extraordinary opportunities to change lives. and we're not the only onesin the world trying to do this, but it's very exciting work. very exciting indeed. and itis the cutting edge, this is technology out of the human genome project. so that's onething 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 putit on for the photo (laughs), well i think

i did anyway. ok so i'm a lung specialistand lung cancer is the commonest lethal cancer and patients who come to see me, men and thisis one of them, peter who doesn't mind me showing his photo, and he, like many of themsaid to me, when i chat to them. "you know, i've only got six months to live, and i wishi'd spent more time with my kids." that's what men say. well i'm going to show you whatthe next one said; "i wish someone had helped me see that when i was young and busy" whenyou're young and you're driven, work and everything seems a lot more important to you, than whenyou look back at what it really was. if only someone had helped me.and of course, in theolden days we had elders and tribal elders and our grandfathers to help us but now welive in suburbs and flats and things and there's

no one there to tell us so we just end upgetting cancer at fifty or sixty and living with regret. so we set up the fathering project.andthat's because, it wasn't just to help dads it was to help kids. kids are a huge risknowadays, risks that people in the audience aren't even aware of. substance abuse, bingedrinking, teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, loss of values. when everyone usedto 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 alot of values. but nowadays kids have this so called "loss of a values compass." teenagedepression, suicide.i don't know if you know but forty eight percent of west australianseventeen year old have used illegal drugs,

and just in case you think that's marijuanasixteen percent have used amphetamines just to pick one. so if you just think of all thosekids out there, all those seventeen year old in western australia, sixteen percent.so weset up the fathering project. and people say to us, oh its great bruce, you set up thefathering project to help dads, because as i said you don't want to have guys livingwith regrets. but i remind people that we didn't set it up for the dads, we set it upfor 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 goodjob. working mums, non-working mums, disabled

mums, you know, sole parent mums they do apretty good job. there's something about mothers and children, that on average, their performanceis way up here. and whilst there are plenty of dads who do a good job, on average, wellit'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 otherkids -- and to learning itself, and crime. on average a fifty percent reduction if theyhave 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 childin australia -- which is our vision- had a

strong and appropriate father figure, fiftypercent reduction in all of those things. i mean how exciting is that? that's why we'redoing 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 givethem skills, how they can speak into a child's life, uncles, step fathers, school teachersand sports coaches. the power of a father figure, especially when the regular dad isn'tinterested 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'veactually 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, "wellyou go honey and tell me what i need to know, you read the book, you read the book and tellme 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, socialmedia, fathers groups, camp outs, it's already been very powerfully effective. so what dowe do? we roll it out to schools. so we do a lot of stuff in schools, they get theirdads together and they form a dads group and the aim is to have it in every school in thecountry and we have special target groups as well.fifo workers, big problem there, we'redoing some stuff with fifo dads. aboriginal father figures, very exciting project becauseof the power of the father figure in aboriginal

culture, speaking to young people. dads andhealth. there's an obese child eating chips and watching tv. obesity in children is aproblem, 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 notspeaking 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, oneof our best tips is how to create special times with kids and here you see a dad withhis 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, wetalk about taking your kids on trips and so

many stories of wonderful outcomes.i'll justtell 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 thissociety -- this is my pulmonary society -- saw me at the registration desk and came runningup to me and he said "oh bruce i gotta tell you something, i've been waiting for you tocome 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 wereall, you know, it can happen with fourteen year old girls, and i read that chapter andso i said i'll take her to paris with me. and because it was paris she said yes. fivedays 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 secretstories about silly things we did." and here's the thing, he said "she's been telling peopleit was the best two weeks of her life." and he said? "you know what bruce? best two weeksof 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 yearold girl i think about.you know, when they go through that angry phase, they can do allsorts of things, as an act of rebellion. and there's a very thin line between having funand having a catastrophe, in adolescent life. so i think about her. and i remember, i'lltell you another story too. just thinking

about these stories, but i interviewed a girlwho 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 -- shesaid "i got really angry when i was fourteen, i don't know why i got angry," she just gotangry with everybody, started to rebel. she said "i started to go out drinking and startedsmoking pot and i ended up on heroin." and then she said, "i don't blame my dad, i don'tblame him it's my responsibility i'm not that sort of person now, i'm an adult i don't blamehim. i knew he loved me but he just didn't know what to do. if only he'd reached outand hugged me i probably wouldn't have been a drug addict." it's the difference betweenone thing and another those two stories. and

that's what the fathering project does, ittells 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 basedin the houses of parliament. so why do you need one? well just to explain, the changein society. this is the last two hundred years. our kid's needs and risks have increased that'sthe blue line. kids needs and risks have increased, let's get that really clear.what am i talkingabout? 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. sexualpressure, including pornography. 12 year old

addicted to pornography, because they knowhow to get onto the internet. and mostly it's accidental. they get trapped by the peoplewho push pornography. for example the website "thewhitehouse.com" pornography peddlers useall sorts of tricks and that's one. "thewhitehouse.com" is a pornographic site. they bought that domainname. 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 ofit, it's called mouse trapping and they can't get out of it. because they won't let themget out of it, then they lose all their homework. anyway.school behaviour, bad, i'm sure youknow this you read about it in the paper, school teachers are quitting because of thebad attitude of children. cyber bullying,

teenage depression, suicide, i've mentionedthe values. so these are massive challenges to our kids, it's quite a dangerous worldfor 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, comehome. they might not have been that great but at least they were home. less help fromthe 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 onekilometre of their parents? well probably in the same house over there, you know whati mean. no it's just that people move. so

that sort of tribal sense that kids have otherpeople 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'sjust a repeating cycle. and obviously divorce and separation -- twenty six percent of kidsin 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 fatherscan 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 anydifference? i've told you a couple of stories

so i'll just play a dvd now mike thanks. (dvdstarts at 28:35, ends at 31:06, video inaudible)thanks mike. what i love about that is, and you wouldhave noticed this straight away, like sometimes when you do things with men, and women area little bit touchy, but women love what me do, they love their kids and they want theirkids to have -- even sole parent mums who maybe have a bit of aggro with their ex -- wanttheir 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 thedramatic 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 thesecond journey.so the final journey now, well

here i am again. this all comes out of beinga 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 anothervolcano going off in indonesia as we speak. every year there is something going on. here'sa tsunami, in our time-zone most of these things happen. and they affect people. actuallythis 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 meanyou never quite know in the beginning and we were camping and the statistics just continuedto go up, i mean we ended up at a quarter of a million people, but it got to about sixtythousand. but i heard an abc report talk about

all the kids and this little kid. kids canswim in indonesia, often the parents can't, so there was a massive number of kids whohad 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, theywent back and their whole family was dead. and that's because they all live togetherin the same little area - grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters whatever. so there werea lot of orphans and i just wept actually, and i do have a trople of meds and a publichealth diploma from when i was young so i put my hand up and volunteered. and as i saidi've been back more than 20 times, but anyways.people think, what's wrong with a tsunami? can'tyou 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 atall the bits of water, that's flowing fast down the main street of banda aceh, cars comingyou just can't survive in that. and you don't actually see much footage out of banda acehbut you do. mostly it's tourist that let you know when there's a disaster because theyget affected, not in such great numbers but of course they're all texting their mums ordads.just play that one thanks mike. so this is a tour in thailand now and you can seethis is now a tourist area, and you can see they're also being affected. and i used tothink that, like no they're just tourists but in fact they're the ones who create theinterest in the news and get donations to

help the poor people who have no other wayof 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'sabout 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 ourneighbour. when you think about loving your neighbour, i could just about stand on thebeach and if i could see over the horizon i would have seen the tsunami smashed shoresof aceh, they are our neighbour. it didn't seem morally right that i would sit aroundmy 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 systemis hugely smashed, hospitals and clinics and so on. in aceh a third of all doctors andnurses were actually killed in the tsunami, so i mean you just couldn't mount. there area lot more sick people; they ran out of antibiotics straight away, people were dying everywhere.theright hand side is actually in haiti, i went there as well after their earthquake. andthis is actually an example. it's actually a picture from padang in sumatra where i workedafter their earthquake and you can see the health clinic behind is collapsed and allthe bricks and rubble is around. so i'm part of a team that goes and looks, most of whatyou do to be honest is ordinary health care because people are still getting pneumoniaand 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 buildingsgoing down and you know, terrible things. but then after a while you're just helpingthe people until they can get back on their feet. and that's what this picture illustrates.thisis actually a place called locruut? the whole town was smashed, here i am actually landingon a road, no cars or anything on the road fortunately. tsunami water either side, andit's actually a bit of fun. mostly to be honest its emotionally draining to do this sort ofstuff but it's quite exciting as well, jumping in helicopters and all that sort of stuff.that'sjust responding to disasters. in addition we also go and help poor people in a non-disastersituation. in other words where every day

is a disaster, because they just don't havegood 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 seventysix 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'sa very swollen ankle joint. in fact it was hot and red and painful and swollen. she actuallyhad 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 monthlater. here's the thing. i looked at this

girl and looked at this ankle and thoughtthe following. "i can see her whole life being played out in front of me now; she has nothad adequate treatment. that ankle joint will be eroded by the white cells and she willbecome a cripple. if she's a cripple she won't get a husband -- probably -- and if she doesn'tget a husband (this is a muslim culture) she won't have kids, and she'll be you know inthe village, helping, whatever for the rest of her life but she will not get a husbandand she will not get children, probably. and she'll limp, and she won't be able to workin the fields, and i could see her whole life being played out." so i said to the guy sheneeds the following two antibiotics and she needs six weeks. and i thought, that's thedifference you can make. that is the difference

you can make. her whole life is changed becauseof that event.so just as i mentioned, so this is a map of western, of australia and asiaand that's a colour coded thing of all the natural disasters in the world. point is thateighty percent of them happen in our time zone, or roughly within our time zone. seethe red dot's perth and you can see where the natural disasters are happening. so thisgives us an opportunity, a particular opportunity in western australia to help.and so, we canrespond as individuals , but the faculty of medicine here at uwa and the department ofhealth, state department of health got together, they're the two main partners and formed agroup called -- you can see at the top there -- the international skills and training institutein health. and we provide help, mostly training

and you can see us providing training thereand we train people. so it's sort of what we call the stone in the pond approach. wego and we train a hundred people, and then they go and train a hundred people, and that'snow ten thousand people trained. but if you just do one thing yourself that's only oneperson and that's the stone in the pond approach, and we set up clinical training in variouscountries in south east asia.bottom right you see this thing called "volunteers forhealth," people who want to volunteer, nurses, doctors click on there and if, for examplethey go into cambodia for a week's holiday they might take another week or so and dovolunteering in some villages, giving tb vaccines or something. and that's some of the placesthat we've been working.various contracts,

all sorts of work we've been doing. here'straining, that's me at the top left, you can see me teaching some indonesians how to dobronchoscopy, which is a technique of putting an instrument into peoples lungs to look inthere and various other training courses we've been running.so let me finish just by sayinglook, here i am, i'm a doctor, i've got a uwa medical degree and a bunch other onesas 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, probablybecause i am a uwa academic, i feel like i get freedom to do things. how shall i saythis? if you're busy, five days a week seeing patients you don't have the time, energy orpatience to do new things. but universities

are about breaking new ground. universitiesare about new knowledge, new ideas and passing on those ideas which we call teaching, that'swhat a university is about. i'm in a university and in my medical career i've been able tohave these three journeys in addition to my regular medical practice. the journey intothe cell, trying to cure cancer basically. the journey into the community, you know theuniversity of western australia acting into the community to try to change the futureof our children, and then amongst our neighbours, our poor neighbours, creating things thathelp 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 opportunitiesto change lives. i mean i'm very grateful

for having that opportunity, it gives me avery rich and fulfilling life. thank you for listening to my three journeys.we're almostout of time, we probably have time for one question maybe, or two but that's it thenwe got to clear the room but i will hang around outside if anyone wants to talk about anythingand if you want to volunteer for any of these things get on the website and volunteer. anyparticular 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 thati 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 girlfriendat 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 anamerican doctor who was a physician, highly trained. and i said to these guys once, theywere very impressive. they were with young wives and kids and what have you. very sacrificialcaring for hundreds and hundreds of poor people every day. and i said, guys, for a medicalstudent like me surely, it was very impressive. you know you've given up lucrative careersto come here and serve the poor. and they sort of said oh thanks, and so i said, butat least you've got the gratitude of the poor

for your soul. they looked at each other andlooked at me and said, "uh-uh, it doesn't work like that. in order to give them theirdignity, the poor people, to give them some dignity and not to feel like it's charitywe charged them the equivalent of two cents a day. and they actually think we're hereto make money out of them." you don't do something for the gratitude of the poor; you do it becauseit's the right thing to do. so, fifty in medicine, changed my life. so it's really people aroundyou, i mean why do i bother talking to audiences, and yesterday i went down to the fourth yearmedical student camp and just talked about the disaster work. i want other people toget a glimpse of what you can do just like i was lucky enough to have a mentor -- twomentors -- in a sense, push me onto a plane

and they knew what affect it would have, buti didn't. so that's pretty much, i think, how it happens for most people. i mean wetake people with us to the third world, you know and work with the poor and they sortof don't really want to go, but then i nag them and then they go. then after a week theygo, "when can i come back?"anyway i think we need to finish now but again, thanks verymuch.