Fenner's science today and tomorrow
The Academy’s 2011 public lecture series will serve as a tribute to the work of Frank Fenner and an opportunity to hear about the latest scientific advances in the research areas that he pioneered.
Frank Fenner's long and diverse career spanned many areas of science, beginning with malaria and tuberculosis research in the 1940s. He pioneered the development of a biological method to control rabbit populations, and played a pivotal role in the elimination of smallpox. His interest in epidemiology, population dynamics and passion for the environment, led him to founding and becoming Director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, now expanded into the Fenner School of Environment and Society.
All the fields that Frank Fenner worked in are still actively researched. The challenges of controlling disease and managing introduced pest animals, plants and organisms are increasing, and our population growth and consumption rates threaten the environment and the future of humans on the planet.
Tuesday 6 December 2011
Myxomatosis and rabbits: biological control and evolution
Dr Peter Kerr
Research Scientist, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences
What happens when a virus jumps species? The unexpected spread of myxomatosis in the Australian rabbit population in the summer of 1950/51 initiated a continental-scale experiment in the evolution of an emerging infectious disease. The classic studies of Fenner and his colleagues demonstrated in real time how the virus and the rabbit coevolved. The initial virus had a case fatality rate around 99.8% but it was out competed by slightly attenuated mutants that had a higher probability of transmission. Intense selection pressure by the virus led to the emergence of resistance in the rabbit population. Virus attenuation and rabbit resistance reduced the effectiveness of biological control. The experiment was repeated with the release of Myxoma virus in Europe in 1952. Despite differences in climate, geography and vectors, the evolutionary outcomes were remarkably similar on the two continents and demonstrated the nexus between virulence and transmission in the evolution of host and pathogen.
Tuesday 1 November 2011
Pestilence, pandemics and climate change: 2000 years of experience, 100-plus years of risk
Professor Tony McMichael AO
Professor of Population Health, and NHMRC Australia Fellow
ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment
Humans are now changing the global climate rapidly, posing great risks to health and survival. While heatwaves and weather disasters may be the ‘face’ of climate change, more serious risks loom: food shortages, freshwater crises, mental health disorders, and altered infectious disease patterns. Many diseases are sensitive to climatic conditions of temperature, rainfall and humidity, influencing microbial proliferation, vectors such as mosquitoes, and ‘reservoir’ species, for example kangaroos for Ross River Virus. Climate-related epidemics are evident from two millennia of natural climatic fluctuations. Was the Plague of Justinian in 542 AD, which enfeebled the fading Roman Empire, triggered by cooling that enabled transmission of bubonic plague from North Africa to Constantinople? There is suggestive evidence of various infectious diseases now responding to climate change. Future risks are uncertain, but modelled estimates for plausible climates to 2100 indicate how dengue fever and salmonellosis may increase in Australia, schistosomiasis in China, malaria in Africa.
Tuesday 4 October 2011
Frank Fenner, the evolution of virulence and the birth of Darwinian medicine
Professor Andrew Cockburn FAA
Director of the College of Medicine, Biology & Environment
Australian National University
One of the most remarkable features of Frank Fenner’s career was his ability to move from fundamental and applied biomedical research at the John Curtin School of Medical Research to found the multidisciplinary Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (now known as the Fenner School). This lecture will focus on another aspect of his immense contribution – his ability to think laterally and recognize that he had unwittingly performed an extremely significant replicated experiment on fundamental evolutionary biology. It will review his ability to grasp the significance of the coevolution between rabbits and the Myxoma virus, how that coevolution profoundly changed our view of the evolution of disease, and how fifty years on, a new branch of medicine is emerging from the perspective generated by Fenner’s experiment, with paradigm-changing implications for public health practice.
Tuesday 6 September 2011
The miracle of immunity: how the immune system tells foe from friend
Professor Christopher Goodnow FAA
Head of Department of Immunology
Australian National University
Immunization works because it targets our microbial enemies, and not the normal cells and tissues of our own body. In distinguishing foe from friend, our immune system does this more specifically and sensitively than any other chemical sensor that nature or man has yet conceived. Mistakes in this process are rare but costly: over our lifetime about 5% of us will develop an autoimmune disease that reflects one of these immunological mistakes. It has taken sixty years to track down how the immune system learns to tolerate friends and destroy foes. This is a tale of twists and turns that illustrate the challenges of the scientific method: and the need for tenacity, experimental rigour, imagination and scholarship. Professor Goodnow will focus here on the remarkable legacy of one paper and one book that Frank Fenner co-authored with Macfarlane Burnet in 1948-1949, on the production of antibodies and its control by genes.
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Killer viruses and killer T cells
Professor Peter Doherty FAA
Nobel Laureate
Thirty years ago the World Health Organisation team led by Frank Fenner and DA Henderson celebrated the eradication of smallpox. This year in Rome, celebrations were held for the eradication of the second ever virus to be eliminated from our small planet. This time the virus was rinderpest, an infection of cattle that shared a common ancestor with human measles virus about 10-12,000 years back. Rinderpest caused catastrophic economic loss in 18th and 19th century Europe and, as recently as the 1980s, repeatedly devastated poor communities in Africa and Asia. Professor Doherty will speak about its eradication and the related potential to eradicate measles. He will also explore emerging viral threats and elements of the cellular immune response that play a key part in controlling such infections.
Tuesday 5 July 2011
The History of Science and 'The Two Cultures': envisaging multidisciplinary approaches in a complex scientific age
Dr Ann Moyal AM
Dr Ann Moyal will discuss the history of science in Australia and the gathering momentum to overcome the critical divide between ‘the two cultures’ of science and the social science and the humanities. She will examine ways to heighten community understanding of science and propose ways in which new interdisciplinary approaches at government level could bring the social sciences and humanities together with the sciences to solve the major problems confronting Australia in conservation, adaptation and survival, and the very future of planet Earth.
Tuesday 7 June 2011
New perspectives on Ecologically Sustainable Forest Management
Professor David Lindenmayer FAA
Fenner School of Environment and Society
Australian National University
The management of native forests has been one of the most controversial forms of land and resource management in Australia over the past 40 years. Professor Lindenmayer will present some new perspectives. His particular focus is on how ecologically sustainable forest management is not possible without also considering key concurrent elements such as ecologically sustainable fire management, post-fire salvage logging, the intersection between forest logging and the fire-proneness of managed forests, and the role of old growth forests in carbon storage.
Tuesday 5 April 2011
Malaria: The plant connection
Professor Geoffrey McFadden FAA
ARC Federation Fellow, University of Melbourne
His research has recently revealed that the malaria parasite was originally a plant-like organism that survived by photosynthesis. This revelation has offered new ways to combat the disease using drugs and herbicides initially designed to kill plants. These herbicidal compounds work against malaria too.
Tuesday 1 March 2011
Bioterrorism: Who do we need to fear the most, the terrorist or the research scientist?
Professor Ian Ramshaw
Director, National Centre for Biosecurity
Group Leader, Vaccine Immunology Group, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University
Topics discussed in the presentation will include the ‘dual use dilemma’, communication of research results, oversight of experiments, the funding of research, the responsibilities of scientists and other biosecurity stakeholders, and examples of various national and international measures being implemented or considered.
Tuesday 1 February 2011
Frank Fenner Tribute Symposium
Professor Peter Doherty AC FAA FRS Nobel Laureate
Fenner the Immunologist
Emeritus Professor Henry Nix AO
Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Life
Professor Adrian Gibbs FAA
Virology: carpe diem
This symposium started off the lecture series as a celebration of Frank Fenner’s life and science. Three eminent speakers provided insights into the health and environmental research that defined Frank’s career.
