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Peter McGauran Ladies and Gentlemen, Prime Minister the Honourable John Howard, the Hon. Gareth Evans, Acting Leader of the Opposition, the Hon John Moore, Minister for Industry Science and Tourism, Prime Ministerial, Senatorial and House of Representatives colleagues, excellencies and distinguished guests one and all.
Welcome and thank you for coming to this quite unique and indeed
historic event at which we honour Australia's Nobel Prize winner
for medicine, We also offer at this time our warmest congratulations to Dr Rolf Zinkernagel of Switzerland, who shares this award with Professor Doherty. As most if not all of you know, the research was carried out at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, part of the Australian National University's Institute of Advanced Studies and internationally renowned for its basic research in medicine. It is quite extraordinary that three of the four Australian Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine have had close connections with the John Curtin School: Howard Florey who was instrumental in setting up the school; Sir John Eccles, Professor of Physiology there, and now Professor Doherty. The award recognises the long time that can occur before the knowledge resulting from basic research is accepted and applied in the arena of human welfare. It is only now - 20 years after this breakthrough research of Professor Doherty, that it is coming to fruition, so to speak. The day after Professor Doherty was awarded his Nobel Prize, I heard him say in an interview that he set out in his career as a veterinary surgeon in Queensland. It therefore makes him the only vet in history to be awarded a Nobel Prize and certainly the only Nobel Prize Winner, he tells me, ever to conduct a post mortem on a week old dead cow! I think I speak on behalf of everybody when I say how grateful we are that he decided to change vocations. Professor Doherty's achievements are an enormous incentive to the Australian research community and future scientists. To welcome him tonight, I call on the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. John Howard. John Howard Thank you very much Peter McGauran, Professor Peter Doherty, Gareth Evans, the Acting Leader of the Opposition, my other Parliamentary Colleges and guests and particularly I acknowledge the presence of the Ambassador for Switzerland in recognition of the partnership of Professor Doherty with Professor Zinkernagel.
This is a small but, I hope, appropriate gesture on behalf of
the Parliament and on behalf of the Government and the people
of Australia towards a person who is only the 7th Australian to
win a Nobel Prize. Professor Peter Doherty joins the select company
of Lord Florey, Sir William Bragg, It is by any measure, both here in Australia and around the world, a remarkable personal achievement. As a nation we are always ready - and properly and enthusiastically so - to honour the achievements of our men and women who bring great credit to Australia on the playing fields and the sporting fields of the world. We are perhapsnot always so quick and so ready and eager to acknowledge the massive contribution of people in other walks of life and other fields of national and human endeavour. The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Medicine to Professor Doherty is not only an immense honour for him but it is also an immense honour to the John Curtin School of Medical Research. The work carried out there some 20 years ago has won them the 1996 Nobel Prize in Medicine for physiology, and throughout its 38-year history that school has been at the forefront of Australian and international medical research. The prize-winning work revolutionised immunology by finding a key to understanding how the immune system operates and how this can be exploited to prevent rejection of organ transplants and in fighting cancer. It also gave immunologists an insight into how the body's defence system identifies infective agents such as viruses and destroys them. It is a remarkable personal and scientific achievement. It is a reminder to all Australians of the great store of scientific and medical excellence that can be found in this country. One of the three proud claims that an Australian can make is that we have standards of medical research, of medical treatment, of compassionate care for the ill and those who suffer life-threatening illnesses, which are without parallel around the world. It is with an enormous degree of personal pride on behalf of the Government and the people of Australia that I congratulate Professor Doherty and warmly welcome him back to his native Australia. Although busy receiving proper recognition for his great achievement, he is also here for the most human of all reasons, to attend his son's wedding in Melbourne in the very near future. We are very proud of you, Professor Doherty, for what you have achieved. You have done the John Curtin School an immense honour, you have done Australia an immense honour but, most importantly of all, in keeping with the finest traditions of your own profession and of scientific endeavour you have made a massive contribution to relieving the suffering of mankind. You have made a great contribution to understanding the ravages of disease and providing for an insight into how medical sciences and other sciences may counteract this. On everyone's behalf, I want to extend warm congratulations to Professor Doherty and, in accordance with what is properly a bipartisan political occasion, I would like to invite the acting Leader of the Opposition Mr Gareth Evans to briefly support my remarks. Gareth Evans Thank you very much John Howard, Prime Minister, Peter McGauran and of course our guest of honour tonight Peter Doherty. I am absolutely delighted to be given this opportunity to add my congratulations and that of the opposition to this magnificent achievement by Peter Doherty. There are quite a few things that divide this country but every now again something happens that absolutely unequivocally unites us and I think all of us here and around the country had more than just a little skip of pride when that marvellous announcement was made a few weeks ago. There is no higher honour, of course, that can possibly be bestowed on anyone - not at least any medical scientist - than the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Prize for Medicine. It's the kind of achievement that offers enormous inspiration to youngsters contemplating the kind of careers they might have. It gives enormous sense of reward and encouragement to the fellow members of the profession, many of whom, of course, work along mightily in the dim lights without the opportunity to really achieve these heights of recognition. But above all, from Australia's point of view, a national point of view, it enables us to project ourselves to the rest of the world as the kind of country we like to think of ourselves as being: creative, imaginative, adventurous, out there on the frontiers and really very much part of the international action. There can be absolutely no better proof of being on the mainstream path of international action, intellectually, scientifically and in terms of human achievement, than to be the recipient of a Nobel Prize. So really, Peter, it's an absolutely superb achievement! One that we all unite with the rest of the community in honouring you for and I'd like to now ask you to come to the podium and address us on that basis. Congratulations! Peter Doherty Well, thank you. This is a marvellous occasion - in fact, this is fantastic. I can tell you it is really nice to win the Nobel Prize. I would recommend it! People are extremely pleasant to you. I have come from being a scientist who sits in the laboratory, writes papers and does all the usual things that scientists do on the international circuit to being a sort of institution. It took us 20 years, the experiment that Rolf Zinkernagel and I did in Canberra those many years ago, to get to this point. It took so long in fact that we are in all the text books. When some people are told what we did they say, 'well we already knew that', and over the years I have become so accustomed to it that I'd started to describe myself as part of the living fossil record of the subject. It is also great to see the two sides of the Australian Parliament making the commitment that science truly is a bipartisan issue in this country just as it is in the USA. We've recently had a substantial increase in medical research funding through the PBS year, through the efforts of Republican Members of Congress and the Senate and the cooperation of the Democratic President and I think this is the way science should be supported. Science, and maintaining an active basic science community that will feed on technology and new developments, is absolutely essential for the future health and welfare of all countries. Those countries that don't compete, that don't participate, are going to fall behind and are going to miss out on much of what is likely be the growth areas of the 21st century - I think much of this is going to come from the biological-type areas. Rolf Zinkernagel and I were young guys, we worked in a small laboratory. We were put in a laboratory together because Rolf sings opera and I was the only guy in the place that had any decent musical appreciation. Science is often like that, it comes from chance encounters between individuals. It comes from skills that one of us has and the other complements. We built on a base that had been built in this country over many years. The base we built on was really put in place in Victoria, back in the 1930s in the laboratories of Sir Macfarlane Burnett. Through those years it was fostered at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, I think with fairly small funding from Government. Burnett, of course, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1960 for his work on human immunological tolerance; his earlier work had been on viruses. His people proceeded out to Canberra: Frank Fenner, the co-author of the book Immunological tolerance, set up a group in Canberra and this was the program that Rolf Zinkernagel and I worked in. Frank Fenner will actually be coming to the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Stockholm in December as my guest, so there is a clear continuity between the two immunology Nobel Prize winners through his service.
I didn't expect to win the Nobel Prize when I was growing up in
the outer suburbs of Brisbane. I went to public schools and I
wasn't a particularly good student. My best subjects were literature.
I only went to the veterinary school because I was totally confused.
I had been simultaneously reading
By the time I had finished veterinary school I was convinced I
wanted to do research. I had some leanings in that direction because
I was inspired by a cousin of mine Ralph Doherty, who is quite
a recognised research worker. I didn't expect ever to be living in Tennessee, but that is where the money is and the resources are to maintain my program in a big way. However, it is great to be here and I am pleased to be at this occasion with so many of my scientific colleagues and friends and to see the Australian Parliament recognising the Australian scientific community. This has been a fantastic community of dedicated people which has done an enormous amount in this country in a very efficient and cost-effective way. Australian science is extremely cost-effective. I think the return for the dollar is better than it is anywhere else that I know. The Nobel Prize has only come from this discovery, and they don't come very often. You have to be lucky. I was lucky, but there are a lot of people in this room who are just as good scientists as I am - or better in some cases, I believe. What more can I say? Thank you very much.
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