Hawke Centre Inaugural Chair and Patron
The Hon Dr Basil Hetzel AC
Chance & Commitment: Memoirs of a Medical Scientist
Dr
Basil Hetzel’s work as a research scientist and public health advocate has
prevented and will prevent millions worldwide from being born intellectually
disabled. His engaging and reflective memoir traces the life behind ‘The
Iodine Story’.
Iodine deficiency, common in many developing countries, causes serious birth
defects, including extreme goitres and mental retardation. Dr Hetzel and his
team of researchers discovered in 1956 that a single dose of iodised oil
added to the diet of pregnant women could eradicate these conditions. Then
began his crusade to persuade the governments of Indonesia, Nepal, Tibet,
India, the People’s Republic of China and many other affected countries to
add iodine to salt for human consumption.
Basil Hetzel has observed and been part of the huge scientific advances of
the 20th century. As a medical student during World War II at the University
of Adelaide, he listened to lectures by Howard Florey, a former student of
the same university and later Nobel Prize winner. Chance and Commitment
tells the story of the day boy at St Peter’s College who became a University
Chancellor, of the medical student who wanted no more than to be a good
physician like his father and became a renowned research scientist, revered
worldwide. Basil Hetzel has travelled from Tusmore Presbyterian Church to
the Great Hall of People in Beijing, from working at the laboratory bench to
being named a Living National Treasure. Hetzel’s memoirs make medical
science accessible. His writing reveals the strengths of a teacher who was
invited to give the ABC Boyer lectures in 1971 and to write numerous
textbooks on public health and healthy lifestyles. A life well lived for the
benefit of others globally.
The Public Health Association should be proud to recognise the contribution
of its most persistent and admired life member to the elimination of a
public health problem that soon will be relegated to the history books. –
Tony (AI) Adams, Australian Journal of Public Health
Orders via Wakefield Press at: http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/books/chanceandcommitment.html
Presentations given at the book launch on Wednesday 28 September 2005
Professor Ian Maddocks AM MD
Former Dean and Professor of Clinical Sciences UPNG and Emeritus Professor Flinders University
The title that our distinguished colleague Basil Hetzel has chosen for
the autobiography that we launch today - ‘Chance and Commitment’ - is a
phrase that echoes the titles of two other books of considerable
significance. Jacques Monot’s 1972 book ‘Chance and Necessity’ is a review
by a Nobel Prize winner of the evolutionary process. It suggests that within
an apparently chaotic Universe, as random events occur, there are underlying
rules which determine further steps predictably. In addressing the question,
“How did we come to be here?” he concludes “Man is an accident based on
chance, and the accident is perpetuated by the necessity of chemical
reactions”.
The other echo is from Joe Oldham’s earlier book “Life is Commitment” - a
theological response to the larger question “Why are we here?’ finding its
answer in a life of obedience to Christ’s demand that we love one another,
and with a major emphasis on how that love may be expressed in informed
social action. Basil’s early experiences in the Student Christian Movement
confirmed such expression as the guide by which he wished to live – not a
matter of necessity, but of personal decision, a discipline of mind and
spirit that has been his consistent characteristic.
Presbyterians speak of grace – of undeserved gifts that God allows to
miserable sinners; Methodists are as likely to place an emphasis on good
works performed in obedience to divine command. Basil’s ecumenical emphasis
may be seen to embrace both traditions – an acknowledgement of the
importance in his career of happy coincidences, opportunities, and
unforeseen chances, and a determination to build upon them.
Excited by science, the young Dr. Hetzel took up opportunities denied to his
doctor father, and trained with enthusiasm in the arts of the laboratory,
but always with an accompanying consideration of what scientific findings
might mean for the life of his patients or of the human family. Science was
enjoyed for itself – its innate challenges and satisfactions - but it also
needed direction and purpose. So from having developed skills in
endocrinology, he turned naturally to how hormones and behaviour interact,
and had opportunity to engage in attempts to understand the biology of
‘stress’, soon after the introduction of that word into popular vocabulary.
Basil’s consideration of religion, a consistent and fundamental component of
his intellectual activity, was been similarly broad, not focussed on
personal piety but looking outwards at the workings of God’s purpose in the
world. Process theology confirmed for him a holistic concept of the
universe, its basic elements not particles to be weighed or measured, but
the relationships and interactions that engage its various entities, be they
animal, mineral or vegetable. So he was led to advocacy of an understanding
of ecosystems – in science, in medicine and in community life.
It has been the remarkable conjunction of science and religion in his
outlook on life that has led Basil Hetzel to pioneering achievements in so
many areas of endeavour. I first remember Basil at a Medico-Clerical
conference in the 1950’s, a gathering at which he was a major influence as
we tried to clarify what a Christian commitment might mean within Medicine.
Some time later, I went to work in Papua at the Papuan Medical College. By
that time, Basil had completed postgraduate experience in both USA and UK,
and was positioned to take up academic life in Adelaide, first as Reader
then Professor at the then newly established Queen Elizabeth Hospital. It
was in PNG that we met again, as Basil began, in the 1960’s, to explore the
consequences of iodine deficiency – a field in which his research expertise
found an extraordinarily fertile expression – and an exploration that has
continued with extraordinary effect right up to the present day.
A mover in the establishment of medicine’s own ecosystems, Professor
Hetzel’s energy was important in the formation of organizations as diverse
as the Endocrine Society, the Association of Clinical Professors, the
Australian and New Zealand Society for Research in Epidemiology and
Community Health. He was a foundation appointment to the Council of the
University of Papua New Guinea, and was one of the Committee that in 1970
appointed me Foundation Dean of its Faculty of Medicine, appearing on the
occasion at our little house over the sea in Pari Village, looming out of
the darkness with a bottle of celebratory champagne.
It was consistent with Basil’s humanist liberal theology that he became
concerned by the failure of hospital medicine to tackle the basic problems
of community health – the need to address factors of life-style that
underlie so much common illness, and the lack of a preventive and
maintenance approach to health care. In 1968 he took the unusual step of
moving out of clinical medicine to a chair at Monash University in what was
hoped to be called Human Ecology, but settled for the more pedestrian title
of Social and Preventive Medicine. In Melbourne he faced formidable
difficulties of inertia and downright hostility from within his own
profession. That these were unable to limit the innovative zeal and
dedicated research activity that characterised his department is illustrated
by important innovations that grew from the work there - in seat-belt
legislation, Aboriginal Health Services, and widespread community
recognition of the so-called life-style diseases that we now all know about
but continue to find hard to control.
We met again at the meeting of the International Epidemiological Association
in Yugoslavia in 1971, and Diana and I clearly recall waiting with Basil on
a dark and lonely road for a bus to take him off to we knew not where,
wondering at his confident willingness to venture into new experience.
A further career change, also seen by many as brave, followed in 1976, back
to Adelaide as Chief of the Division of Human Nutrition for CSIRO. Again,
the development of an impressive research team, rigorous enquiry into
matters of importance to the Australian community – school age diets and
exercise, alcohol in Australian society and further work on iodine and the
effect of dietary deficiency on defective foetal development and
neurological abnormality – the so-called endemic cretinism.
The latter section of the life revealed in this volume tells of Iodine and
of global travel to extraordinary places – places few Australians have
opportunity to see, because they are distant and mountainous. I used to say
at that stage that Basil Hetzel was a person one met in airports. Recorded
here is the amazing culmination of a life’s work, drawing on medical
science, epidemiology, medical organization and global politics, to what
surely will shine as the major achievement beside Basil Hetzel’s name – the
global control of iodine deficiency. What did success in this venture depend
on? The scientific message was clear enough – millions of fertile women
needed adequate doses of iodine if their children were not risk major
neurological damage. Clear messages do not always issue in effective action
– we only need to remember the clear messages about our Australian
life-style – and the women who needed this assistance were scattered in the
mountain areas of the world – areas of poverty and isolation, easy to
ignore. What the iodine story required was a network of global contacts,
drawing in individual scientists, health administrators, decision-makers,
government policy-makers, and United Nations organizations. Largely through
the many scientific and personal skills that Basil brought to this task,
through his energy, consistent enthusiasm and clarity about what was needed,
and through his personal advocacy and organizational know-how, the
International Council for the Control of Iodine Deficiency Diseases was
established, recognized and funded.
Surely there is no South Australian other than Florey whose application of
science has touched, enhanced and restored the lives of so many millions of
people in all parts of the world.
This biography cannot be compared with published revelations emanating from
any recent politician. It is a generous book, positive in its appreciations
of an enormous circle of colleagues and friends. It allows most positive
appreciation to two marvellous women who have shared Basil’s life, and to an
impressive mix of family generations. If it shuns trenchant criticism, it
yet reveals a depth of humane concern for the state of the world and the way
it is managed that we might all do well to share.
I am very grateful for the honour your conferred on me in asking me to speak
today, Basil, and for giving me the opportunity to view an advance copy of
your book. I find it an important document, a good read, offering many
windows through which to view South Australia, science, medicine,
university, church and state. We whose intellectual houses have fewer
windows may find here some inspiration to hold in moral balance, and fulfil
in fruitful potential, the chances that come our way, and to augment our own
commitment to the things that matter.
Orders via Wakefield Press at: http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/books/chanceandcommitment.html