Institute’s Distinguished Professors honoured with orations at medical congress

University of Auckland Distinguished Professors Sir Peter Gluckman and Jane Harding delivered prestigious keynote addresses at the 2014 Congress of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) last week.

Sir Peter delivered the Arthur E Mills Memorial Oration at the College Ceremony where new Fellows of the College were formally welcomed and recognised. The topic of the oration Science and Public Policy – Reconciling Two Cultures, drew on Sir Peter’s experience as New Zealand’s first Prime Minister’s Science Advisor. In it he explored the two very different cultures of policy making and decision making and the increasing role of science and technology in informing these cultures.

“Virtually every part of our lives – from what we eat to what work we do to how we spend our leisure time depends on the fruits of science and technology. It is ultimately the use of science and technology that allows populations to be healthy and countries to become wealthy. It is the combination of the knowledge of science and technology with the values of the humanities that makes advanced societies what they are,” he said.

Read Sir Peter Gluckman’s speech in full

The College’s Paediatric and Child Health Division awarded the Howard Williams Medal to Professor Jane Harding, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) of the University of Auckland and a leading member of the Liggins Institute’s LiFePATH research group. The medal is awarded annually to a person who has made an outstanding contribution to Paediatrics and Child Health in New Zealand or Australia.

In her oration The Life-long Legacies of Perinatal Management Professor Harding discussed how pre-birth treatments, first developed in Auckland by Sir Graham Liggins and Sir William Liley in the 1960s, had markedly improved vulnerable babies’ chances of survival. She went on to outline more recent research which has shown that these lifesaving interventions could have long-term health consequences and cautioned that those implications must be considered in determining the best clinical care for these babies.

Professor Harding and colleagues have been involved in studies assessing the current health of people who, as babies, received treatments developed by Liggins and Liley.

“Medications given to pregnant women expecting preterm delivery and intrauterine transfusion for Rhesus haemolytic disease have important implications for how we treat babies today, and for their life-long health,” she said.

“Our research aims to incorporate these understandings into developing the best treatments for vulnerable babies both before and after birth.”

Read more about the research of the Liggins Institute LiFePATH group.

Both Arthur E Mills (1865-1940) and Howard Williams (1910-1999) played significant roles in the development of the RACP. [Source RACP website - College Roll]

Mills was a Foundation Fellow of the College and an outstanding physician, medical administrator and teacher. The Arthur E Mills Oration was endowed in 1950 by his widow and established within the College for the promotion and encouragement of medical education and general culture.

Williams was instrumental in establishing paediatrics as an independent medical discipline. He was a founding member and later President of the Australian Paediatric Association; he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of his outstanding contribution to paediatrics and child health. Each year at the RACP Annual Scientific Meeting, the Paediatrics and Child Health Division acknowledges a person who has made a similar outstanding contribution to the field, by inviting them to be the Howard Williams Orator and the recipient of the Howard Williams Medal.

Professor Gluckman is a previous recipient of the Williams Medal and Professor Harding delivered the Mills Oration in 2005.