30 September 2004

Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen and those very special people, the Graduands

Chancellor, the Senate of The University of Queensland has greatly honoured me tonight with an Honorary Doctorate.

It gives me great pleasure to accept, doing so as a former graduate of the University.

It was in microbiology classes that the germ of an idea began to smoulder.

That germ had its genesis when, as a little boy, my mother told me how, in our country town, in the great influenza pandemic of 1918-19, a man on a horse-and-cart would call from the street for the bodies of those who had died from influenza. Her story was compelling, her concern was compelling.

During this pandemic, some 20 to 40 million died worldwide. The major concern was that a virus with the same potential for human devastation could arise again.

Comprehending death rates of 1/100 to 1/50 almost beggars belief. They need to be viewed against the nutritional deficits and social dislocation of the time.

Her story and such figures had a tremendous impact upon me. While in London in the late 1960s, fortuitous findings on animals, some originally from Hong Kong, led me to suspect a possible connection between animals and influenza pandemics. The seeds were sown – leading me to The University of Hong Kong in 1972 to explore this, with the ideal of getting ahead of the next pandemic.

This led me into the field of influenza ecology. At that time, and for many years, it was regarded by many as an academic curiosity – but it was an interesting exercise worth pursuing nevertheless.

As the years rolled by, there was increasing evidence of interspecies transmission of influenza viruses noted by Hong Kong and other groups. Circumstantial evidence for the role of avian influenza viruses in the origin of human influenza pandemics was increasing.

Pivotal to this was virus surveillance, making viruses available for others to study, transparency in findings and information, and the involvement of national and international health authorities as appropriate.

The influenza storm clouds broke with the H5N1 "bird flu” in 1997 – kindly or unkindly doing so in Hong Kong.

Tonight you have honoured me as a consequence of those explorations.

Chancellor, as I travelled from Queensland to The University of Hong Kong to pursue teaching and research, our graduands today travelled from Hong Kong to The University of Queensland to pursue graduate and postgraduate studies.

Graduands, you are a special group of people, having gone through the ups-and-downs of studying in another country, returning home to embark on a never-ending exploration of the challenges that lie ahead. Your opportunities are limitless.

We salute you and congratulate you on your achievements.

The University of Queensland has honoured you by coming to Hong Kong to bestow your degrees upon you. Your parents and families can be justly proud of you; many have given up much for you to study at the University.

You are a wide spectrum of young people, privileged to have studied at the beautiful St Lucia campus or to have had it as your university focal point studying with teachers of quality from a member of “Universitas 21”, a select group of universities around the world.

While you have learnt much academically and socially, I trust, too, that you have expanded intellectually and will go forward purposefully and positively in your new directions. New challenges and horizons await you. This is a new beginning.

Graduands, don’t forget you are ambassadors for Hong Kong and ambassadors for The University of Queensland and, I hope, Australia.

Chancellor, the world has many problems in spite of the great advances in science and technology.

We should be moving into a higher order of human development but we are not.

This does not make any sense – it is almost as if human development, rather than going forward, is in some ways, going backwards. Loneliness abounds, we could treat our fellow human beings better, we could treat our wonderful animals better, we should treat this fragile planet better.

Somewhere in this equation, this unsatisfactory situation, the world is being subjected to the added pressures of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. In the past 50 years or so, infectious, zoonotic viral diseases have left their mark on the world, for example, HIV/AIDS, haemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, West Nile, influenza H5N1 “bird flu”, SARS. Other avian influenza viruses are waiting in the wings.

The world is under serious threat from infectious diseases. It is as if Nature holds all the aces, but really we should be in partnership with Nature.

In the current influenza situation, the potential threat to the global community is great – to humans, to poultry and to bird life. While such a situation apparently did not exist prior to 1997, a global catastrophe extending beyond humans is within the realm of the possible. All the more so, since poultry is now the major meat protein worldwide.

I am increasingly convinced that if we are ever going to deal with zoonotic diseases at source, we will need to have a better relationship with animals – all animals – an intrinsically important step in itself toward improving human development. A sobering thought here is that pandemic influenza is now regarded as a non-eradicable zoonotic disease.

A higher aspiration in human development is that we might look forward to the time when ALL disease is eliminated. This will mean upping the stakes to take in all of Nature. As I have said in one of my publications "Only when we are at peace with Nature, will disease begin to melt away".

Sure, this is a pious hope – I believe bringing infectious diseases to heel is within the realm of the possible and we must start somewhere.

As we move on, the baton must be passed to succeeding generations. Young graduands of today such as yourselves, armed with new knowledge and international dimensions can start to make the difference.

Graduands and all young people for that matter, I challenge you to make a better world.

The motto of our alma mater, Scientia ac Labore, “By means of knowledge and hard work” will stand you in good stead.

I thank The University of Queensland for giving me my start, and I thank you.