Medical Research In Canterbury

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30191, 24 July 1963, Page 20

Medical Research In Canterbury

• Lord Taylor, in a recent issue of the “British Medical Journal,” states: “A wise and progressive firm working in these (scientific) fields will allocate at least 5 per cent, of turnover to research, of which at least onefifth will be in basic research.” More than £40,000,000 a year is spent on the health services in New Zealand, but less than £200,000 (and Lord Taylor’s 5 pei; cent, would equal £2,000,000!) on medical research from this huge sum.

Not only should we be able to afford to spend more than the £150.000 to £200,000 allocated for medical research in this country, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that unless we are prepared to spend a greater percentage of the health vote on medical research it will be increasingly difficult to staff the main metropolitan hospitals in New Zealand with highly trained and skilful specialists. More and more, young men who

have had experience and long years of training in first-class departments in North America and the United ''.ingdom will turn away from New Zealand and towards Australia and North America for their future employment.

Conditions of service in New Zealand hospitals are much less attractive for the highly trained specialists, and in addition there is no provision for funds to be spent on research from Health Department sources. Attracting Specialists Although the citizens and civic authorities of this city can do little to improve the conditions of service in hospitals to make them more fairly competitive with overseas attractions, they can. through the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, do something to provide facilities which could help to attract young specialists back to Christchurch. The sums of money available through the New Zealand Medical Research Council are inadequate to promote all research projects already contemplated in New Zealand and in addition, they are often committed for at least three years ahead. Thus, the Canterbury foundation can be helpful in meeting the needs of newlyappointed specialists to the staff of one of the Christchurch hospitals to enable them to continue some line of research or a special investigation which may have been started outside this country.

Already the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation has a role in promoting certain types of research work in this community. These include the following: Cleft Palate Research

A cleft-palate research project at the Burwood Hospital is financed in part by a grant from the New Zealand Crippled Children Society, and in part by the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation. Mr L. J. Roy and Dr. D. E. Poswillo are continuing to work on this exceptionally valuable study on the production of cleft palate and various abnormalities around the face and jaws which develop under experimental, conditions in laboratory animals.

In a report to the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation they state that most of the clefts of the palate occurring in newborn children are due to an unfavourable maternal environment in the first three months of pregnancy, and much emphasis is given to co-relating animal studies with histories of human families in which cleft palate has no obvious genetic background. Two hundred animal embryos with cleft palate produced by environmental changes found in humans are being studied microscopically and compared.

Laboratory studies are also being undertaken in preparation for chromosome examination of families in which there is a definite hereditary disposition resulting from cleft palate.

These dual lines of attack promise the most obvious opportunities of linking causative and preventative measures which are essential to control of the deformity This work has received the highest praise from overseas visitors, including Sir Harold Hirns worth, the present executive secretary of the Medical Research Council of the United Kingdom. Diabetic Research In diabetic research the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation is heavily committed to supporting original work being carried out in the Medical Unit at the Princess Margaret Hospital, and • has already supplied a precision-type shaking incubator for tissue studies

and to facilitate the biological assay of insulin. The foundation also pays the salary of one full-time technician and a part-time technician who are engaged in co-relating the response in blood-insulin levels with the blood-sugar levels after intravenous injections of glucose, in the relatives of diabetic patients. This work, directed by Dr. L. E. Miles, the research fellow to the unit, follows the development of an accurate immunochemical method for measuring minute quantities of insulin in the blood of normal subjects and of diabetic patients. The aim of these studies is to develop a method for predicting the possibility of the onset of diabetes in relatives of diabetic subjects. This particular method of insulin measurement is not at present being used in any other part of Australia or New Zealand and, indeed, in only two or three centres in North America and Great Britain has it been developed to date. Protein Studies To continue work in the development of new methods for separation of the small quantities of protein in the serum of normal subjects the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation has supplied a grant to assist Dr. A. C. Arcus, senior biochemist in the Medical Unit laboratory at the Princess Margaret Hospital. These methods will be later used to supplement present less sensitive methods already in use for the detection of small changes in the protein fractions of the blood associated with certain disease processes. (To be Concluded).

Contributed by Dr. D. W Beaven, M.R.C.P. (London), M.R.C.P. (Edinburgh), M R A.C.P., director of the Medical Unit, Princess Margaret Hospital, in support of the work of the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, The foundation is to benefit by the proceeds of the premiere of the film, "PT 109," at the Regent Theatre tomorrow.