FELLOWSHIPS FOR RESEARCH DOCTORS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31375, 22 May 1967, Page 10

FELLOWSHIPS FOR RESEARCH DOCTORS

Five New Zealand medical men have been awarded International Research Fellowships by the United States Public Health Service. They are Drs. R. G. Kay, and K. P. O’Brien, of Auckland, and Drs. G. F. Laws, F. J. Austin and T. P. Casey, of Dunedin.

These awards, made on the basis of international competition were a welcome recognition of the stature of medical research workers in New Zealand, said the chief executive officer of the Medical Research Council (Dr. J. D. Sinclair) yesterday. The recipients will travel to the United States where they will carry out a year of research in hospitals and laboratories.

Dr. Kay, of Auckland Hospital, is surgical tutor to the Auckland Hospital Board and the University of Otago. He will go to the Harvard Medical School’s department of surgery where he will join a team experimenting on the possibility of transplanting the liver. Dr. O’Brien of the cardiology department, Green Lane Hospital, Auckland, will work at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Laws, of the department of pharmacology and pharmacy, University of Otago Medcal School and formerly of the Medical Research Council’s hydatids research unit, has been studying chemicals which might attack hydatid eggs. In the United States, he will work at the Rice Institute’s department of biology at Houston, Texas. Dr. Austin, of the Medical Research Council’s virus re-

search unit in the University of Otago Medical School, Dunedin, has studied poliomyelitis infection and psittacosis, an infection conveyed by birds. He will work in the Cornell Medical School, New York.

Dr. Casey, of the department of pathology, University of Otago Medical School, has been studying aspects of an anameia discovered in mice bred at the school’s laboratory. The natural disease of the mice follows the pattern of important human diseases. In America, he will continue research in blood diseases at the Mount Sinai Hospital and Medical School, New York.