Dr Davis in space medicine

Press, 26 July 1978, Page 3

Dr Davis in space medicine

The new Premier of the Cook Islands, Dr Tom Davis, aged 61, has had a career that spans medicine and space research as well as politics, reports the Press Association. Born at Aviatiu in the Cook group’s main island of, Rarotonga in 1917, he is of mixed descent and can name s Welsh sea captain as one of his grandfathers. He went to primary school In the Cook Islands and later went to Auckland to attend King’s College. Otahuhu. where his fees, he savs. were paid for with orange and tomato money, studied medicine at tbe| piann M«d ; c?1 School, straduttin® M.B. Ch.B. in 1943. He distinguished himse’f im mo'-t-eraduete wo'k at Svd--1 .. hnfnrß return! | „ » 0 tfop rnnk Ts’ands to! become medical officer for

the island’s medical service in 1945. He held the post until 1949. Dr Davis and his family sailed their vacht Miru from Wellington in 1952 via Peru and Panama to Boston, Massachusetts, where he took up a research fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health from 1953 to 1957. In the early days of the United States space programme, he joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration becoming chief of environmental | medicine at the Arctic Aeromedical laboratory in Alaska and then medical monitor for Proiert Mercurv from 1960 to 1963. From then until 1971 he was a resident physician (with a medical consultancy I in Cambridge. Massachusetts. I After neaHv 20 vears in the United States he became

Cook Islands chief medical officer under the Premiership of his old political ally, Sir Albert Henry. When the Cooks had been a New Zealand dependency, Dr Davis and Sir Albert had both worked for self-government but their alliance did not survive their reunion. “As soon as we came together, we fell apart,” says Dr Davis. The Henry Government, he thought, was misusing democratic principles, so Dr Davis began the Democratic party that aimed at pulling apart the Henry familv political machine. Sir Albert offered Dr Davis the post of Head of State — a job which, in Sir Albert’s words, would have “absorbed” Dr Davis — in Dr Davis’s words, the position would have “made me quite ineffective.”

Sir Albert offered him the deputy premiership but Dr Davis held his distance. But Sir Albert, who was later to be widely criticised for running the Cook Islands as if they were a private estate, also kept his distance at General Elections and managed to keep his Cook Islands Party well out in front until yesterday when the Davis avalanche, and the law, overwhelmed him. Mr Justice Donne, aged 64, has had ample experience of untangling arguments on political representation, and in the Pacific at that. During his term as a judge in Western Samoa—he was both an associate judge and, later, Chief Justice there before his Cook Islands term began in 1975 — Mr Justice Donne had to adjudicate on four separate cases where representation in the local

legislative assembly was in dispute. In one member’s case, he found in favour, in another, against, a third withdrew his claim to a seat, and the fourth was decided on the toss of a coin in the judge’s office. Mr Justice Donne was a magistrate for a number of years in his home town of Rotorua before he first did duty on the Bench in the Pacific. Mr Justice Donne has, since 1975, carried out the role of Head of State in the Cook Islands.

Until then, the position had been filled by the New Zealand High Commissioner in Rarotonga, but the status of that post was changed to New Zealand representative and the Cook Islands was expected to provide its own Head of State.