CO-ORDINATED RESEARCH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21248, 30 July 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

CO-ORDINATED RESEARCH

LORD BLEDISLOE'S LEAD The journal Nature referred recently in a leading article to the fact that at a meeting of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association in March, a resolution was approved urging tho necessity for further research regarding the " factors which govern the incidence of goitre, in particular its relationship to the nature of the soil and the food of the people," and recommending that arrangements be made to co-ordinate medical research with soil and animal research. The resolution to co-ordinate work on soils, domestic animals ancl human beings," says tho writer, " is undoubtedly sound. Investigations on these lines have been carried out in Great Britain in recent years. The greatest obstacle to progress is the difficulty of determining with accuracy the amounts of iodine present in soils and foodstuffs. A committee of tho Medical Research Council, with the assistance of Sir Robert Robertson, of the Government Chemical Laboratory, is at present trying to evolve a jnethod which will give trustworthy data and can bo used as a standard method throughout the world. " If such a method be found, the advance in our knowledge will certainly bo along the lines suggested by the New Zealand Medical Conference. It is probablo that through the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, the Medical Research Council, tho public health departments, and the Agricultural Research Council, co-opera-tiv© research not only between medical, veterinary and agricultural research workers, but also between institutions in different parts, of tho Empire may be arranged. It is by such co-operative work that the goitre problem is most likely to be so'ved. " That such co-operation should not be limited to the question of goitre is emphasised by a message from Lord Bledisloe, to the New Zealand Medical Conference. Lord Bledisloe has, for many years, shown a deep interest in veterinary and agricultural research and in his message ho directs attention to the interrelation of human and animal food deficiency diseases. He refers specially to diseases 'traceable to lack of iron, calcium, iodine, phosphates, vitamins, or other essential food factors,' and points cut that these diseases, which have a common aetiology in both human beings and farm animals, require further investigation. " A number of deficiency diseases, for example, Wailii disease in cattle, due to phosphorus deficiency, bush sickness to iron deficiency, goitre believed to be associated with iodine deficiency, and several diseases in sheep which may be due to lack of either calcium or phosphorus, or both, are already being successfully investigated in New Zealand. Thero is evidence that similar mineral deficiencies occur under certain conditions in the food of human beings, and there is no doubt that lack of some of the vitamins is of common occurrence in large sections of the world's population. " Th© wealth of knowledge which research in nutrition has accumulated in the past few years, perhaps On account of its very newness, has not yet been fully applied to the prevention of disease in human beings and domestic animals. The lead given by Lord Bledisloe for tho combination of medical, veterinary and agricultural research resources for an attack on diseases, the incidence of which is influenced directly or indirectly by nutrition is therefore timely, and deserves the attention of those responsible for the. direction of medical and agricultural research in other countries as well as in New Zealand." HELIUM BELT DISCOVERY The existence of a helium belt stretching from the Mediterranean to the Vosges Mountains, a distance of about 400 miles, has been reported by Dr. Pierre Charmont,, a French hydrolo'gist. Recently, at Toulon, Dr. Charmont, while boring for artesian wells, found what he claims to be abundant traces of a large underground supply of this rare gas. which is non-inflammable and used in the gasbags of airships. Samples of it have been sent to a laboratory in Paris for analysis. " Similar finds," Dr. Charmont said, " have already been made at points between Marseilles and Toulon. The gas we struck probably is due to infiltration from a belt believed to stretch from the mouth of the Rhone almost to the Rhine."