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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-09-27 Daily Xml
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ANNUAL LECTURE

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (16:36): The 24 September is a special day for me and the members of my staff at the Florey electorate office as it is the birthdate of that remarkable South Australian and Nobel Prize winner, Howard (Lord) Florey, Baron of Adelaide and Marston—a man whose work has saved an estimated 800 million people throughout the world. The namesake of my seat, he is remembered in many ways, and one of them is through the Annual Florey Lecture, auspiced by the Florey Medical Research Foundation.

The Annual Florey Lecture is a major highlight of the foundation's year. Each year, the Florey Medical Research Foundation brings a world-leading researcher to Adelaide who focuses on a discipline related to the medical school and to the University of Adelaide. It has been my honour and pleasure to attend this lecture for many years now, witnessing and learning from the excellence and expertise of many fine speakers at the invitation of Professor Justin Beilby, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Adelaide, who is also President of the Florey Medical Research Foundation.

Last year, Professor Baroness Susan Greenfield gave a thought-provoking lecture on the brain, and this year's lecture was no less stimulating on a subject I can best describe, in short, as IVF conception. This year, our speaker was Professor Nick Macklon, MBChB, Medicine, PhD of Southampton in the United Kingdom. Professor Macklon is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and co-founder and Medical Director of the Complete Fertility Centre at the University of Southampton affiliated tertiary referral centre at the Princess Anne Hospital, Southampton.

Professor Macklon is an international leader in fertility medicine and a pioneer in the field of periconceptional medicine. His ongoing research has resulted in improved IVF outcomes for patients throughout the world. In 2005, he was appointed to the Chair of Infertility and Periconceptional Medicine at the University Medical Centre, Utrecht, in the Netherlands, where he led the largest IVF unit and set up the first Dutch transport service in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and first integrated service in periconceptional medicine in Europe.

His research interests include ovarian stimulation, implantation and periconceptional determinants of fertility and health—areas in which he has published extensively. He has contributed more than 40 chapters in international standard textbooks and has published two textbooks—the award-winning IVF in the Medically Complicated Patient, and, more recently, the Textbook of Periconceptional Medicine.

Among other things I took away from last night's lecture, I now know that birth weight should be part of his CV and, from what he says, everybody else's. The lecture gave me great assurance and confidence that there are many people working on the many areas of research around IVF.

I note from today's Advertiser that the father of in-vitro fertilisation, Carl Wood, has died. Professor Wood, 82, died last Friday at a nursing home. The gynaecologist and his team from Melbourne's Monash University pioneered IVF as an option for infertile couples in the seventies, and they helped develop the world's first IVF pregnancy in 1973.

Australia's first test-tube baby, Candice Reed, was born in 1980, and since then more than 45,000 babies have been born worldwide with the assistance of IVF. Professor Macklon's paper, while aimed at the scientific minds in the audience, was in language I mostly understood. It dealt with the rate of fertile pregnancies to term achieved via IVF and the preconditions and challenges such babies may face.

Birth weight becomes a key factor, and the research that Professor Macklon and his team, and others around the world undertake, will be vital in improving successful pregnancies with or without the aid of IVF. The miracle of life still has many secrets, and of particular interest to me was the work being done in the Netherlands, as that country's birthing and midwifery services are well known and respected.

The many questions that researchers sought to answer led to many others. Again, in short, I learned that embryos that have been frozen before implantation seem to achieve better results, most likely because of the condition of the endocrine tissue. This discussion also centred on the apparent poor spontaneous fertility rates in humans, in that only 10 per cent of fertile embryos result in a full-term pregnancy, 30 per cent not implanting at all, 30 per cent miscarrying without outward sign, and further 30 resulting in a miscarriage, that most dreadful of outcomes for anyone.

There are many other highlights in this very interesting paper, and I am sure it will eventually be available on the website of the Florey Medical Research Foundation: www.florey.adelaide.edu.au. I would also like to let the house know about some of the work of the foundation. Last year, they had a very successful 125thmedical program anniversary dinner at which Professor Beilby announced research fellowships to commence in 2012.

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