Welcome to the second half of the Rotary year.

Our first meeting last Tuesday was a joint meeting with members from the Penrose Rotary Club.

Our speaker was Dr Brett Cowan, Chief Research Scientist at the ESR.  Brett is medically trained, has worked in the Emergency Department at Auckland hospital for a number of years and has been Head of Radiology at AU. An outstanding scientist in his own right, Brett now spends much of his time leading, advising and communicating. ESR’s role is the underpinning of the safety of all New Zealanders – its contribution to the NZ economy is substantial. There are 600 employees, with two thirds women staff members.

Brett commented on the forensic side of some of the work done by ESR, including the maintenance of the police DNA database of 211k samples. He told us real detective stories involving DNA, including the identification of the 2014 Fonterra 1080 60-year-old blackmailer, whose motives turned out not to be eco-terrorism, but financial gain. Looking for a needle in a haystack is child’s play to using minute DNA samples, rejecting those not relevant, and coming up with a single match.  PCR [Polymerase Chain Reactions] have greatly assisted the identification process by amplifying small segments into testable samples.  Amazing science, in which ESR has become a world leader, resulting [amongst other things] in the award of the Prime Minister’s Science Prize.

He talked about firearms, food safety, radiation and drinking water [remember the major E-Coli outbreak in Havelock North, affecting up to 5,500 of the town’s 14k population?]

But the main thrust of his comments centred around ESR’s leadership and innovation in the testing of wastewater as a result of Covid, and DNA sequencing of the virus. ESR has always tested for drugs in our wastewater –methamphetamine, cocaine and now [from the US] fentanyl. Testing for Covid at a number of sites round the country has provided helpful insights into the extent and duration of waves of infection. Genomic sequencing has been a revolution: PCR testing has helped identify variants, with remarkable decreases in costs and time. Portable testing is now possible. From single strains of the virus to the present variant soup – Brett’s caution was that the course of Covid is unpredictable, even although the wider public view might indicate that we are over the worst.  As serious effects of the virus decline, so contagion increases. Covid is the third leading cause of death in the US.

In answer to a question on Polio and recent outbreaks in vaccine derived Polio cases, he agreed that this is a risk faced by communities with low immunisation and commented that the disease that really worried him was measles, with NZ’s unpreparedness for a major outbreak.

 

A riveting and informative address, setting a high standard for future speakers! Indeed Big Wig Ed