The Incidental Tourist Read online

  An extraordinary scientist who commutes monthly between his major research groups at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the Institute for Medical Sciences at Tokyo University, Yoshi became one of the major players in the dual-use influenza controversy triggered by Rotterdam researcher Ron Fouchier’s talk some years later in Malta (see chapter 6, ‘Retracing the knights’). Following the Okinawa meeting, Yoshihiro organised for me to give a further lecture at the University of Tokyo, and it just so happened that the timing also worked for accepting an invitation to speak at a medicinal chemistry meeting in Kyoto. Departing from Memphis after two weeks at my still active St Jude laboratory, it was north west by Northwest Airlines for a family weekend in Seattle, then on via San Jose (Alaskan Airlines) to Tokyo Narita (American Airlines), by bus to Tokyo Haneda, a third flight to Okinawa (Nippon Airlines) and by car to the Busena Resort, where we would spend three days hearing about the latest on influenza while learning just a little of Okinawan history and culture.

  The biggest of the 160 or so islands of the Ryukyu chain, Okinawa is about the same distance (640 kilometres) south west from Japan as it is west of China. Invaded by the Satsuma samurai in the seventeenth century, the Ryukyu Kingdom was annexed in 1879 during the Meiji Restoration and remains part of Japan. Arriving at night for the hour-long drive to Okinawa’s Nago City and the Busena Resort, we saw numerous illuminated, plastic greenhouses that we later learned were being used for mango production. Unlike the massive, sheltering backyard mango trees of my Queensland childhood, the greenhouse occupants are evidently pruned to grow at a height of about 1.5 metres.

  Located in a marine park and looking out on the East China Sea, the Busena Resort was a pleasant meeting venue and, from looking back at the conference proceedings, the list of speakers included most of the usual suspects. I don’t recall any reports of great scientific breakthroughs, but there are clear memories of rugged coastal terrain and the sense that we were in the land of tough island people who are very intent on maintaining aspects of their unique culture. We saw a little of that in the enthusiasm and energy of the traditional lion-dog dancers and Taiko drummers. Banging a traditional daiko (the drum) looked like a lot more fun than being the back end of a lion-dog, but to each his own!

  Leaving Okinawa, it was back to Haneda and the Westin Hotel, Tokyo, to give a fairly broad-brush lecture on infection immunity and all that at Tokyo University. After talking to other scientists and students and enjoying a pleasant dinner, the next day saw us on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto for the 5th Asian Federation of Medicinal Chemistry conference, where we stayed in the Kyoto Royal Park Hotel. Japanese toilets are interesting because, with instructions in Japanese that may tell you how to turn the thing off, they automatically activate a loud fan if you sit down and, very likely, wake up your partner. The Kyoto Park also added a novel water-saving innovation: a small hand-washing basin on top of (and draining into) the cistern.

  Having tweaked my disease overview talk a bit to suit what would likely be the interests of the chemists, there was the usual hope that I hadn’t bored them. Asian audiences can be too polite and not give much feedback. Otherwise, not greatly involved in the science content, we enjoyed a few hours’ free time to walk around and enjoy the peace and beauty of the Shinto temples and formal gardens. The trees were showing their fall colours and it was pleasantly cool. Having visited Kyoto before, we were relaxed about seeing the sights and could simply enjoy the ambience of this wonderful city.

  Earlier on in the planning stage of our circum-Pacific tour, the next step would have had us back to Tokyo, then on the ten plus-hour Narita to Melbourne flight. But it turned out that we would spend an extra night in Tokyo. Likely as a result of publicity associated with the Tokyo University event, I received a surprise invitation (organised via the Australian Embassy) to deliver the 7th U Thant Lecture at Tokyo’s United Nations University. Given the source, and that I would be following US President Jimmy Carter (fellow former President Bill Clinton spoke the previous year) in the series, there was no way this opportunity/obligation to perform at a level well above my pay grade could be refused!

  Burmese diplomat U Thant became the third, and first non–European UN Secretary-General (1961–71), having been elected unanimously to fill the breech when Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash. Publicly critical of the Vietnam War, U Thant helped US President John F Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev avoid a nuclear confrontation during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A devout Buddhist, he initially tried to work with the Japanese during their Second World War occupation (1942–45) of Burma, but soon aligned himself with the resistance. Established in 1976 as a consequence of a 1969 initiative by U Thant, the United Nations University operates as a research arm for the intergovernmental organisation. Focusing particularly on areas related to global sustainability, the main and original (of five across the world) campus is in Tokyo.

  The United Nations is not viewed with universal affection and, writing this the day after the election of President Trump, I wonder how it will fare in the face of a solid, and likely unfriendly US Republican administration. Even for those who do regard the United Nations as valuable, the level of enthusiasm can be diminished by the cumbersome way it sometimes operates and by fact that mechanisms for filling key positions based on political considerations rather than ability can, at times, lead to disastrous outcomes. However, the secretaries-general are usually great humanitarians, and the appointment of people like Gro Harlem Brundtland as Director-General (1998–2003) of the World Health Organization can be enormously beneficial.

  Apart from the fact that my 2003 visit was, at least so far as travel costs were concerned, a freebie for the Australian Embassy, the reason I’d been asked to speak at the university was immediately obvious when I read the invitation. We knew John McCarthy, the Australian Ambassador to Japan. In 1996 when I was still fulltime in Memphis, McCarthy (a professional diplomat and Indonesia expert) was appointed by the Keating government to the top posting of Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, but was soon displaced when John Howard won the election and decided to send (remove?) his political colleague and former rival Andrew Peacock to Washington.

  The 1996 Nobel Prize I shared with Rolf Zinkernagel was the first to an Australian for twenty-one years, and McCarthy was keen to organise a reception at the Washington Embassy before the new incumbent arrived. Ambassadors use whatever opportunities come along to highlight the culture of their country and, though I was a US resident, the discovery that brought us to prominence was made at the Australian National University, I had retained my Australian passport and my accent is recognisably Australian! Working scientists don’t usually get invited to formal receptions at foreign embassies, so a lot of Washington-based friends and colleagues turned up and the event was an enjoyable and relaxed occasion.

  My Tokyo U Thant Lecture on ‘Science Sustainability and the Future’ used influenza and infectious disease stories to explore themes that were very much along the lines of work done at the United Nations University. While there were several interviews and accounts in the quality Tokyo print media, including an English language article in The Daily Yomiuri, there was the usual sense of wondering whether what I’d said and written was of the slightest use to anyone. Still, a number of people attended the 11 am talk, we met many notables, caught up with old friends Hatsu (a medicinal chemist) and Kumiko Mizuno from early Canberra days, and enjoyed an elegant lunch and reception hosted by the Australian Embassy.

  Located in the historic Mita District, Australia’s Tokyo legation inhabits 13,000 square metres of prime Tokyo real estate. Purchased in 1952 from the descendants of the Hachisuka family, who were prominent in the unifying Tokugawa Shogunate of the Edo period (1603–1867), the new (from 1990) Embassy, Ambassador’s residence and staff apartments are (unlike the situation in Washington) all located on the same site. The aluminium-faced Embassy building is impressive and it was a delight to walk and talk in the beautiful
gardens, some of which date back to the days of the (largely demolished) Hachisuka mansion. If there had been extra time to look around the neighbourhood, it would evidently have been possible to visit Shinto shrines from the same Edo era that saw the Japanese ascendancy over Okinawa. But it was not to be. That evening, we checked out of the ANA Hotel and were back to Narita for the flight to Melbourne.

  John McCarthy’s next ambassadorial post was as High Commissioner (the title used in other British Commonwealth countries) to India, where I met up with him again in the course of a trip to promote scientific interchange between Australia and India. I don’t recall who paid the airfare, but it would have been either the federal government or the University of Melbourne. The only other time I’ve had a ticket to an international meeting supplied (directly or indirectly) by the Australian taxpayer was when (still living in Memphis) I was invited to participate in an Australian Trade Mission to Taiwan hosted by the then Liberal Minister Nick Minchin. That experience was not repeated, maybe because my participation seemed to be more of a distraction than of any real value to the underlying business objectives.

  The Australian ambassadors (both foreign-service professionals and former politicians) that I’ve met over the years have all impressed me as being smart and politically sophisticated. I do wonder, though, what sort of life it is with modern communications bringing head office so much closer than it was in, say, the first half of the twentieth century, or in the era of nineteenth century viceroys and plenipotentiaries. Being a real ambassador may have been a lot more satisfying in the days of the telegraph and the Royal Mail steamers, when the type of science-related travel we experience (at times endure) now could not have even been imagined.

  CHAPTER 12

  Up for a spin

  WAITING IN THE DEPARTURE area at Harare Airport in Zimbabwe sometime in the 1980s, it was well past our expected boarding time and it seemed increasingly unlikely we would arrive in Nairobi in Kenya even remotely on schedule. An Australian accent then came over the intercom – the pilot, telling us the score. Australians tend to be direct and this guy didn’t beat about the bush: ‘We’ve had a few issues with the old bus and we’re going to take her up for a spin to see if she’s okay.’ Less than an hour later he was on the loudspeaker again telling us, ‘Plane’s fine; we’ll be off soon.’

  Back in that distant time, we climbed the steep mobile stairs to the veteran Boeing 707 and were soon in the air. I was probably flying with Kenya Airways, but it might have been Air Zimbabwe, as both had narrow-bodied 707s that they’d leased or purchased at the end of their service with First World carriers. Along with the pre-departure ‘circuit and bump’ before departure (did they actually do that, or was the pilot kidding around while they made some repair on the ground?), the fact that this machine had a few miles on the clock was of no concern. Like pharmaceutical drugs, big planes grow in stature as they build a long safety record. Over the decades I’ve flown a lot of miles and I don’t recall a single discomfiting incident on a 707.

  Years later, in the course of a lecture tour at the time of the bird flu scare, I spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library outside Santa Barbara in the United States. My honorarium was a casual jacket bearing a prominent Air Force One logo and the opportunity to sit in the pilot’s seat of the Boeing 707 that had carried Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and The Great Communicator himself, as Reagan was known. It’s the only library I know that has an airplane, rather than books and manuscripts, as a centrepiece.

  When we finally took off from Harare, heading north, what I recall when looking down was savannah grasslands passing beneath us, plus a large body of water, likely Lake Malawi. At 584 kilometres long and 83 wide, the southernmost and third largest of Africa’s great lakes in the East African rift system was hard to miss. I took this flight a couple of times a year to fulfil my obligations as Scientific Committee Chair and Board member of the International Laboratory for Research in Animal Diseases (ILRAD) in Nairobi, Kenya, one of the network of institutes in developing countries that are funded (with the aim of increasing global food production) via the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research (CGIAR).

  The CGIAR began with an initiative from the US Rockefeller Foundation to link non-government institutions, like the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and the International Rice Research Institute, under a single administration that could ensure standards and co-ordinate fundraising. Led by former US Secretary of State Robert McNamara and Australian economist Sir John Crawford, 1971 saw the CGIAR secretariat established at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington. Today, the CGIAR continues to operate fifteen research institutes that are located in developing countries and focus on the practical applications of plant and animal (including fish) sciences. After combining with the Livestock Center for Africa, based in Addis Ababa, Nairobi’s ILRAD is now the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Free from local intervention due to its international support and administrative structure, ILRAD/ILRI has long been a venue for great research, using the latest technology.

  The quality of the science at ILRAD in the 1980s and 1990s was right up with world’s best practice for the time. Indeed, part of its product has been a cadre of smart, well-trained young (and now not so young) African researchers. And the beneficiaries were not all African – a number of molecular biologists, geneticists, parasitologists and immunologists who now hold senior appointments in (or are retiring from) European and American veterinary schools also worked as junior scientists there. The initial mandate for the laboratory was to develop vaccines for two cattle diseases: East Coast Fever (caused by Theileria parva) and trypanosomiasis (principally Trypanosoma bruceii). Though they did not succeed in what still looks like an impossible task, the ILRAD group forged ahead as world leaders in veterinary immunology and developed many techniques and reagents that are still used worldwide. Today, with a much broader and more realistic scientific remit, and ably led by Guyana-born Jimmy Smith, the new iteration, ILRI, continues to explore science-based approaches for enhancing food production.

  Apart from educating me on the social and economic constraints that govern the application of science in poor countries (solutions must be simple and cheap), I also learned a great deal from interacting with my African colleagues on the ILRAD Board. Though we may be aware of the ‘big man’ problem that allows dictators to take all and has so degraded some African countries, the people I knew there were genuinely egalitarian and very critical of any hint that ‘this fellow is getting a bit above himself’. Such thinking was very familiar from my Queensland upbringing, though I fear Australia is losing some of that sense of equality and shared fate. The other great pleasure for me was that the francophone Board members spoke French (as Africans do) much more slowly and with a measured clarity that allowed me to understand what they were saying, and were even tolerant when I tried my execrable French language skills on them. Try that in Paris and see where it gets you!

  My close involvement with ILRAD was during the apartheid era in South Africa, which is why, living in Canberra, I was travelling to Nairobi via Harare. Making that trip now from Melbourne, the most likely transit would be via Johannesburg in South Africa, Dubai or Qatar. In the 1980s, the alternatives were Singapore, Bombay (Mumbai) in India or Harare. South Africa was increasingly isolated and, though it remained a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, there was no direct flight to Australia. Instead, Qantas flew a ‘stubby’, Boeing 747 SP, non-stop from Perth to Harare. In those days, when jet engines were less efficient, the foreshortened and lighter SP was the only passenger jet that could make the distance.

  Smaller was also an advantage from the aspect that Harare airport was not designed to take the passenger load from a big wide-bodied plane. That’s one reason why, I guess, anyone travelling directly to South Africa simply got off one plane and immediately boarded another, though the easy transit did make Australia’s ‘isolation’ strategy seem hypocritical. Those travellin
g on to Nairobi had to collect checked luggage, clear customs and spend a night in Harare. On the way home, the return flight connected directly with Qantas. On the several occasions I didn’t convert the first class-return airfare supplied to Board members (those days are long gone!) to a round-the-world business ticket so I could visit colleagues in Europe and the United States, my recollection is that the Harare–Perth plane was loaded with accountants and other professionals who were fleeing South Africa to become my fellow citizens – a tragedy for Africa and a gain for Australia!

  Spending the night in Harare meant that, rather than being met at the airport by a car and a driver (the situation in Nairobi) I would jump into a local cab and ask to be taken to Meikles Hotel. Apart from the terrors of the trip in what I recall as an ancient Renault R4 held together by string and baling wire (a fix familiar to anyone who had worked in rural Australia), the driver and I shared the experience of being citizens of the old Commonwealth. Africans are always worth listening to, and we spoke the same language, both linguistically and culturally. The Harare of the mid to late 1980s was an interesting and optimistic place.

  Though architecturally modern, the five-star Meikles has been around for almost a century. Wandering around the town gave no sense of unease, though my danger antennae were still acute after seven years working in West Philadelphia in the United States! Harare is in Mashonaland in northern Zimbabwe, and the art we saw in the galleries and tourist stores left no doubt concerning the talent of the ‘Shona’ sculptors. Though Zimbabwe’s modern era of soapstone carving only dates back to the years immediately following the Second World War, the appeal of their work is such that they are collected and displayed globally. At home, we prize an enigmatic, dark green chief’s head by Wilson Mesha, which sits prominently on the lintel above a Melbourne fireplace. Together with a true-to-life hardwood carving of a fine-featured Masai woman (from Kenya), it imparts a sense of universality and a deep past that I associate with Africa.