Tuesday 8th October 1996
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Dr Doherty, 55, won the award with fellow researcher Dr Rolf Zinkernagel, 52, of Switzerland, for their pioneering work at the John Curtin School for Medical Research in Canberra in the 1970s.
Doherty is only the third Australian to ever receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine since it was first awarded in 1901.
The two previous winners were Frank Macfarlane Burnet in 1960 and John Carew Eccles in 1963.
In 1945 Australian born researcher Howard Florey was joint winner with Ernest Chain and Alexander Fleming for their discovery of penicillin.
Mr Rod Dent, son of Bob Dent - the world's first legal euthanasia death in the western world, has called for a nationwide poll on euthanasia. This follows a Private Members Bill which, if successful in Federal Parliament, will overturn euthanasia's legal status in the Northern Territory.
Only a few days ago, the doctor who helped Dent die said that he has five other patients in Darwin who are only waiting on two other doctors with a bit of moral fortitude to come forward and co-sign the paper which will allow them to proceed with their computer-driven deaths.
The whole ruling seesm a bit of a mess, because although euthanasia is legal no doctors are willing to put their reputations on the line while the Private Members Bill has to be debated. The Bill moved by Victorian Liberal back bencher Kevin Andrews is being voted from a moral, not party political stance... which really takes the democratic element right out of the vote.
The feeling I have is that if a poll was taken euthanasia would be legalised in this country... I would certainly vote that way, why be kept alive and in pain while in a terminal condition when you can die at peace. The morality shoe seems to be on the wrong foot - but I guess it fits well with some Doctors financial aspirations.
The amendments are designed to reduce what are seen as frivolous claims aimed at holding the mining industry to ransom for financial gain.
The amendments are, however, expected to have a fiery and unknown passage through the Senate. The Democrats and the Greens are fervently against the changes... so it will make for interesting times ahead.
The mill will be reduced to a series of value-adding mills unless 400 staff can be sliced from the current 1630 workforce.
Ken Arthurson, now termed, "the embattled Australian Rugby League (ARL) chairman", by triumphant News Limited newspapers, has offered to quit, This to help in bringing peace between the ARL and Super League which is slowly ripping apart the traditional ARL competition.
Arthurson said yesterday while holidaying on Hayman Island, "I've never had too many problems with the concept of Super League. The main thing I've said is that I believe the ARL should run the thing because they are best at it.
"I don't think I should be part of it (a restructured rugby league), nor would I want to be, because Mr Morgan (Paul Morgan, chairman of the Brisbane Broncos) is one person I won't work with."
Mr Morgan, one of the main architects of Super League accused the ARL at the weekend of giving "jobs to the boys".
Pressure is now on Optus Vision and the Nine Network, partly Kerry Packer's empire, to declare whether they will continue to fund the ARL.
North Sydney club president one of the stalwart ARL clubs said, "If they don't (fund), it's the end isn't it? It just can't function."
The CEO of the financially embattled South Queensland Crushers, Mr Alan Graham, raised similar concerns, "If Optus are serious about coming in then they need to grab the (ARL) competition by the throat and put their full weight behind the organisation."
Somehow I think that the game as we knew it has been throttled in the courts and the only way that we will see it in the future is by paying for Foxtel Pay TV.
Is this really a victory for the man in the street? Somehow I think not.
Final word, you have got to respect ARL chairman Arthurson who has done so much for the game in the past, but now the future has caught up with him and it is up to News Limited's newspapers to decide how he will be portrayed in the history of rugby league.
What a sick world.
The study was conducted on 31,843 women aged between 50 and 59. Researchers finding that woman who smoked 25 or more cigarettes a day were more than twice as likely to develop AMD - which leads to blindness.
Overcast, warm but dry today... another one to be spent in the big smoke. A lot of travelling ahead as well. Such is life.The cockatoos are getting so tame at the feed table now that I can hand feed one old tyke I call "Baldy"... he makes little squeaky noises by way of conversation..
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