Abstract

HIV infection: Immunodeficiency viruses are Retroviridae

This presentation is mainly about the HIV pandemic but also about: African monkeys, great apes, Jane Goodall’s chimpanzees and their simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs): about the ancient parasitism of vertebrategenomes by ubiquitous retroviruses (of which HIV is one): the rare retention of functional retroviral genes in all mammals, which determine the development and functionof mammalian placentas: koala and the evolutionary adaption of their immunodeficiency viruses before our eyes.

Biographical details 

Rod left school in 1959 with a University of New Zealand National Scholarship. With a boyhood fascination for animals, large, small and tiny, he enrolled in a B.Sc. in Zoology at Auckland University. After a year however, he switched to Medicine at Otago University. In Dunedin he represented Otago Province in hockey and NZ University Winter Tournament representative hockey teams. He was awarded Otago and Auckland Universities Hockey Blues.

Later, having decided to be an Infectious Disease physician, a particularly unsexy career choice at the time, postgraduate training after working in Auckland took him to London (1972-5), Kingston (Jamaica) 1973 and later a spell in Denver, Colorado (1982-3).

Returning to Auckland in 1975 with his wife, Elaine and 3 children, he worked his entire career for 31 years as an ID physician on Ward 9C , Auckland Hospital, and later  Ward 68 Auckland City Hospital. He taught and lectured to medical students and other groups extensively here and overseas and was a Clinical Associate-Professor in the Dept of Molecular Medicine and Pathology at the Auckland Medical School. He served on many local and Australasian Committees to do with Infectious disease and Pharmacology.

 He was awarded MNZM for services to Medicine and received life memberships of the Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases, of which he was a founding member in 1976, the Australian Society of Antimicrobials and the NZ AIDS Foundation and was awarded Fellowship of the ID Society of America, also receiving the NZ Committee of Pathologists Award and a Dennis Pickup Clinical Teacher Award.

On retirement from Auckland City Hospital and Auckland Medical School in 2006, he changed direction and worked as a consultant at the Phase1/2 private medical unit at NZ Clinical Research Ltd.  Auckland for 14 years, evaluating new and innovative medicines with a particular involvement as Principal Investigator for studies of monoclonal antibodies and anti-complement molecules, before retiring in 2020.

Abstract

This presentation will provide a brief history of the discipline which deals with 90% of patient contacts for less than 10% of the health service budget. Reflecting 50 years of clinical practice in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Canada, it offers a perspective from a GP, an addiction medicine specialist and an academic. It will describe the evolution of general practice as part of the education and training of medical students and doctors, and offer some reflections on life, medicine and society.

Biographic details 

Brian R McAvoy 

MBChB, MD, FRNZCGP, FRCGP, FRCP, FAChAM, BSc

 Professor Brian McAvoy has been a practising clinician for nearly 50 years, working as a general practitioner and addiction medicine specialist in New Zealand, Australia, UK and Canada. He graduated from Glasgow University in 1972 then spent one year as a Teaching Fellow at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada before becoming a lecturer at Leicester University and working in a rural dispensing practice in Northamptonshire, England. He was appointed Foundation Professor of General Practice at Auckland University in 1989, then Professor of Primary Health Care and Head of the School of Health Sciences at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK. From 2000 to 2006 he worked in Melbourne as Executive Director of Research and Practice Development with the Royal Australian College of GPs and as Deputy Director of the National Cancer Control Initiative. Returning to New Zealand, he worked in inner city general practice, the public and private sector of addiction medicine, and with the Tasmanian Alcohol and Drug Service, retiring in 2020. He has published extensively, written several books and has been an Adviser to the World Health Organisation and the Health and Disability Commissioner. He has particular interests in addiction medicine, evidence-based practice, medical education and workplace bullying. His memoir, The Last, The Least, The Lonely and The Lost  (http://www.brian-mcavoy.com) was published last year.