Wednesday, October 20, 2010

SIRT court battle

Tomorrow we have an early start. Have to be at the Mount Hospital by 7am for the SIRT trial. It is an all-day event so I will see Joan booked in and await her call for an afternoon pick-up.

The SIRT treatment was invented by Professor Gray who at the time was employed at the University of Western Australia. He patented his work, but the university reckoned that as he was employed by it as a staff member they owned the rights to the therapy. And so a court battle, UWA v Gray ensued. The prof won out and the courts decided that as he was not employed to do any research in his position at the university, he was entitled to do what he liked with his invention. If you are so inclined you can read about it here.

He sold it to a major medical firm and immediately assumed the status of a multi-millionaire. All this happened around 1985-6 and at that time my father was diagnosed with bowel and liver cancer. At the hospital I was advised that he had no more than six months to live. I had read of Prof. Gray's work and sought treatment for my father. I guess at that time (1986) the methods were far from being perfect. Never-the-less Dad lasted another three years. In the closing months he told me that he would have rather have not gone through all the treatment and just lived out his time as best he could.

Last evening I went out the front to water my newly planted tomato plants and found a new lotto ticket on our driveway. What to do? I went next door to our neighbors, but they had not bought a ticket. Our other neighbors were not home. I will offer them the ticket this morning. Very tempting to check the numbers in the paper.

Update: After checking with the neighbors that the ticket wasn't theirs, I decided it was now my ticket. Unfortunately no luck for Kev & Joan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I won a small prize with a scratchie sent to me last week for participating in a survey. I bought a Lotto slickpick with the winnings and that won me another fifty bucks. So I'm more cashed up now than I have been for ages. :)