Frank Macfarlane Burnet - Public Health and Policy

Public Health and Policy

From 1937 Burnet was involved in a variety of scientific and public policy bodies, starting with a position on a government advisory council on polio. After he became the director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in 1944, he was considered a public figure and overcame shyness to become a good public speaker. He recognised the importance of co-operation with the media if the general public was to understand science and scientists, and his writings and lectures played an important part in the formulation of public attitudes and policy in Australia on a variety of biological topics. However, despite making many appearances on radio and television, he never became at ease with interviews and had to be selective with outreach engagements due to the many invitations he received, and tended to accept those that had the potential to promote the Institute. Over time, he began to increase his activism, as he felt more confident that he would be able to make an impact as his reputation grew, especially after winning the Nobel Prize, and even more so after his retirement from the directorship of the Institute. Although Burnet was not naturally outgoing, he saw it as the social responsibility of a scientific leader and scholar to publicly speak out and impart wisdom and foresight to the wider community.

Burnet served as a member or chairman of scientific committees, both in Australia and overseas. Between 1947 and 1953, he was a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council's Medical Research Advisory Committee. The committee advised on funding for medical research in Australia. During this same period (1947–52), he was also a member of the Commonwealth government's Defence Research and Development Policy Committee. Declassified files from this committee show that Burnet made the recommendation that Australia pursue development of chemical and biological weapons to target neighbouring countries' food stocks and spread infectious diseases. His report was titled War from a Biological Angle. Between 1955 and 1959, he was chairman of the Australian Radiation Advisory Committee; he was concerned that Australians were being exposed to unnecessary medical and industrial radiation.

Internationally, Burnet was a chairman of the Papua New Guinea Medical Research Advisory Committee between 1962 and 1969. At the time, Papua New Guinea was an Australian territory, and Burnet had first travelled there as his son was posted there. His role on the committee allowed him to explore his interest in human biology. He was particularly interested in kuru (laughing sickness), and lobbied the Australian government to establish the Papua New Guinea Institute of Human Biology. Burnet later helped oversee the institute's contribution to the Anglo-Australian participation in the International Biological Programme in the Field of Human Adaptability.

Burnet served as first chair for the Commonwealth Foundation (1966–69), a Commonwealth initiative to foster interaction between the member countries' elite, and he was also active in the World Health Organization, serving on the Expert Advisory Panels on Virus Diseases and on Immunology between 1952 and 1969 and the World Health Organization Medical Research Advisory Committee between 1969 and 1973.

In 1964, he was appointed to sit on the University Council of Victoria's third university Latrobe on an interim basis until the institution was formed in 1966. He served until 1970. He advocated a less hierarchical relationship between a professor and student, something seen as a move away from the English tradition prevalent in Australia towards and American model. He also called for the downgrading of the importance placed on the liberal arts. His ideas were too radical for his peers and he stepped down from the role in 1970 after none of his suggestions had made an impact.

Burnet was opposed to the use of nuclear power in Australia owing to the issues of nuclear proliferation. He later retracted his objections to uranium mining in Australia, feeling that nuclear power was necessary while other renewable energy sources were being developed. In the late 1960s and 1970s, he was also vocal in the anti-smoking movement; he was one of the first high-profile figures in Australia to educate the public on the dangers of tobacco, and he appeared in a television advertisement criticising the ethics of tobacco advertising, and broadcasters for displaying such material. He and fellow activists were surprised that the commercial was allowed to run briefly, before being taken off air by the station, which only further generated attention for the anti-smoking campaign. A former smoker, he had rejected the habit in the 1950s after several friends died. Burnet was also a critic of the Vietnam War and called for the creation of an international police force.