Salt of the earth

Chance and commitment. Memoirs of a medical scientist.

Basil S Hetzel. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2005 (xviii + 301 pp). ISBN 1 86254 686 7.

Central to this narrative is the author’s 40-year commitment to elucidating iodine deficiency disorders (cretinism, neuromuscular disability and goitre), and pursuing worldwide remediation of this preventable scourge. The “chance” arose in the early 1960s when, as Reader in Medicine at Adelaide University, Hetzel reviewed a manuscript reporting goitre reduction by iodine supplementation of Papua New Guinea (PNG) adults. With his interest in hormones and stress physiology, Hetzel’s interest in iodine-dependent thyroid hormone duly heightened. His team undertook a trial in PNG that showed that pre-pregnancy iodine administration prevented cretinism.

Hetzel subsequently made two unorthodox career moves (for a clinician) — first to the (Foundation) Chair of Social and Preventative Medicine at Monash University (1968–1976), and then to head the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Division of Human Nutrition. These moves, fortuitously, facilitated further epidemiological and animal experimental studies of iodine deficiency disorders (IDD), respectively.

“Commitment” then became dominant. Hetzel helped establish the International Council for the Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders (ICCIDD), and, in the late 1980s, as Executive Director of that body, persuaded the World Health Organization to support a program of IDD elimination via iodised salt. By century’s end widespread gains had been made.

With detailed recollections of family, friends and colleagues, Hetzel recounts his school days, university studies, early clinical research, stress-hormone research in New York and London, his work at Adelaide University, Monash University and the CSIRO, and, in “retirement”, along with his ICCIDD activities, his Deputy Governship of South Australia and Chancellorship of the University of South Australia. There were highs and lows: the death of his first wife, Helen; his subsequent marriage to Anne (and their travels together); and, along the way, many honours and tributes.

Basil Hetzel’s autobiography underscores how, with a little luck and risk-taking, much can be achieved via a mix of optimism, resilience, clarity of focus and commitment grounded in professional and religious conviction.

Anthony J McMichaelDirector, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health Australian National University, ACT