Make This a Better Place Trivia Quiz

Answer: Colin Sullivan

Obstructive sleep apnoea is a condition that affects millions of people worldwide and causes the sufferer to stop breathing several times, sometimes hundreds of times a night. The cessations cause the brain to wake you up each time and so you have a very disrupted sleep, leaving you feeling tired and unable to concentrate.

The first sleep clinic opened in 1970 at Stanford University, California, by William Dement, about the same time as Eliot Philipson began a study on dogs' respiratory control. Australian Colin Sullivan took this research to humans in 1976 who, until then, were treated by having a tracheostomy. Sullivan, along with colleague Nurse Bron Lehrhaft, developed the first Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine in 1981/82. The first machine was constructed from a paint compressor with the motors reversed, and pool tubing. The masks were specially made for each patient by Jim Bruderer at the University of Sydney Biomedical Engineering Department.

Answer: Colman and Varghese

Influenza (the flu) is a highly infectious, seasonal illness, affecting 10 percent of the global population and is responsible for about 650,000 deaths each year. Influenza is spread through respiratory droplets from coughing or sneezing and may be picked up by touching a contaminated surface. Hand washing and covering the mouth and nose while coughing or sneezing is the best defense against the spread of the flu. Influenza is responsible for seasonal epidemics and various pandemics in history, from the Spanish flu 1918, the H5N1 (bird flu) and the H1N1 (swine flu). The latest pandemic occurred suddenly in 2020 with the arrival of the Covid19 Influenza.

Relenza was first made in 1983 by CSIRO scientists Peter Colman and Joseph Varghese in collaboration with Monash University and the Victorian College of Pharmacy. The drug is not a vaccine, but it has proven to shorten the length of, and lessen the severity of symptoms of an Influenza A or B infection. Funding for the project of finding new anti-viral drugs came from Biota, but since they were too small a company to mass market the product, the patent rights to Zanamivir were sold to Glaxo in 1990. The wheels for drug approval turn slowly and it wasn't approved for use in the US and Europe until 2006.

Answer: Nagal and Heath

The baby safety capsule was developed by Colin Nagal and Robert Heath in the 1980s. The final design for the capsule, named 'Safe-n-Sound', was by Robert Pataki and Phillip Slattery for the Britax company. The device consists of a moulded plastic carry cot with handles, that fits inside a rear-facing base that is secured to an adult seat by seat belts. The baby is held in place by a harness and in the case of a collision, a release mechanism rotates the bassinette, keeping baby safe in a solid cocoon with an impact absorbing bubble in the base.

The wearing of seat belts became mandatory in Australia in the 1970s, and while there were several ways of securing young children, there were no specific designs for babies. Australia has one of the most stringent standards for infant and child restraints in the world and many devices from overseas do not meet those required standards.

Answer: Ian Frazer

There are over 170 types of human papillomavirus (HPV) and a quarter of them are spread via sexual transmission. While most infections are asymptomatic, the virus can cause genital or oral warts and a few strains are responsible for more than three quarters of all cervical cancers. It is also responsible for some cases of anal cancer and genital warts in males.

In 2006, Professor Ian Frazer and Dr Jian Zhou of the University of Queensland, developed Gardasil, a vaccine that protected women against four strains of the cancer-causing HPV. In the more than 120 countries where Gardasil has been approved for use, it is recommended that all children between the ages of 9 and 14 receive the vaccine.

Answer: Graeme Clark

Prior to 1951, there was no treatment available for the profoundly deaf. Then Endre Djourno from Spain and Charles Eyries from France implanted the first single-channel cochlear implants. Because they were single channel, they could not differentiate high and low frequencies needed simultaneously for speech. So, while the wearer could hear, they could not understand or learn speech.

In the mid 1970s, NASA scientist Adam Kissiah began working on a cochlear implant and was awarded a patent, which he then sold.

This allowed two teams to create multi-channel implants, one lead by Australian Graeme Clarke and the other by Austrian husband and wife team Ingeborg and Erwin Hochmair. Both teams revealed their cochlear implants within a few months of each other.

Answer: Fiona Wood

Dr Fiona Wood migrated to Australia in 1987 where she completed her plastic surgery training and specialised in treating burns. In 1992 she developed her idea of a 'spray-on skin'. Normally a sample of skin would be cultured and grown for up to three weeks before enough was produced to be used on a burn victim. Dr Wood's method of taking a small skin biopsy, scraping the skin cells into a medium which is then sprayed onto the burn, results in rapid healing within two weeks.

This method became known after the Bali bombings in 2002, when the burns patients sent to Western Australia had the highest survival rate. Dr Wood then founded 'Avita Medical' to market her spray-on skin called "ReCell", but the product was slow to market until the United States Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine provided Avita with a grant to hasten approval through the US Food and Drug Administration. Approval was given and by 2018 "ReCell" is now being studied for use not only on burns, but also ulcers, scarring, and necrotising fasciitis.

Answer: Doug Waterhouse

Beginning in 1938, CSIRO's Doug Waterhouse was doing studies on the Australian sheep blowfly (Lucilia cuprina) which was devastating to the wool industry. When WWII came, he became interested in ways to protect the Australian troops from malaria, a mosquito borne infection.

He created a repellent containing dimethyl phthalate and tested it on himself against the swarms of mosquitoes in Cairns and PNG. By the middle of the war in 1943, the repellent, called "Mary" by the troops, was very successful in the Pacific region for keeping the insects away.

In 1963, Queen Elizabeth II was saved from the great Aussie salute when she was sprayed with Waterhouse's repellent at a garden party. The following day, the royal party all used the spray and the journalists noticed that the 'blowies and skeeters' stayed away from the group.

A few days later, Mortein asked for and was given the formula, and Aerogard was born. Aerogard has become an Aussie icon and is still used today. In the 1970s their advertising slogan "Remember the Aerogard, and avagoodweekend" was introduced into the Aussie vernacular.

Answer: Ansell Rubber Co. Pty. Ltd

By the 1900s surgeons were wearing sterile gloves in theatre, but they were re-usable and had to be washed and sterilised between uses. In 1965 the Ansell Rubber Co Pty Ltd began making the first mass-produced disposable latex gloves using the technology previously used for making condoms.

They also made a sterile disposable glove by using gamma irradiation to kill microbes. The latex gloves were an immediate hit due to their thinness, which allowed surgeons to feel internal structures better and their tight fit which enabled better dexterity.

The Ansell Rubber Company was founded in Australia in 1929, and began making condoms before branching out into gas masks and weather balloons.

Answer: Drs Trounson and Wood

Ever since the first "test-tube baby" was born in 1978, scientists have tried to cryopreserve or freeze these embryos for later implantation. Despite some success, it wasn't until 1983 that a frozen embryo developed to term and a live baby was born. The team from Monash University in Melbourne and led by Drs Alan Trounson and Carl Wood, had frozen an embryo for eight weeks before implanting it into the mother's uterus. In March 1984, baby Zoe was born via caesarean delivery. The details of the birth were not revealed for several weeks, to protect the family's privacy.

Trounson and Wood had been researching and perfecting IVF and embryo transfer which has helped countless couples around the globe to conceive a child. Carl Wood was awarded a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 in medicine, and in 1995 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for his services to women's health and as a pioneer of in-vitro fertilisation.

Answer: Florey and Chain

While Alexander Fleming has always been credited with the discovery of penicillin, Australian pharmacologist and pathologist Howard Florey, along with Englishman Ernst Chain, shared Fleming's Nobel Prize for their role in the development of Penicillin.

In 1935, Florey read Fleming's paper on the apparent antibacterial effects of penicillium notatum mould and in 1941 he and Ernst Chain treated their first patient with the antibiotic. Initially the patient began improving, but Florey and Chain were unable to produce enough penicillin to continue treatment and the patient died. Florey and his research team turned their attention to this problem and by 1945 they had found a way to extract the active ingredient in the penicillium mould and mass produce the antibiotic for use by the Allies in World War II.