My friends,Tiresias must admit that it has been fun posting on...

My friends,

Tiresias must admit that it has been fun posting on Optiscan. There is so much more to say. He realises however, that we live in a time of Twitter, short attention spans, and soundbites. Long diatribes on subjects are not well received and rarely read. Tiresias is impressed by some of the replies and request for other issues to address. These are all subjects for future posts. As readers may have noticed, Tiresias, among other things, is a student of medical history, and today would again like to mention several interesting facts involving little recognised revolutionary medical developments by Australians.

Australia has a history of Australians making great medical innovations, and then not profiting from them. He would like to mention three revolutionary developments made by Australians, which have transformed medicine, and life, from which Australia gained nothing and from which foreigners have made hundreds of billions of dollars.

The first, a drug developed in the 1940s by an Australian, which has saved more lives than have been lost in all wars in all of history. Penicillin, of course. Developed by an Australian, Howard Florey, on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford university. He, not Fleming is the true discoverer of penicillin. He did not patent it. He took it to America, as part of the war effort, they patented it, and the rest is history.

The second, also a drug, lithium carbonate, the first proven medical treatment for mental illness, still in use, developed by an Australian psychiatrist, John Cade. it was the beginning of the emptying of the mental asylums. Recognition and benefit for Australian, and the discoverer? Same as penicillin, but even less.

G-CSF, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, developed at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, in 1983, and sold for a pittance, and has transformed cancer chemotherapy enabling all the modern chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer.

Tiresias fears that this may well happen again with Optiscan. He would suggest that the low share price and the staleness of the register, a bid for this company would look very attractive to many shareholders. He would suggest that many shareholders might be happy to sell out at something like 20 cents. This would be a great tragedy for the long term shareholders and for Australia. This is the next revolution in cancer treatment. How much is that worth?