Lord Robert May visits ӳý
Lord Robert May addresses the ӳý community
Photo by Maria Nemchuk
On October 5, Lord Robert May, President of the Royal Society of London (2000-2005), presented a special lecture to the ӳý community on the past and present interactions between infectious agents and human populations. Lord May also offered thoughts on how current public health initiatives have contributed to the eight Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations, intended to improve the lives of the world’s poorest by 2015.
In his lecture, entitled "Parasites, people and poverty: Infectious diseases and Millennium Development Goals," Lord May delivered both good and bad news. “With respect to health, the past 50 years have been really good for people in both the developing and developed worlds,” said Lord May. “However, the bad news is that there is still a very large gap between diseases of the rich and diseases of the poor.” Explaining that scientists and policy makers should and could be doing better, particularly in relation to neglected tropical diseases, Lord May offered potential solutions such as developing a better understanding of both the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases and their hosts and prioritizing funds and resources more objectively toward current needs.
Lord Robert May holds a joint professorship at Oxford University and Imperial College, London and is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. From 2000 to 2005, he served as president of The Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science. Prior to that, he was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Head of the UK Office of Science and Technology. Lord May was awarded a knighthood in 1996 and appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1998, both for “Services to Science”. His scientific interests include how populations are structured and respond to change, particularly with respect to infectious diseases and biodiversity.
