The inaugural Professor K.N. Seneviratne Memorial Oration was delivered in 1987 by Professor David Witteridge, FRS whose claim to fame was that he was the last direct pupil of the great Oxford Neurophysiologist, Sir Charles Sherrington, OM, Nobel Laureate and President of the prestigious Royal Society of London founded in 1661. Professor K.N. Seneviratne worked [...]

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Prof. Gunawardena to speak on ‘One animal model – many experiments: Use of animal models in physiology experiments’

30th K.N. Seneviratne Memorial Oration on November 24
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Prof. K.N. Seneviratne

The inaugural Professor K.N. Seneviratne Memorial Oration was delivered in 1987 by Professor David Witteridge, FRS whose claim to fame was that he was the last direct pupil of the great Oxford Neurophysiologist, Sir Charles Sherrington, OM, Nobel Laureate and President of the prestigious Royal Society of London founded in 1661. Professor K.N. Seneviratne worked for his Ph.D. under Professor Witteridge. In due course, he succeeded Professor A.C.E. Koch as Professor of Physiology in the Colombo Medical School in 1968. I had the honour of succeeding Professor Seneviratne in 1983.

It fell to my happy lot to write the newspaper blurb for the K.N. Seneviratne oration from its inception. So for some 30 years I have told the simple truth that Keerthi Nissanka Seneviratne, elder son of Dr. Robert Seneviratne and brother of Nihal Seneviratne (the most distinguished Clerk of the old House of Representatives) has been the greatest physiologist in the history of the Colombo Medical School which began in 1870.

In Shakespeare’s play ‘King John’, it so happens that King John is crowned for a second time. Concerning this, a character in the play says that crowning King John for a second time is: “…To guard a title that was rich before/ To gild refined gold, To paint the lily/ To throw a perfume on the violet/ To smooth the ice or add another hue/ Unto the rainbow … wasteful and ridiculous exercise”. Unlike King John’s second coronation, however, each K.N. Seneviratne Oration is new and the audience is partly new. So there is justification for gilding refined gold for the benefit of the new.

The orator this year is Professor Sampath Gunawardena of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ruhuna. As the Colombo Medical School being the mother of all faculties, Professor Sampath Gunawardena came under my influence as a physiologist. He is an accomplished physiologist, specializing in the field of Cardiovascular Physiology. Senior citizens reading this may remember George Bernard Show’s excoriation of vivisection in his preface to his play ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’ published in 1906. Professor Gunawardena is a humane person and the title of his oration‘One animal model – many experiments: use of animal models in physiology experiments’ implies that he is greatly concerned to minimize the harm done to animals in the pursuit of knowledge for the benefit of human health. In his diatribe against vivisection, GBS avers that Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, Ruskin and Mark Twain were against vivisection. I believe GBS without verification. Speaking for myself, for my Ph.D, I had to literally guillotine 10 rats I had fed and trained for six months. At the end of that time they had come to trust me but in the end I had to cut off their heads. Thereafter I ceased to be an experimental physiologist.

In 2009 I was invited to deliver the Professor S.R. Kottegoda Memorial Oration. I chose to speak on ‘Ten commandments for scientific researchers’. The fifth commandment I laid down went like this: “Because all sentient beings belong to the complex web of life on planet earth, ensure that animals are used for research, if, and only if, there is no alternative and that the animals so used are well cared for and are not exposed to avoidable pain and injury.

Professor Sampath Gunawardena is an experimental physiologist with a high academic reputation and he has the gift of skilful exposition. He will be worth listening to at the New Building Lecture Theatre, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo on November 24, 2017 at 6 p.m.

All are welcome.

 

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