‘Conflict of interest’:

Relationship between industry and science

Professor Carlo Fonseka

This year’s Professor K.N. Seneviratne Memorial Oration will take place at the auditorium of the Faculty of Medicine, Kynsey Road, Colombo 8, on Friday November 27 at 6.30 p.m.

This year’s orator Professor Susirith Mendis (MBBS.Ph.D) is currently the Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Physiology in the University of Ruhuna. A scholar with wide interests, he appears to be even more interested in how human society works than in how the human body works, which is the subject matter of physiology.

He has written extensively on ethics in general and medical ethics in particular. Those who wish to honour the memory of the much-lamented Professor Kirthi Nissanka Seneviratne in the 80th year of his birth should not miss this opportunity of celebrating an exceptionally gifted and admirable human being. As a bonus, they would be able to listen to a lucid exposition concerning the seemingly inevitable conflict of interest between scientists and industrialists.

Kirthi Nissanka Seneviratne was born on November 22 1929. Were he still with us, he would have reached his 80 the birthday this year. But that was not to be. He died - oh so prematurely ! - on August 10, 1986. He succumbed to a massive heart attack at the age of 56. I have said this before but it bears repetition especially in the context of the theme of this year’s memorial oration and the fact that I happen to be the Chairman of the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol.

Professor Kirthi Nissanka Seneviratne

KNS was a doctor, physiologist, scientist, scholar, educationist, administrator (national and international) volunteer army captain and university don - and a tobacco addict - all rolled into one. I used to call him Professor of Omniscience. (He had won the Arunachalam Prize for General Knowledge at Royal College in 1946 and 1947).

Tobacco menace

I feel impelled to record here the fact that he knew that tobacco is the only consumer product that kills half its regular users.

Yet KNS, the most well informed scientist I ever knew personally, gambled with tobacco staking his dear life. He couldn’t help it. That was because in the first half of the 20th century, the ruthless merchants of death called the tobacco industrialists were free to seduce children into the deadly habit by aggressive marketing.

Calculating pitilessly that innocent children represent future profits, they hooked KNS during his youth to their deadly product. So he smoked cigarettes compulsively.

His friend and contemporary in the University of Edinburgh, the distinguished Indian Physiologist A.S. Paintal, a Fellow of the Royal Society referred to this addiction when he delivered the fourth KNS Memorial Oration in 1990. Prof. Paintal recalled that whenever a friend expressed dismay about KNS’s smoking, in scorn of consequence, his standard response had been, “whatever will be, will be”.

More than a fatalist, KNS was a gambler. He believed that he belonged to the 50 percent of heavy smokers whose health tobacco gravely harms without actually killing them. But, of course, nothing could be done when he found himself among the other 50 percent. Even so intelligent a man did not figure out that a 50-50 chance of an early death is not worth taking.

It will be interesting to hear what this year’s Professor KNS Memorial Orator, Professor ‘Susirith Mendis will have to say about the ethics of scientists who work for murderous industries such as the tobacco industry.

Biography

In the 80th year after his birth, it is appropriate to recall the family and academic pedigrees of KNS. He was the second of the three children of Dr. Robert and Laura Seneviratne. Having qualified as a doctor in the Ceylon Medical College, Dr. Robert Seneviratne went to Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland where he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Years later, his son KNS was also to tread the same path to Edinburgh where he acquired not only a Ph.D from the University of Edinburgh, but also a charming highly educated and accomplished Scottish lass called Alison Alexander as his life’s partner. She was the daughter of the Senior Physician in the Teaching Hospital of the Edinburgh Medical School. A brilliant student, KNS was an alumnus of Royal College Colombo, University of Ceylon and the University of Edinburgh.

At Edinburgh, his Ph.D supervisor was Professor David Whitteridge FRS, who was at that time the last surviving direct pupil of the famous Oxford Professor of Physiology, Nobel laureate and Neurophysiologist, Sir Charles Sherrington OM. Thus KNS had an impeccable academic pedigree.

Family pedigree

As already indicated in passing, no less impressive was the family pedigree of KNS.

His younger brother Nihal Seneviratne graduated in law from the University of Ceylon at Peradeniya in its glory days when the world famous authority on constitutional law, Sir Ivor Jennings was the Vice Chancellor.

Nihal was taught constitutional law by Sir Ivor.

After graduation, for many years Nihal Seneviratne was Clerk of the House of Representatives.

It was not KNS’s fault that I felt stunningly inferior in his presence.

He was so clever. He was so well-educated in the best of places. He was so tall, dark and handsome. He was a superb lecturer who taught abstruse neurophysiology without a scrap of paper.

The students hero-worshipped him almost to idolatry. And to cap it all, he was so well connected socially. Once when I openly envied him his brain, his education and his family, he said “Yes, but my brother is only a clerk”. Some clerk Nihal Seneviratne was ! KNS had delightful humour.

He never minded his nickname “Bull”. Before I got to know him well, I had imagined that he must have acquired his nickname by virtue of his exceptionally tall, powerfully built, majestic physique.

But I was wrong. I gathered later on that during his years at Royal College in Colombo, there had been two Seneviratnes in class, one clever and the other not so clever. Those were the days when well-meaning, dedicated teachers were innocent of child psychology and thought nothing of verbally abusing children in what they believed to be in the children’s best interests.

Irritated by a foolish answer given by the not so clever Seneviratne, one such old fashioned teacher had called him “cow”. Ever thereafter, by rigorous schoolboy logic, the other (clever) Seneviratne became Bull. The nickname stuck and KNS rejoiced in it. I still preserve letters he has sent me signed “Bull”.

Professional career

By common consent, KNS is the most distinguished physiologist Sri Lanka has produced upto date.

He was a world class neurophysiologist i.e. a scientist who specializes in the study of the brain and nerves.

He joined the Department of Physiology of the Colombo Medical School as a Demonstrator in 1957 and ended up as Professor of Physiology before he was 40.

He was specially chosen by the government to establish the Institute of Postgraduate Medicine in 1974. It transformed itself into the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine. (PGIM). This was perhaps his most significant and lasting contribution to medical education in our country.

In 1981, he joined the WHO as a Regional Adviser and worked enthusiastically until his sudden death in 1986.