A vision to transform lives with Dr. James Muecke
Sir John Kirwan has a chat with Dr James Muecke about his career being a blindness prevention pioneer and what he is up to now.
Find out about James’ stories and where you can listen to the full episode.
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His work in blindness prevention has taken him all over the world, but winning Australian of the Year came with backlash at home.
Episode 3 of Open Minded brings you Dr James Muecke AM, the 2020 Australian of the Year. He sits down with Sir John Kirwan to share stories of his life and career including his life-threatening encounters while working in Africa and the Middle East.
Dr James Muecke founded Sight For All in 2018, a charity aiming to help in the fight against blindness in the Aboriginal and mainstream communities of Australia and some of the poorest countries of Asia and Africa. Sight For All’s comprehensive and sustainable projects are now impacting on the lives of over one million people each year.
James is a researcher, a teacher, an author, a musician, a photographer, and a film producer. Tune in to the full episode to catch his practical strategies for dealing with the ever so common keyboard warrior in today's times as well as tips on how to bounce back from adversity, his full-circle career transformation and what he does with himself now.
Discover the details of Dr James Muecke’s conversation with Sir John Kirwan
Dr James was set on being a doctor for as long as he can remember. However, after practicing medicine for a year after study, treating people who mainly had chronic, self-inflicted diseases, Dr James became disillusioned. He reinvigorated his passion for medicine after a year volunteering in Kenya, Africa where he discovered that he was able to cure infectious diseases such as malaria and TB as well as help people in poor communities. This encouraged him to pursue a career in public health.
Aside from the life-threatening encounters with rebel soldiers and wild animals, James’ time in Africa and Israel also taught him about his passion for having an impact on people's lives and making a difference in the world.
After his involvement with poverty in disadvantaged countries and communities, seeing children in blind schools with easily preventable impairments, he came home to Australia to find a crisis of their own in diabetes.
A neurological condition impacting on his dexterity, called Focal Dystonia has forced James into a premature retirement from surgery. Not letting his impairment slow him down, James then devoted his time to Sight For All. Here he advocated for prevention of avoidable diseases like diabetes and pushing for a tax on sugar, coming full-circle in his career.
He has also redirected his vigor to crafting films, and has a number of powerful documentaries under his belt and several compelling projects in production.
Being awarded Australian of the Year presented Dr James with some fantastic opportunities for speaking and getting a very important message out.
Unsurprisingly, the spotlight also brought many negative comments from online trolls with it. In the full episode, James describes how he responded to the online negativity and kept himself well.
Read:
Troll Hunting by Ginger Gorman
India: An area of darkness, A Wounded Civilization & A Million Mutinies Now (Picador Classic) by V. S. Naipaul
The Diabetes Code by Dr Jason Fung
Here’s where you can listen to Open Minded and Episode 3:
See the full transcript of the interview below
Sir John Kirwan 00:00:04
Hey, everyone, it's John Kirwan here, and I'm really excited as this is my podcast called Open Minded. This podcast is interviewing inspirational people from all walks of life. From leaders, from people who are making decisions, from normal people. You know, I want to give you the real stuff that's happening every day in the minds of these leaders. How they stay well in high-pressure roles, how they build resilience in themselves, how they look after their people, and how can you invest in yourself and your people to do mental wellbeing well. So, this is JK and this is Open Minded. So, let's go.
Sir John Kirwan 00:00:39
Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Open Minded. And today, I'm really excited to be joined by Dr James Muecke. Now, this guy is absolutely amazing, Australian of the Year. He's also achieved many other things. He has a work and a passion for blindness prevention, social impact and humanitarian efforts. He co-founded an organisation named Sight For All. Today, we're going to talk about his story. I mean, I'm not even going to tease you, but we're going to go to Africa. We're going to go into poor communities. We're going to talk about some of the amazing highlights, but also some of the scary things in James's life. So, James, thank you very much for joining us, my friend. We are what I would call new friends. I've met you a couple of times on Zoom, which is the modern world, but the last time we spoke, you absolutely inspired me. So, can you just give us a little bit of a background about your passion for blindness for all? That was really intriguing. I didn't even think about blindness that often, to be fair.
Dr James Muecke 00:01:48
No, fair. Absolutely sure. I mean, thank you, JK. It's lovely to be here this morning and thanks for inviting me to be a part of your Open Minded podcast. It's really, really special to be here and to see you and you're being a legend in rugby, I was an ex-rugby player actually, I grew up in Canberra. So, I'm a rugby union player from way back, passionate Wallabies supporter. Good to see the match on the weekend...
Sir John Kirwan 00:02:13
What a... Dr James, what a great game. How good was it?!
Dr James Muecke 00:02:18
Incredible, incredible. Two more to go so that's going to be good to keep an eye on what happens, but yes, so, I'm an eye surgeon. I'm a doctor and as you say, a passion for fighting blindness. And really it stems way back. I wanted to be a doctor for as long as I could remember. There was nothing in my early years that drove me down the pathway of medicine. It just was one of those things I knew from the earliest years I wanted to do, to be a part of it, to help people, really, I think. I also had a passion for using my hands, you know, my early years. I used to love putting together model airplanes and model tanks from World War Two. And so this idea of using my hands, helping people, ultimately wanting to do surgery was the thing that drove me through high school, studied hard, studied my ass off to get into medicine, and fortunately did get into medicine and then as I worked my way through medicine, I had this idea that eye surgery, and particularly the microsurgery was something that was really appealing to me. During my medical school years, I did a medical elective in Kenya and I came across this little hospital in the mountains of Kenya, called Tumutumu hospital. And it just was beautiful. And I thought one day, I'd love to come back and work here. So, during my internship which was my first year of practising real medicine, I became a little disillusioned. I was you know; I was on the back of really twelve years, six years of high school, six years of medical school, really studying hard. So, I needed a break from the study. That first year of practising real medicine, I was mainly seeing patients who had chronic diseases that were self-inflicted diseases caused by things like smoking and a poor diet and just needed a change. I just needed something different. And so, during my internship, I remember that time I had in Africa as a... during my medical elective as a medical student, and I wrote to the director of the hospital, he invited me back. And so, I went back to work as a volunteer doctor in this hospital for a year, which was just a life-changing year for me. You know, for the first time, I was now able to treat patients who had diseases that weren't self-inflicted, that were mainly infectious diseases, things like malaria, TB.
Sir John Kirwan 00:04:40
Dr James, I'll just stop you there because I was really interested because you said, like, you know, when I was a young fella, the first thing I said, I didn't say mum or dad. I said All Blacks, right? I wanted to be a fireman like every other kid. So, you from as long as you can remember wanted to be a doctor. And then you just mentioned that you were disillusioned. So, how did you come to the realisation that you were disillusioned, and you wanted to make a change? Because that's courageous, right?
Dr James Muecke 00:05:07
Yeah, it's a long time ago now, so I can't remember the specifics. But I think myself, I'm a person that likes results, likes being able to achieve change, make things happen. And with chronic illness, you're really just alleviating symptoms, improving quality of life, extending the length of life... But not being able to cure and so that was a frustration for me. Just, I suppose it wasn't my mindset, it wasn't my personality, not being able to cure people. Frustrating. So, when I was suddenly able to cure people in Africa, it really did inspire me that this is something I wanted to do to reinvigorate a love for medicine. And it also inspired me to pursue a career in public health. And I mentioned before that I wanted to do surgery, but particularly microsurgery. I was starting to get an interest in, you know, eyes. And so, the idea of actually curing blindness, particularly cataract blindness, which is the leading cause of blindness in the world - makes up something like 90 per cent of blindness in poorer countries, was something that that was really calling out to me. So, it was the ability to cure, the ability to use my hands to perform fine work, and also to help people in poorer communities. So, it was those three things that really came together at that time to drive me down this pathway.
Sir John Kirwan 00:06:34
And so curable diseases in Africa, often, you know, we think that they have the non-curable ones and we have the curable one. So, what you're saying to me is that you go to Africa and you realise you can do so much good. Was there a lot of blindness that you felt you could have prevented? Were you already...? I can't even...ophthalmologist, is that how you say it? I don't even know how to spell that but, were you an eye surgeon by then or you're still trying to find your way?
Dr James Muecke00:06:59
It's harder to spell than it is to say. So, it's an ophthalmologist. No, I actually didn't come across anything in my time in Africa, which was anything to do with blindness, but during my final year of medical school, I had a... we had a number of lectures and we had a bit of time, you know, observing ophthalmology and it's something that just tweaked my interests almost immediately and in fact, before I went to... Sorry during my internship, actually, I approached the director of the eye department at the time, and I said to him, "I want to... I'm really interested in doing ophthalmology, but I actually want to have a break for a year. I just want to go to Africa and just have this experience. And, you know, would that actually put me at a disadvantage of getting into the ophthalmology training program?" And he said, "Absolutely not at all". He said that if there were two people coming for the job and you'd had this experience and broaden your horizons, I would be, you know, leaning towards you as the appropriate candidate, which was really reassuring to me because I'd only heard during my internship I was exploring a number of opportunities of what I wanted to specialise in. And I was hearing from so many people that if you leave the system, you'll never get back in. If you, you know, if you go to Africa, forget it, you know, your opportunity to specialise will be over. And maybe that was the case in some specialities, but in ophthalmology, the director, as I said, he embraced the idea and that gave me the reassurance to go off and have this extraordinary experience. And I was so grateful. One of the most important pieces of advice I've ever received is to, you know, to follow that dream.
Sir John Kirwan 00:08:36
But at one stage, you're actually fearing for your life. Can you tell us that story? So, you go on this adventure and then you're scared of getting murdered or whatever.
Dr James Muecke 00:08:47
Oh, wow. Yeah, so I've had... during that time, I had quite a number of experiences which were life-threatening. I don't know how I actually survived the year, to be honest. The one which I suppose was probably the most confronting was... really started before I actually well, really happened before I started work. So, before I started at the hospital in Kenya, I just wanted to have a bit of time travelling and particularly I wanted to go and visit the gorillas in Rwanda. And if you know the map of East Africa, so Kenya is in East Africa. Rwanda is south-west of Kenya. It's a landlocked country. Now, I'd saved through my entire internship, this is my first year of earning money so that I could volunteer for the entire year. So, I didn't have a lot of money and so I couldn't afford to fly there. So, I had to go buy land. So, I actually went via southern Uganda. So, I took the night train to the border with Uganda and then on through southern Uganda. And much of Uganda was still in civil war at the time. So, this was 1989 and I eventually made it to the south-west corner. Which was the only safe part of the country, it was the government-held part of the country when Idi Amin, we all remember Idi Amin, the former brutal dictator of Uganda. He was attempting to come back into Uganda, the country that had deposed of his evil rule a few years before that. So, he actually sent an advance party of rebel soldiers to pave the way for his return. And I just happened to find myself in the very same village at the very same time that this group of men decided to stop for the night. So, I was actually with a travelling companion, a guy called Mike from New York City. He'd never left New York City before. He wanted to go and visit the gorillas in Rwanda as well. So, we met up and we went travelling together. So, we were in this village and the moment we set foot in this village, we were surrounded by this ragtag bunch of very heavily armed men. They were drunk, they were filthy, and they were very, very menacing. They tore apart our backpacks. They were looking for weapons, of course, they didn't find any weapons, but they found out binoculars. And so, they accused us of being spies. In fact, they told us that they'd seen us spying on them from the hills above the village. And so, they marched us away at gunpoint and they locked us up in this ramshackle hut at the edge of the village and they told us to behave ourselves and then they left us alone in the hut. So, we were absolutely petrified. You can imagine we were convinced if we stayed in that hut and in that village, we were done for. Mike was absolutely freaking out. He was, as I said, he'd never left New York City before, so he was only going to see the gorillas, he hadn't signed up to be captured by a different type of gorilla. So anyway, I somehow managed to keep my cool when I said, "Mike, we've got to get out of here." So, we actually broke out the back of the hut and escaped the village into the jungle behind. This was as night was falling, so it was dusk, and an African jungle is not the place that you want to be at feeding time. Anyway, there's more to that story. I can keep on going, but obviously, I survived and ended up getting back to Kenya and spending my year working as a doctor. But, you know, it's was pretty confronting experience.
Dr James Muecke 00:12:09
What's your mindset, Dr James, what's your mindset? Like, not many of us have been in a life and death situation. So, what's your mindset when you're sitting in that hut? I mean, can you think back to things where you just thought, I'm actually going to die if I stay, but I risk dying if I go... How do you come to a decision and you know, you're travelling companion Mike, he's shitting himself...? So, who... what happens? What's the mind process?
Dr James Muecke 00:12:38
Again, it's 30 years ago, so I can't quite remember the details. But I know that you know, you have to actually wear the consequences of staying. I mean, these guys, as I mentioned, they were seriously minicing. So, we got the sense that, if we did stay in the village, that this was going to be a problem for us. And they're unpredictable. They were drunk. And so, if we stayed there, you know, we're really hedging your bets. So that's why I decided that we had to get out of there, Mike just came along. But then we found ourselves in this jungle and we actually made our way out of the jungle and we found a little dusty road and we started to head along that road, but we realised from where we were and from the day before, we'd actually found... landed ourselves in a national park. It was called Queen Elizabeth two National Park in Uganda. So, here we were at nighttime, walking on this dusty road through the middle of this national park at feeding time. And so, we could have kept on going and we had about 30 kilometres to get to where we were trying to get to. So, we had to weigh up our situation again. So, okay... do we go back and risk death in that village or do we keep on walking through this national park and risk getting eaten alive? And actually, we ended up going back to the village, believe it or not. So, we thought we were safer going back to the village and risking these guys than actually the wild animals of Africa. So, this was the decision that we came up with. But as we arrive back at the village, a car pulled up. And I quickly ran up to the car and said, you know, we're wanting to get on, to get along to this next village 30 kilometres away, are you heading in that direction? And they said, yeah, yeah, you can come with us and jump in the back of the car. So, we got in the car, and rather than keeping on going down that road, these guys actually turn into the village. They actually had to fill up with some petrol. This is just a little dusty village, you know, really just one street and they had a small petrol pump there. And so, the guys pull into the petrol pump and fill it up and then they disappeared, and they were gone for about an hour. And the whole time, Mike was his name, and I was sitting in the back seat of the car, trying to keep a low profile because we were expecting these rebel soldiers to turn up again at the time. And eventually, the two guys in the car came back and they'd clearly been drinking. Anyway, we set off on our way... just as we were leaving the village, there was a pub on the corner. And these guys, these rebel soldiers suddenly poured out of the pub and they were pointing at us, laughing at us and the guys in the front seat were laughing back and sort of talking in their language. And, you know, suddenly we felt we were in an even worse predicament because these guys were obviously in cahoots. So, we headed off on this 30-kilometre journey and it was night time. And this is the edge of what's called the Rwenzori mountain range on the border of Zaire (what was Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Uganda. And it was a little dusty, bumpy road and a sheer drop to one side. Nighttime. These guys were not friendly. They were not talking to us. The music was blaring. There was a huge hole in the bottom of the car between where we were sitting and there was dust and exhaust pouring up into the car. And then after a few kilometres, the guy slams on the brakes gets out of the car and heads around to the boot. So, I quickly jump out thinking that the guy's going to grab a gun and shoot us and throw us over the edge. And so, I got out and went round and he opened the boot and he got out a water container and came around to the front of the car, opened the bonnet and poured some water on the radiator, which was leaking. And so, you know, this terrifying situation and we went, you know, it was a very slow journey. We're probably doing 5, 10 kilometres an hour. And it took several hours to get there. But multiple times during the journey, he had to stop and fill up the radiator with water, but we made it, of course. But the whole time, we were absolutely beside ourselves that at some point, these guys were going to shoot us and throw us over the edge. So, that's the rest of the story.
Sir John Kirwan 00:17:02
Wow, so morf yourself forward. You do your year in Africa; you decide that you want to dedicate yourself to the public health system. You come home and you specialise in eye surgery... And then you create Sight For All. Tell us how you keep thinking about... I need to do more. I want to give back. And what does Sight For All do?
Dr James Muecke 00:17:31
So, I mentioned before that the idea of doing the microsurgery and particularly cataract surgery in poorer countries was something that really appealed. So, I came back to Adelaide after my time in Africa, went through my ophthalmology training, and from there I actually went to Jerusalem to work as an ophthalmologist in a Hospital, an Eye Hospital, St. John's Eye Hospital, run by St. Johns. Snd spent a year there with my young wife and we had another extraordinary year, and this was another year which was full of adventure and excitement.
Sir John Kirwan 00:18:04
Jerusalem! I mean, what was going on in Jerusalem back then? So, are you just going from war zone to war zone? I mean, a little bit dangerous Dr James, you should have gone into the army maybe.
Dr James Muecke 00:18:19
It sounds a bit like that, doesn't it? But I do love an adventure. And absolutely this year in Jerusalem was another adventure for both of us actually. I wasn't going to tell you about Jerusalem because I was actually heading towards why Sight For All evolved. But I can certainly come to that in a moment.
Sir John Kirwan 00:18:37
Tell us about Jerusalem, I'm intrigued.
Dr James Muecke 00:18:39
Oh, Jerusalem was amazing. So, this was... certainly when we arrived. It was a relatively peaceful time in Jerusalem. It was what was called the intifada, which was the conflict between the Muslim and the Jewish people. And this was a quiet time. Things were reasonably peaceful, and it felt peaceful until about halfway through the year when my wife actually worked on the Israeli side. She's a commissioned interior architect. And on the Palestinian side, which is where the eye hospital was the St. John's Eye Hospital, there were no architectural firms doing interior architectural work. So, I worked as an eye specialist in this hospital and she worked on the Israeli side and she used to catch two buses to work each day and two buses home and one morning, she went extra early because it was very, very hot in the middle of summer, you can imagine. So, she took a really early bus to work and when she got off the bus and the bus came back round back towards the suburb where the eye hospital was, it was blown up. So, only a few minutes, maybe 15 minutes or so after she got off the bus, that particular bus was blown up in the suburb next to where the eye hospital was, which is on the Israeli side. So, she had this extraordinary experience as well. And she resigned from that job immediately and ended up working with a Palestinian developer on the Palestinian side and actually was involved in the refurbishment of one of the biblical churches in the old city of Jerusalem. So, she had this extraordinary experience as well. But so that really was...marked a bit of a turning point that experience and then the rest of the year was quite stressful, actually. We had the first Palestinian elections ever in that part of the world. So that was a pretty tense time. And then we had Rabin's assassination. So, Rabin was assassinated. We actually went to his funeral and it was, you know, an extraordinary time and things really started to go downhill after then. So, you know, it's quite a relief. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of our life together. And we cherish that time that we had. But again, it was full of adventure, full of danger. I also had another experience, a very, very stressful experience, when... one of the things I really loved to do while we're there, I was able to hone my microsurgical skills. So, this is my first year as an ophthalmologist outside the training program. So really, I was my own boss now. And so, it was a great opportunity for me to improve my confidence and competence and surgical skills and particularly with cataract surgery. So, I was loving the opportunity to cure people. So, this was, you know, in stark contrast to that experience, that as the intern where I was just not feeling like I was achieving anything. Now, I was really starting to feel like I was making an impact on people's lives. But one of the other things I really loved was the outreach trips. So, we used to go out to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the occupied territories, to undertake eye clinics in the refugee camps and that was a brilliant experience, but also quite a dangerous experience at times and I mean...
Sir John Kirwan 00:22:03
What was it like? I mean what's the Gaza Strip like from a physical point of view, like we all... people our age... we've grown up with this conflict, right? And so, when you go to go to the Gaza Strip like... no one would think about going to the Gaza Strip. What's it like physically? What's it like from a feeling point of view? Is it... How do you deal with that? What is it?
Dr James Muecke 00:22:29
Yeah. So, the Gaza Strip, as you're aware, it's a part of that world, which is essentially cordoned off from the rest of the world. So, to get into the Gaza Strip, you actually have a checkpoint and it's quite a rigorous process. The cars all get searched, you get searched. So, you feel like you're entering a war zone. So. it's all cordoned off from the rest of the world. It's only a small strip of land. It faces the Mediterranean Sea, but on all three sides, really, it's basically enclosed in there. And you then go into the city, Gaza City itself and that's where we did the eye clinic. And it's tense. It's certainly not a beautiful part of the world, it's a ramshackle city, but it's a functioning city and, you know, once you're actually in the city itself, there's nothing but hospitality. In fact, you know, whenever we went out to the refugee camps in the villages in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, we had the most wonderful experiences that the Palestinians were so warm and welcoming. And, you know, once we'd finished our eye clinic for the day, we would have a feast. They would always have a feast for us. And it was you know, it was a special experience. So very warm, very hospitable. And even within the Gaza Strip, you know, a part of the world, which is extremely tense, you know, you have this lovely warmth and hospitality there. So, you didn't feel once you're in there, once you're working and doing your eye clinic, you were oblivious to what was going on outside. And certainly, we hear and we know of regular attacks that happened, really both ways across that border between Israel and the Palestinian territory. But fortunately, when we were there, we didn't have any such experience. But I actually I remember my very first outreach trip to a refugee camp in one of the West Bank villages and a machine gun battle broke out between two Palestinian factions right next to the eye clinic where I was working and of course, that was the first time I'd experienced anything like that. And I turned to one of the nurses from the hospital who was helping me, said, "oh, my God, you know what's going on here?" And they said, "oh, no, don't worry. That's just it's just a battle between two Palestinian factions that happens all the time." And so, you know, you're just surrounded. You realise you're in a war zone. So, it was tense. And another... there was another time when we were coming back from one of the West Bank villages, and it was a month after one of the Palestinian terrorist leaders was assassinated by the Israelis. And so in the Muslim religion, I think about 30 days after someone dies, there's a... like, they have a wake or celebration, I suppose. And so, we were coming back, I think it was through Nablus and we were in the hospital van and we actually found ourselves in this huge mass of people. And it was as those images were from, you know, we remember them from the news where they're, you know, burning effigies of Israeli flags and burning effigies of Israeli leaders and burning tires and things like that. And there was hostility and danger. And the air was with thick with menace. It was absolutely terrifying. So we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of this group of people. And as soon as they saw the hospital van, and we were surrounded by quite literally hundreds of angry people. Now, the important point here is that the license plates, if you are from the Palestinian territories, you have blue license plates. If you're from Israel, or from Jerusalem, you have the yellow number plates. So, although we were a Palestinian hospital treating Palestinian people, they saw yellow number plates, they saw Israelis and they were wanting to rip the van apart and probably tear us to shreds. But the driver and the nurse were both Palestinian, quickly wound down the windows and said: "it's okay, we're from the hospital." And it was like Moses parting the way or the people just parted and let us through. And we were able to proceed on our way. But again, you know, another very tense and terrifying experience. And, you know, it's funny, isn't it? Because at the time, you think the first thing one would do once you were captured by rebel soldiers in Uganda or if you were having that confounding experience in Israel, you'd be on the next plane home. But, you know, at that age, I think, you know, you're invincible. And it's just one of life's fantastic adventures. And I look back at those experiences and think, my goodness, how did I actually ever decide that was a good thing to do or that I should even stay in that part of the world when I'm constantly, you know? And putting my life at risk and potentially my wife as well.
Sir John Kirwan 00:27:35
How do you so, you know, you created / co-founded Sight For All and you mentioned to me last week that... so how do you deal with Uganda where there's real poverty? You know you deal with the Gaza Strip where, you know, people are so appreciative they're giving you a feed and then you come back into the Western world and you're going into poverty in your own country. How does... how do you sort of deal with that mentally? And tell us a little bit about Sight For All and where the motivation came from.
Dr James Muecke 00:28:08
Sure. So, after Jerusalem, I actually went on to London and I studied eye cancer and then came back to Adelaide in mid-98. So, 22 years ago now. And I knew that I wanted to keep on working in poorer parts of the world and I wanted to continue to work to fight blindness in poorer parts of the world. So, we settled. I bought into a practice, you know, there was no more, you know, going for great lengths of time. So, there were a number of colleagues that were working in the Department of Ophthalmology, in the eye department at the Royal Adelaide Hospital who were interested in this field. So, fighting blindness in poorer communities. And so I got involved with them and got involved in a number of research and teaching projects in Asia. And Asia is home to half the world's blind adults and two-thirds of the world's blind kids. So, you know, this is particularly the poorer countries of Asia. It's a serious problem. And so, there are a number of experiences which ultimately fill me with a passion to want to do something, to want to make a change and a number of very, very powerful experiences. But the one that really springs to mind was in 2007. So, I was part of a research team from the Royal Adelaide Hospital undertaking a childhood blindness study in Myanmar and South East Asia. So, there's a study to determine the causes of blindness amongst children in schools for the blind across the country. And what we found was absolutely staggering and confronting. We found that nearly half of the kids have blindness that could have been preventable or treated. So that was something that was, you know, in itself was pretty powerful. But the thing that really had such a deep impact on myself and in fact, on the entire team was the leading cause of blindness that we found, which was measles. So I imagine that most people wouldn't even be aware that measles could cause blindness, but it actually caused blindness in the most painful and disfiguring way, and it's irreversible once a child is blind from measles. And so, to be surrounded at seven schools for the blind with kids who are irreversibly blinded by measles was just one of the most...
Sir John Kirwan 00:30:22
So, measles... is it a side effect of the measles? So, not everyone gets blind from measles? You're just unlucky? How does that work? Or measles is going to cause blindness. I don't...
Dr James Muecke 00:30:35
So, here is a country, you know, we're talking... there's the anti vaxxers, there's... we have measles vaccine. It's one of the many vaccines that we have in childhood to prevent the really terrible complications of measles and one of which is loss of vision - blind so it damages the cornea, the front windows of the eyes. So, here's a country that had very little reach of its vaccination program. In fact, they were very suspicious of vaccines at the time. And so, there was limited... we didn't have that herd immunity that we've heard about with covid. We didn't have a herd immunity in Myanmar that allowed them to fight measles. So, when a child gets measles, it can kill them. It can have a number of devastating complications. And blindness is just one of those. Probably or almost certainly exacerbated by poor nutrition. So, when you have poorer nutrition, measles becomes particularly dangerous. And so, yes. So, this was a really powerful experience it actually made me realise there's so much more to blindness than cataracts and being able to cure cataract. And it really drove home to me for the first time, how powerful prevention is in medicine. So, now I've come full circle. I've gone from being frustrated by not being able to cure patients as an intern with chronic diseases that were pretty much self-inflicted, through to, you know, loving the ability to cure people through cataract surgery and other diseases that we were treating, to now seeing first hand the devastating effects on kids who had to then live a lifetime of blindness because they just hadn't been vaccinated for measles.
Dr James Muecke 00:32:24
And the other thing that we saw... we actually also found a similar result in schools for the blind in Cambodia and Laos. So, we found that measles is a big problem. But the other thing that we found, you know, we were surrounded by kids who are blind from measles, but we occasionally found children who are visually impaired, even blind, because they'd never been tested for spectacles. Because there was no one available in their country to be able to provide something that we take for granted in our country. So, again, you know, it's a very, really preventable cause of loss of vision and blindness. And so now, I've really changed my mindset towards something that could be addressed quite easily.
Sir John Kirwan 00:33:03
Well, I might get onto that shortly, because I know that you've moved into some other passions, but you've had to give up operating because of focal dystonia, is that right? So...
Sir John Kirwan 00:33:16
Yes.
Sir John Kirwan 00:33:16
Here's this passion you have, you're doing all this great work, and I imagine the motivation that you're getting from putting a pair of glasses on a young child that then can see or curing someone through cataract and that's taken away from you. How did you deal with that mentally?
Dr James Muecke 00:33:34
That was so that happened, I was diagnosed with focal dystonia in 2012. So, by that stage, I'd had 20 years of operating or 20 or more years of operating, and the operating room was becoming difficult. I actually didn't know what was going on. I was just holding the surgical instruments with my right hand with increasing force. And it was just giving rise to this discomfort in my hand. And particularly by the end of the long operating lists, you know, my hand was quite sore. It wasn't impacting on my surgical skills. It just was concerning me. And so, it wasn't until 2012 when I actually gave one of my neurology colleagues a call and he was able to tell me immediately over the phone that you have focal dystonia.
Sir John Kirwan 00:34:23
But what is that for us butchers in the world?
Dr James Muecke 00:34:26
Yes. So, it's a cortical neurodegenerative condition. It's actually genetic. So, my father had it and we didn't actually realise until I had my diagnosis that dad... you know, what had dad bean through? Dad always held his pen in a funny way, and he had bad handwriting, but no one actually knew what was going on in Dad. So, when I had this diagnosis, it was great to suddenly be aware of what was causing this. So, what was the underlying problem? So, just to give you a bit of an idea of focal dystonia... so, when the brain tells a given muscle to contract, at the same time, it has to silence opposing muscles. And so, when you're doing very fine, work with your hand, there's a complex series of messages going from the cortex down to your hands and back again. It's very sophisticated. So, when you're doing sophisticated, fine work, the focal dystonia interferes with your ability to do that. So, really it was manifesting initially by just holding the instruments very tightly. I was also holding my pen really tightly as well, and that was also causing me some problem. And it was something that was slowly progressive. And so because it was slowly progressive, I had time to adapt and I actually had a series of what I call micro innovations that I engaged over several years to adapt to hold my instruments in different ways, you know, just things that were happening in my everyday life. I was, you know, shaving and I was cutting myself regularly because I was having difficulty holding the razor blades. So, I then bought myself an electric shaver. And then I started using my left hand and then I started using my left hand to do virtually everything I could... using the electric toothbrush, using a spoon. So, you know, these days by one o'clock, a few years forward, if I held a champagne flute with my right hand, I'd smash it. So that's how little control I have over my hand function these days. So, you can imagine, it was a year later. So 2012 diagnosis, 2013, I actually started writing with my left hand, so I went cold turkey to my left hand, and then I had an operating list, a cataract surgery lists where I had a close call. Fortunately, it wasn't a disaster, but there's a very fine line in cataract surgery between a successful result and a disaster. At the end of that list, I turned to the scrub nurse and said, "That's it. I've just finished my that's cataract operation." and I was in a daze for a few days. I was thinking, you know, have I been hasty in this decision, am I you know, am I doing the right thing here? And it took me a few days to realise, yes. I am putting my patients at risk. I absolutely have to give this up. And so then I cancelled my upcoming list. I transfer my patients to my colleagues. So, it was definitely a tough moment. You know I, as I mentioned before, I'd worked, studied, trained pretty much all my life to become a doctor then a surgeon, then a microsurgeon and then having to give it up perhaps 20 years before I would have otherwise had to. So, I really had to, you know, to dig deep, to draw on that inner strength because it was a confronting experience.
Dr James Muecke 00:37:41
But I think I was comfortable with it because the surgery was becoming more difficult. I was actually not looking forward to my surgical list anymore. So, you know, in a sense, it was a bit of a relief when I finally said "That's it, no more." it was actually quite a relief, and so that made it easier for me to get through that process.
Sir John Kirwan 00:38:02
Tell me what in your experience for you personally, what inner strength was at that time, if you could list it out for us. So, you went into yourself and you said, "Right, OK, inner strength for me needs to be... what?"
Dr James Muecke 00:38:19
I think I was telling myself at the time. So, there's a number of operations that we do in ophthalmology. And perhaps one of the most exacting... one of the most technically exacting is the cataract operation. So, that was the first one to go. But I resolved in myself. Said, "OK, there's a number of other operations I can still continue to do. And so, I'm just going to continue to do those. I'm not enjoying cataract surgery anymore. So, I'm going to stay positive and I'm going to continue doing these other things and still helping people." So, that was fantastic. But over the next three years, one by one, I had to give up the less technically exacting surgeries until 2016 when I finished my last operation. So, as I was saying, it was a slow progressive process. And I think that gave me time to adjust in my mind and to look forward to other things. So, that staying positive, keeping a cool head, you know, as I mentioned in that experience in Africa was captured by soldiers. Having that cool head and not letting the emotions get the better of me and then saying to myself, "Okay. You know, this is not great, but let's look on the positive side. I gave up some of my surgical lists because I was no longer operating. It allowed me time to dedicate more to Sight For All and Sight For All at that time was really starting to grow and really starting to have a serious impact. So, I was trying to squeeze Sight For All in when I was working full time, I used to call it my second full-time job. I used to wake up early in the morning and I used to work in the evenings in between patients lunchtimes. I always took a day off so that I had time to dedicate to other pursuits and all of this was getting consumed by Sight For All. So, when I gave up my surgical list, I suddenly had more time to dedicate to it. So, that was great. So, I was able to fill up that time very productively and that allowed me to keep that positive mindset. I think also the work we were doing with Sight For All and the positive rewards that we were seeing far outweighed for me, the negative impact of not being able to operate anymore. And as I said, I had been operating for... by the time I gave up surgery, something like 26 years. So, you know, I'd had a pretty good run. And so, you know, life throws these things at you and so you actually have to... rather than letting them get you down, you have to keep positive and say, "OK, well. Let's look for other opportunities, let's open this other door and see what that has to offer." And so I think that was how I was able to get through that process.
Sir John Kirwan 00:41:02
So Australian of the Year, Order of Australia in 2012, the Australian Medical Association President's Leadership Award, Ernst and Young social entrepreneur for Australia in 2015, the University of Adelaide Distinguished Alumni Award in 2019. So. When I throw that sort of stuff at you, what's your reaction?
Dr James Muecke 00:41:30
I try not to let... to be honest, I try not to think about it. And, you know, I've had this extraordinary opportunity this year as Australian of the Year. And no sooner had I received the award, which happened on the Australia Day weekend, then things all went to sh*t with the covid pandemic. And in the first couple of weeks of that award, I was I had something like 60 speaking engagements already booked for the year. I was going to be away for most weekends and had all sorts of exciting opportunities. And pretty much once the virus hit, all of those things were cancelled. So, it was pretty disheartening. But the world has been consumed by covid-19. And, you know, often the Australian year really comes along with a little bit of a high profile celebrity status. But I feel like I've flown under the radar, which I'm quite comfortable with. I'm actually quite happy flying under the radar. But I think the thing for me, which has been disappointing, was that this was the year to have recognition for Sight For All, for all of the work that Sight For All is doing. So, that's the one thing I feel particularly disappointed about. That I've not been able to really fly the flag as much as I could've for Sight For All. You know, the speaking engagements all dissolved. And what I did, again, we talked about innovation before. You know, I was quite despondent in those early weeks. But then I realised, OK, let's make the best of this situation. And I come back to my keeping a cool head. I didn't let this overwhelm me. I stayed positive. And when I moved into this positive mindset, I said, OK, what am I going to do here? I'm going to innovate and how am I going to get my message out as Australian of the Year to as many people as possible if I don't have these speaking opportunities? Well, let's take it online. So I created three keynote presentations, one about resilience, one about social entrepreneurship, and one about the toxic impact of sugar in our society. And I started reaching out to all sorts of organisations and bodies, offering myself to give keynote presentations by webinars. And then I also sought out opportunities to get podcasts and became active on social media. And there's a post that I put out a week or so ago, which has had about 150,000 views. So, you know, perhaps this opportunity that covid has given me to take this online has meant that I've had a bigger reach this year than I would have otherwise, you know, jet-setting around Australia giving live presentations. So once again, just trying to stay positive that... using that innovation to create opportunities.
Sir John Kirwan 00:44:10
We'll get back to the staying positive, but one interesting thing for me is, obviously, you're a passionate man and you believe in prevention now. And you just used two words that probably would create a divide in opinion. So, toxic sugar. Right? So, you know, we spoke offline last time we met about your passion around too much sugar in our diet, but also getting trolled and bullied and told you're an idiot online. So, take us a little bit into the sugar story, but tell us how you actually dealt with, you know, being told online that you should go and jump somewhere. I mean, I'm sure you've got some really good ones. And how you dealt with that, because one of the things that especially around mental health and I talk a lot to our youth, it's that online bullying, that anonymous abuse of you or that collective bullying, which is so hard for people to deal with.
Dr James Muecke 00:45:12
Sure. So, just briefly, and I'm sure... I'm not sure the figures in New Zealand, but in Australia, we now have about one point seven million people with Type two diabetes, which is a dietary disease, largely preventable, related to the consumption of too much sugar and refined carbohydrates in our diet. There are some communities which have been very severely impacted. You know, lower socio-economic areas, has been heavily impacted. For example, greater western Sydney, 50 per cent of adults over the age of 24 have either Type two diabetes or prediabetes. Half of the population.
Sir John Kirwan 00:45:50
Did you say great western Sydney?
Dr James Muecke 00:45:52
Greater Western Sydney, yeah.
Sir John Kirwan 00:45:55
Sydney?!
Dr James Muecke 00:45:56
Yeah, and there are other lower socio-economic areas in Australia where there's also similar concerning statistics. In Aboriginal communities, as in the Maori community in New Zealand, diabetes has been devastating. So, there's been an eighty - eight zero - eighty-fold increase in type two diabetes in Aboriginal people in Australia in the last 40 years. So, this exposure to this horrendous diet, which is high in sugar that we have, has been just devastating for their health. And we're now seeing this disease that used to call maturity-onset diabetes in kids and in kids as young as seven. There's actually a famous case in the UK of a three-year-old child with Type two diabetes. So, it's becoming a real scourge, a real epidemic, killing far more people than covid-19 in the first four months of the pandemic in Australia, there were 102 deaths due to covid-19, which is a tragedy, of course, but at the same time, over 5000 deaths due to type two diabetes. So, it's a long story of how we got here. But, of course, you know, we can parallel the situation with the smoking and tobacco devastations of smoking on our health. Tobacco was one thing. Sugar, however, entails a... It's much broader, much deeper, much more difficult because it involves not just the sugar cane farmers, the sugar producers, the beverages industry, the processed food industry, you name it. It's very deep and very broad. The people that don't want to... Dr Muecke to be giving these messages that sugar is bad for us. There's so much conflict. There is a religious ideology. There's an industry influence as well. And it's very hard for the government to act on that because there is money in it and there are votes in it. You know, the sugar cane farming areas in northern Queensland are in marginal seats, so, neither one of our major parties wants to make a call on it. So, it's a very, very difficult field. And so, of course, once you actually start talking out and raising awareness, then there will be people coming out to try and silence you. So, I had this wonderful weekend on the Australia Day weekend when I received the award. And then I got back to work on Tuesday morning and there were a series of emails which were quite confronting, I can't quite recall. But there was one trolling email that was telling me to shut up and not quite so gently as that. And that hit me hard. I suppose I should have been...
Dr James Muecke 00:48:38
Hang on, I'll read one out for you. I've got it right here. "Why is the solution to every problem in this country a tax? If you're f*cking dumb enough to drink six litres of coke a day and eat McDonald's for every meal, then you deserve to get it." I mean, did you respond? What did you do?
Dr James Muecke 00:48:58
No, no, I didn't respond, but that very first one that I received was...it did hit me harder because I wasn't expecting it... I should have expected, but I wasn't expecting it. And it really it was quite confronting for me and something that I'd never experienced before, I think, in my life. But fortunately, I think as Australian of the Year, I'm in a somewhat protected situation. You know, often the trolls come out to attack people in high profile settings and celebrities and so forth. They put themselves out there and so they're often the target of trolling attacks. But fortunately, I haven't had as many as I probably would have expected. And I think as Australian of the Year, it's not very Australian to attack the Australian of the Year, is it? So, perhaps that's why I've been protected to some extent. But the second time it happened... and in the meantime, I've actually read a book called Troll Hunting, which actually was an interesting read by an Australian author. And there have been a number of really devastating consequences of trolling, including suicide. And so I read this book and it made me realise that the best thing to do with trolling was just to ignore them. It's so tempting to respond because it's interesting the number of trolling messages where they actually say "I'm an educated person." They say that quite regularly. So, they try and convince you that they're educated and they know what they're talking about. But often what they're talking about is nonsense. And so, the best thing is not to feed the Trolls. Just park them, ignore them, and in fact, when I received my second trolling email message, it made me smile and I actually thought, oh, you poor thing. You know, I should probably feel sorry for them because, you know, life for them must be sad, empty... for them to have to do that. One wonders what has happened in their life, that they feel that they need to do that, but, you know, that can't be my problem. What I need to do is, not let that drag me down and just read it, smile park it and move on. And that's probably the best thing to do. Not, certainly not feed the troll, not to let it get you down, once you start engaging in it... actually on social media, there are some people that come out and one could call it trolling, but they are coming from an educated viewpoint and they are in the business world, you know, on LinkedIn, I often have people trying to counter by my opinions of the things that I'm saying, which I tend to be all evidence-based, and I'm able to then, you know, have a rational argument or discussion with them on social media. And so, you know, I think that's quite, quite fair enough. If you want to go down that pathway of having a constructive argument with someone on social media. But the trolls who come out with those sort of messages that you just read, you just ignore them.
Sir John Kirwan 00:52:01
You're in a hut. You think you might get killed. You go in a car with, you know, a couple of soldiers for 30 K, you know, you're in the Gaza Strip, you're creating all these amazing things. You've had all these awards that totally deserved. I mean, your story is intriguing. Covid comes along, and sounds... and you are obviously a naturally positive person. So, you've always seen glass half full, covid comes along and you start suffering from stress and anxiety, which sits you on your bum a wee bit and you go, well, what's going on?
Dr James Muecke 00:52:40
Absolutely. It was the first time I'd ever felt that sort of anxiety, that partly the anxiety was due to the, I suppose the trolling and some of the negativity, which I probably wouldn't call trolling but just the sense of people not wanting to hear the message. It was unsettling and for me, having had all of those pretty confronting experiences, felt like I was a pretty resilient character, suddenly, you know, feeling anxious. During anxious times, and this is when the body is flooded with the stress hormone cortisol. So, you might have an experience... I had also a number of experiences in Africa where I was attacked by wild animals. And when you're attacked by a wild animal, you know, immediately your primitive part of the brain fires up and it's a fight or flight reaction, which is absolutely appropriate. You're in a life-threatening situation. You've got to get out of there. So, a surge of adrenaline, a surge of cortisol, and you fight for your life. When you're captured by rebel soldiers in Uganda, it's not acutely life-threatening, but it's an anxious situation and you need to be able to deal with that and you need to get into this cool-headed scenario. When you're in a more chronically stressful situation, like we have been many of us through the last few months of the covid pandemic, people have lost their jobs. You know, people have had a devastating lockdown, and some parts of the world have been very hard on people's mental health. There's very tempting to turn to unhealthy habits to deal with the stress. So, the body or the brain needs to balance that cortisol reaction with the release of feel-good chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, etc... So, you can take the unhealthy options, you can drink too much alcohol, you can go for illicit drugs, you can eat too much food, smoke cigarettes, etc... All of those things trigger dopamine release from our brains, from the feel-good centre of our brains. And that does counter the stress and that's why people often do it. But there are other much healthier ways, of course, you know, quite simply going for exercise, going for a vigorous walk or run, listening to some of your favourite music, you know, reaching out to other people who are having a tougher time than you, doing a good deed. These have all been shown us scientifically to be very effective and as effective as sugar at countering that cortisol reaction. So, in those early weeks when I was feeling despondent, I would go for a walk each day up in the Adelaide Hills...these beautiful hills. And in fact, I went for a walk first thing this morning, and that just gives you that surge of feel-good chemicals that help counter that stress. And I get to the top of the hill and I look down over the lights of Adelaide, sometimes in the middle of winter. It was pitch black at about, sort of, six in the morning and looking out over the lights of Adelaide. And it just looked stunning. You felt like you're in Los Angeles. And when I was up there, I would then lookout and I would stop for a few minutes and just think of the things that I had to look forward to during the day and the combination of those two things. And I didn't avoid alcohol, I still enjoyed, you know, a whisky most evenings and so I just wasn't overindulging in those sorts of things. But I'm not a saint, but certainly, you know, going for that vigorous walk in the mornings, getting to the top of the hill, thinking of things that I had to look forward to during the day because there's always things to look forward to. And the other thing that I did at the end of the day before I fell asleep was to look back at my day and just reminisce on the things that had happened during the day, which were wonderful, that I had to be grateful for. And what's interesting about this is that there is the neuroscience behind this. There is the classic study by Amundson MacCulloch in 2003 that showed if you reinforce positive messages for a couple of minutes a day over a three week period, you're already starting to move yourself into a positive mindset. So, it comes from the field of neuroscience called neuromodulation. So, how we pay attention can actually change the brain through changes in neuron connectivity. So, there is actually neuroscience behind it, it's not waffle. So, you know, during those stressful early weeks of the pandemic, I don't think I've ever felt more positive, and that positive mindset allowed me then to say, 'OK, how am I gonna get through this? How am I going to get my messages out there' and allow me to have that headspace to then innovate and do what I did. So, really important points there. And there are a number of other things that people can do. I think eating well and exercising that healthy, healthy living is very important during stressful times, trying to get a good night's sleep surrounding yourself with good friends. So, you know, trying to avoid toxic people, trying to. Really have those connections with people who are positive and uplifting, so all of those things help us get through these tough times.
Sir John Kirwan 00:57:53
What are you reading at the moment?
Dr James Muecke 00:57:57
What am I reading at the moment? I'm reading a book called India. I love India, I have a bit of a love affair with India as well. And it is by VS Naipaul, who's a Nobel Prize winner for literature. So, it's really, it's about 30 years old, actually, but it's a history of India. And it's... Yeah, I've only just started it, so I'm not able to share too many gleanings, but it just goes into great depth, into the history of India.
Sir John Kirwan 00:58:32
What would you recommend that I read to change or educate myself around sugar?
Dr James Muecke 00:58:39
Yes, OK, so there's a number of books, but I think the book, which was a turning point for me because I'm a doctor, I should know about the dangers of sugar, but I wasn't aware that sugar was addictive. I wasn't aware that we use sugar to alleviate stress. As a doctor, that sounds staggering, doesn't it? So, then how would everyday man, the person on the street be aware of the dangers of sugar? So, as I was coming into the Australia Day Ceremony, many of those early weeks, I started doing a bit of reading because I felt this responsibility. If I do receive the award, I wasn't expecting to receive the award, if I do receive the award, I have a responsibility here to really get to the root cause of Type two diabetes, which is that excessive sugar and refined carbohydrates. When I say refined carbohydrates, I'm talking about things like white flour, white rice, potatoes. They're pretty much pure starch, which are broken down into glucose when it reaches the gut. So, when you're having those foodstuffs, you're pretty much-eating sugar. So, I read a book called The Diabetes Code by Jason Fung. So, in those few weeks leading up to that, this was a really, really important book for me, because it sets out very clearly how we've reached this situation in the world where Type two diabetes has grown fourfold in the last 40 years. It goes into the biochemistry, but not so much that, you know, non-scientists, non-medical people can read it. I would strongly recommend it because it gives you a very good insight into how this has arisen and very good analogies which help you understand it. So, The Diabetes Code is an excellent one to read.
Dr James Muecke 01:00:23
So in your day, you go for a walk, do something physical, you've got something to look forward to, at the end of the day, retrospectively, you are grateful. So, what's in your goodie basket for today? Goodie basket for me is something that I look forward to every day. So, what's in your goodie basket today?
Dr James Muecke 01:00:45
I always have a number of things in my goodie basket, so tonight I'm giving a live presentation to one of the residential colleges in Adelaide. So, it'll be my sixth live presentation... sorry, my fifth presentation for the year. You know, having a year full of live presentations, which all went, things are starting to fire up now. So, I'm giving a presentation to a group of students, which I'm looking forward to that'll be great. The other thing I'm looking forward to, in fact, when I got off the podcast, I'm going to be... I'm actually part of the expert advisory group, which is looking at a refresh of our national diabetes strategy. So, I'm part of that group and I have put forward to that group... In fact, there was a group of 20 to 30 people we met about six weeks ago. And I was the person that said to the group, I was the only person that said to the group, that Type two diabetes is potentially reversible in many people. There are now over 100 controlled clinical studies that show that this disease is reversible. This is such critical information to know. So today we're meeting again for a couple of hours in about an hour's time. So looking forward to hopefully being able to solidify that in the national diabetes strategy. It's not even in the national diabetes strategy. So, if I can get reversibility of Type two diabetes to the National Diabetes Strategy for Australia, to me that will be a huge victory. So, that's something I'm looking forward to it.
Sir John Kirwan 01:02:14
Would you like me to interview next in Open Minded?
Dr James Muecke 01:02:18
Ah, I think someone to interview next would be Dr Gary Fettke, and Dr Gary Fettke is an extraordinary man. He's an orthopaedic surgeon from Tasmania. Like me, he... one of the turning points for me a couple of years ago was to meet a man who went suddenly blind overnight due to his type two diabetes. He had sudden bleeding into both eyes and his story was so powerful that for me it was a real turning point, a real eye-opener for me, excuse the pun, to my journey into the realms of Type two diabetes and the preventability and the reversibility of Type two diabetes again, coming back to the prevention thing. And so, Gary was an orthopaedic surgeon and every week was chopping off legs, amputating legs, which were gangrenous due to Type two diabetes. And he just found that overwhelming and started giving advice to his patients because he understood the biochemistry very well. That sugar was a major force in this to reduce or give up the sugar in your diet. And he was telling his patients to do this. He was then reported by one of the dietitians at his hospital to the hospital board. He was then struck off and it was investigated. Haf a star chamber investigation for two and a half years was eventually exonerated. But you can imagine it had a terrific toll on him and his professional credibility. And both him and his wife, who's also an extraordinary character, started delving into how this story unfolded, how this happened, how could this possibly happen? How can a doctor who's giving his patients sensible advice to reduce sugar in their diet can get investigated by our medical board and struck off? Unbelievable. So, that story is quite something. And I would strongly recommend you interview Gary.
Sir John Kirwan 01:04:17
Dr James, I talk... I say to a lot of people when I'm doing my mental health talks, one thing I never did was congratulations to me. And, you know, we often don't stop. Congratulations, my friend. You are amazing. I hope you do take five minutes to say congratulations to me every day. Thank you for sharing. You've inspired me. And I could probably do another hour but thank you for sharing. You have an amazing life. You deserve everything that you've been awarded. And it's been an absolute pleasure for me to have you on Open Minded, my friend.
Dr James Muecke 01:04:51
Thank you so much, JK. I really enjoyed it. And also, congratulations to you on Mentemia, what you're achieving there is incredible and what you've achieved through your career and with the All Blacks, you know, I was glued to the TV set for virtually all of those matches. So, I know very well. Still, it's the one thing that probably brings me to tears is watching the Wallabies in action. And so, we look forward to those next couple of matches and hopefully, we have some goodies.
Sir John Kirwan 01:05:19
We'll put a little bottle of wine on it. There you go. You bring one from Adelaide, I'll bring one, I've got a wine company. So, next time we meet on the game on Sunday, it's a draw this week, whoever wins, we'll shout each other wine.
Dr James Muecke 01:05:35
You're on, OK, we'll look forward to that. That'll be great. Thank you so much.
Sir John Kirwan 01:05:38
Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Sir John Kirwan 01:05:43
Thanks, so much for listening to this episode of Open Minded, if you like the podcast, make sure to subscribe. This podcast is everywhere you get your podcasts, so make sure you do that. I don't need to tell you how and then you'll get my new episodes straight away. And if you can leave a review, tell everyone you know about it, it'd be awesome. If you could help spread the word about the show, thanks. But also, I'd love to get your feedback. You know, I'm new to this. I want to get better and I want to know what you want to know about mental well-being. So please reach out to us. And thanks. And I'll see you all soon.