ESA Newsletter December 2000:

ESA Newsletter: December 2000

Minutes of the Annual General Meeting Of the Endocrine Society of Australia held at Darling Harbour, Sydney, Sunday 29th October at 2.00pm

1. Apologies: Henry Burger, Peter Fuller, Jock Findlay

2. Confirmation of minutes: Minutes of the Annual General Meeting that was held on 27th September, 1999 were accepted as a true and accurate record. Proposed by Brendan Waddell and seconded by Ben Canny.

3. Business Arising: Nil

4. President's Report

Ray Rodgers thanked Council members for their hard work for without it the Society would not be nearly as vibrant as it is.

The activities of the ESA included:

• a new Web site for ESA established at the College by Ivone Johnson and Sally Gillies from the RACP. It is functioning very well, but will move to a new interactive format, the cost of which will be substantially less. There are plans to develop the site for on-line subscriptions and registrations.
• an emailing system of sending messages to our members, who wish to be part of such a system has been established. About two thirds of ESA members, are on the electronic directory.
• hosting of ICE 2000. Ray Rodgers expressed, sincere thanks to John Eisman, Rob Baxter, David Handlesman, Chris Cowell, Rebecca Mason, Christine Clarke of the Local Organizing Committee who put in a huge amount of time and effort. Rob Baxter, John Eisman, and Rob Sutherland were members of the ISE Program Organizing Committee. He also thanked John Funder and former members of Council who have contributed to the preparation of ICE 2000.

He thanked the treasurer, Brendan Waddell for an excellent job, especially over the trying times of the introduction of the GST, and the resignation of the auditors. He considered the Secretariat at the RACP to be working out well. He thanked the efforts of Ken Ho as secretary and Ben Canny in assisting with part of that work. Together they have made the Council work extremely well. Ray Rodgers thanked Ross Cuneo and Jeff Zajac for their contribution to Medical Affairs and Roger Smith for input to future meetings. He acknowledged the tremendous effort by Sonia Stanton to catalogue the ESA archives and to collate a complete set of Proceedings.

In association with the Australian Association of Clinical Biochemists, the ESA published a monograph a booklet on Current Issues in Thyroid Disease. This effort stemmed from a joint meeting between the two societies some time ago. The booklet is on sale at the ESA stand at ICE.

In the last year ESA has provided input to the following organisations

• Australian Health Insurance Commission
• Australian Pharmaceutical Manufacturer's Association for which Terry Diamond, Aiden MacElduff, and Sonia Stanton were thanked for representing the ESA.
• Drug Utilization Committee of Health and Aged Care, for which Duncan Topliss was thanked for assistance with their inquiry
• Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee - on dihydrotachysterol capsules and androgens in men
• National Pathology Accreditation Advisory Council
• Medical journalists
• Presidents of Associations meetings.
• NHMRC for composition of discipline panels
• RACP for which he thanked Harvey Newnham for representing the ESA on a Relative Value Study.

Ben Canny has co-ordinated a drive for increasing membership by offering 12 months free membership to ICE registrants who were not ESA members. Ken Ho with Ivone Johnson organised a stand at ICE to enhance the profile of the ESA.

An exchange students program has been made with The Japan Endocrine Society (PhD, Masters students or endocrine registrars) commencing 2001 to 2003. This is agreement to send four students to their seminar meeting and they have agreed to send students to our Annual Scientific Meetings in return. In addition there is agreement for a speaker exchange. This will be cost neutral if the Japanese speaker replaces one of the ESA overseas speakers. A formula for selecting speakers has also been agreed on.

Ray Rodgers thanked the ESA's sponsors for their generous and loyal support. The Major Coporate Sponsor is Roche Products Pty Ltd, and Corporate Sponsors are Serono Australia Pty Limited, Organon (Australia) Pty Ltd, Servier Laboratories (Australia) Pty Ltd, Bristol Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals and Boehringer Ingleheim.

5. Council Appointments
Cathie Coulter, Evan Simpson and Bruce Robinson were elected as new Council members, with Jeff Zajac,

6. Treasurer's Report
Brendan Waddell reported that the Society's financial status was healthy.
The accounts have been audited. Due to the GST and the delay in sending out the sponsorship letters, the income was down by 15-20%. Increase in expenditure was due to the increase in Travel grants and the purchase of a laptop for the secretariat.

Richard Prince suggested that the ESA should seek advice from a financial advisor to look into getting a better return on investments. Council will look into this matter. Acceptance of the Treasurer's Report was moved by Duncan Topliss and seconded by Jim Stockight.
6.1 Auditors

Motion: that the Endocrine Society of Australia accepts the resignation of Cecil Levy and Associates and appoints P. Gruchy and Associates as auditors.
Proposed: Ray Rodgers
Seconded: Cathie Coulter. Carried.

7. Medical Affairs Report
Androgen Treatment in Men. This was reported on at the last AGM. We can report that the article on androgen treatment of men was published in the Medical Journal of Australia (Vol172:220-224). Reprints are available at the ESA stand at ICE.

GH use in Adults. Approval for use of GH in GH deficient adults had been delayed further. It has been a tortuous affair, with first a rejection by the TGA and then a successful appeal by Lilly. The present delay stems from a labelling disagreement with the TGA concerning a link between GH and cancer. The ESA believes the position taken by theTGA to be premature, and that such a statement may have adverse consequences leading to patients rejecting treatment. The ESA has written to Dr Michael Wooldridge, Minister for Health and Aged Care, about this issue and voiced its opinion.

PCO. A position statement on use of metformin to treat PCO in women was commissioned by ESA, the Australian Diabetes Society, Australian Paediatric Endocrine Group, and Australian Society for the Study of Obesity. The authors were Rob Norman, Warren Kitson, and Margaret Zaccharin. A summary statement is posted on the ESA web site, and a full article submitted to the Medical Journal of Australia.

DES in Tall Girls. Alison Venn, Prof Judith Lumley, Dr Priscilla Pyett and Prof George Werther have received NHMRC funding to study the long term effects in girls who received DES for tall stature. A request for members who could help with information went out to our members by email.

8. Report on ICE 2000
John Eisman, Chair of the POC reported that there were approximately 3500 registrants for

ICE. He thanked the POC and LOC for their contributions.

9. Future Meetings
ASM-2001, Jupiters Casino, 10-12 September

John Prins is to chair the Local Organizing Committee for the 2001 Annual Scientific Meeting.

ASM-2002, Adelaide Convention Centre, 23-25 September

Ray Rodgers reported that The Australian Association of Clinical Biochemists and SRB plan to meet with the ESA in 2002.

Seminar-2001, Newcastle 20-22nd April, 2000

Trish Crock, chair of the Seminar Committee, reported that plans are well on the way for the 2001 meeting in Newcastle.

10. Awards and Grants
Drs Craig Munns and Kristin Neville were the recipients of this years Serono Postgraduate Awards.

Dr Fraser Rogerson was the winner of the Servier Young Investigator Award. He will be invited to present his work at the 2001 ASM. The winners of the Eli Lilly 2001 Endocrinology Research Grant Programme was announced by Ken Ho.

11. Other business
Nil

12. Date of next meeting:
10th September, 2001

<<Table of Contents - ESA Newsletter December 2000