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Dr Bruce Scoggins is one of New Zealand’s leading health scientists. These days he lives at Scotts Landing, and is heading a campaign to lower rural rates. He talks to Karyn Scherer about science, salt and seeing red.
I’m 73 now and I’ve really only had three jobs in three countries, and lived in three houses. I was born in Amersham in the UK. My parents migrated to NZ in 1950, when I was 10. My father was an optometrist. I was interested in becoming a vet so I went to Lincoln. I thought I’d do an agricultural degree majoring in animal science, and that would get me into a vet school in Australia. But I decided I preferred research, so I did a Master’s, then went to Australia to do a PhD in animal physiology at one of Australia’s leading research institutes.
We used sheep in our research, because sheep are a very good model to study human disease. We were looking at the complex interaction between stress hormones and salt and the control of blood pressure. The mechanism for increasing blood pressure wasn’t something that people ever really understood, and we came up with some new concepts.
Twenty-five years ago, we were trying to make a case to the food industry to reduce the level of sodium in foodstuffs. It’s interesting that those arguments are still being had. People don’t realise that their breakfast cereal, as well as having quite a large amount of sugar in it, also has a lot of salt. With humans, if they stop using extra salt, within a short time you actually don’t notice that it’s not there. People need to understand that the craving for salt will disappear as they lower their intake.
We very rarely add salt to anything in our household, and certainly don’t use salt at the table, or use it for cooking. I’m surprised that progress has been so slow because 25 years ago the evidence was very strong. It’s been hard. There’s a very large amount of salt in bread, for example. A lot of low-salt products are also higher in price, which is a concern.
While I was in Melbourne, I also developed one of the first methods for measuring the tricyclic antidepressant drugs. We identified there was a minimum level required to produce a clinical benefit but if you went too high there was no additional response. That was world-leading.
I met and married my wife Suzanne in three months. Somebody brought her to a party. She’s in travel and she currently works for United Travel in Orewa. I eventually needed a career change so we moved to the States. After 25 years in Melbourne I needed a change and we headed off to Denver where a professor at the University of Colorado Medical School I helped establish a centre for public health research. We did a lot of research on lower socio-economic families and the delivery of early childhood care. Denver is a pretty spectacular place to live. There were a number of Australian and NZ companies there, and on Anzac Day we used to have a cricket match. One year it was snowing.
We were there two years and then the opportunity came up to come back to NZ. From my time in Australia I had been very much interested in the management of research at a national and international level, and I came back as chief executive of the Health Research Council. I did that for 15 years and I really enjoyed it.
Currently I’m doing some work for Cure Kids and they, along with the Heart Foundation and the Ministry of Health and the Health Research Council, are looking at rheumatic fever. It is very much a third world disease and yet NZ has one of the highest rates of rheumatic fever in the world. There are some major issues like that where research plays an important role in producing the evidence but it’s then up to Government to make the changes that will actually make a difference. An example of where there has been progress is in insulating houses. Research identified that people in uninsulated houses have many more health problems, and there are now insulation programmes that are having a positive effect.
I still mentor people in terms of career development, and my daughter, Amanda, has been someone who has regularly sought advice. She is currently an at-home mother but she worked for Rand Europe in Cambridge, which is an independent not-for-profit research institute, and she continues to do consultancy to the health and science sectors.
Amanda is a good example of what I would call the modern woman. She’s got degrees in science, commerce and a Master of Public Health. She worked on air quality for Niwa before she went overseas. Our son is an investment banker. He’s had a tough time. It’s career-shaping to have been involved in an industry which twice in the last decade has been hit by major global problems. There’s a lot of learning that comes out of that.
Technological change over the past 40 years has been unbelievable. When I was doing my Master’s at Lincoln in 1962 we had no calculators. One used a slide rule and log tables. If you sent a letter to someone you thought you’d done well if you got a reply within a month. Now if you don’t get a reply within an hour you’re concerned that they’re sleeping on the job.
I like reading, travelling, and gardening, although the place we’ve got up here is on a very steep slope which makes gardening very challenging. We decided to move to Scott’s Landing in 2009. We’d been in the same house in Orakei for 18 years. We had a garden that had been written up in books, but we’d always wanted to be close to the coast. We had friends who had a place up here and we eventually found a place we liked too.
The thing that triggered my interest in rates was the change in Rodney from land value to capital value. Our rates have gone up 30 per cent and we realised it was the same along our peninsula, and in other areas of rural Auckland. I’m now the chair of the Mahurangi East Residents and Ratepayers Association and I’ve decided to stand for the Rodney Local Board.
I have a background in evidence-informed policy development and I think what we’re doing is providing an evidence-based case for Council to look at the inequalities and lack of fairness in the rating policy. There’s two or perhaps three of the 21 councillors who represent rural areas, so we’re always going to be a minority. That means we just have to work harder to make a compelling case.
I know people who got to 65 and just retired – that’s just not me. My wife gives me a hard time. She talks about my having “playtime”, which has become a bit of a joke. We’ve been married 40 years. I don’t have a bucket list, just a list of places I don’t want to go. Anywhere with bombs I don’t tend to like. Our five grandchildren all live in London and neither of our children at this stage is interested in coming home. But then I went overseas for three years, and I ended up staying for 28.
