Page 369 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 May 1992
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Wednesday, 13 May 1992
______________________
MADAM SPEAKER (Ms McRae) took the chair at 10.30 am and read the prayer.
PAPER
MR LAMONT: Madam Speaker, I ask for leave to present a petition which does not conform to standing orders as it does not contain a request.
Leave granted.
MR LAMONT: I present an out-of-order petition from 40 residents opposing the introduction of compulsory wearing of bicycle helmets.
EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDIES (CONFIDENTIALITY) BILL 1992
MR MOORE (10.31): Madam Speaker, I present the Epidemiological Studies (Confidentiality) Bill 1992.
Title read by Clerk.
MR MOORE: I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
Madam Speaker, in the transition to self-government in the Territory a gap was left in much legislation. The Epidemiological Studies (Confidentiality) Bill 1992 is simply a Bill to fill one of those gaps. I think it is important to understand the importance of epidemiology and why it is that an epidemiological study requires some confidentiality.
The doyen of epidemiology is normally considered to be one Sir Richard Doll, who is Regis Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford. It was Sir Richard Doll who first managed to link cigarette smoking and cancer. He says:
... the results of epidemiological research are often of immediate concern to the individual in the way he conducts his daily life, and to society in the way its activities are controlled. The media in consequence give the results wide publicity, and hardly a day passes without some reference being made to the hazards associated with radioactivity, chemical waste, food additives, contraceptives, medicines, the so-called drugs of solace, or new sources of infection. Unfortunately, claims about the existence of hazards are often based on half-baked and preliminary findings without adequate allowance for the vagaries of chance -
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