If you had seen an episode of the popular hospital
documentary series "RPA" some years ago, you would have
seen how the flick of a switch restored one man's hearing, and so
transported him from mere existence back to a full life. Furthermore,
this was only one example of thousands that have taken place across
Australia and the world since 1978, when Graeme Clark launched the
cochlear implant, broke the barrier of deafness, and gave thousands
of people their chance to hear.
Graeme Milbourne Clark was born on 16 August 1935.
After attending Sydney Boys' High School and Scots College (Sydney),
he completed a medical degree at the
University of Sydney, where he topped his final year. Following
resident posts at hospitals in Sydney, including Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
(RPA), Clark proceeded to further study of otolaryngology in the UK
before returning to Sydney via Melbourne and completing two postgraduate
degrees at the University of Sydney.
Subsequently, Clark was appointed as Australasia's
first Professor of Otolaryngology at the
University of Melbourne in 1970. By this stage, Clark had spent
several years investigating the possibility of a device to stimulate
hearing electrically, an idea that had been pursued sporadically by
researchers since the 18th century.
Basic studies on cochlear function and speech discrimination
revealed the best option for enabling a totally deaf person to understand
speech through multiple-electrode stimulation of the auditory nerve
fibres. It was to take Clark and his team 12 years to develop the
first device that could do this successfully, the cochlear
implant, more commonly known as the Bionic Ear. Through multi-disciplinary
research in fields such as physiology, surgery, biology, engineering
and speech science, the team gradually overcame the problems associated
with implantation, and in 1978 the world's first cochlear implant
was placed in a 48 year old man who had lost his hearing completely
following a head injury 18 months previously.
The cochlear implant works by electrically stimulating
the nerves inside the inner ear to produce useful hearing sensations.
The device consists of two main components: a receiver/stimulator
package that is implanted, and an external speech processor, transmitting
coil and microphone. Sounds and speech are picked up by the microphone
and sent to the speech processor, which codes the sounds into an electrical
signal and sends them via cable to the transmitting coil. This coil
passes the signal through the skin to the implant just under the skin
near the ear. The signal is transformed to electrical pulses which
pass through an electrode array implanted in the cochlea. This in
turn stimulates the hearing nerve fibres within the cochlea, which
sends the message to the brain, and sound and speech are perceived.
Following the first cochlear implant in 1978, there
was further research to improve it and develop one suitable for use
in children before Clark's team, in conjunction with a new Australian
company, Cochlear Limited,
developed a commercial prototype. Since 1985, this device has been
implanted in thousands of adults and children world-wide, and remains
the leader in the field. Research and refinement of the cochlear implant
continue today, and Clark has also devoted his energies to the development
of other hearing devices such as an electrotactile hearing aid (the
Tickle TalkerTM) and a combined cochlear implant and hearing
aid (Combionic Aid).
In addition, Clark and his Bionic Ear research
team have been studying ways in which deaf children's brains might
be "fine tuned" in order to recognise sounds. In hearing
children, the brain becomes finely tuned to sound, but deaf children,
not being exposed to sound, miss out on this stage of development.
The Bionic Ear research team is therefore studying ways in which the
brain might be made to revert to its plastic state at birth, in order
to re-tune it for hearing. If successful, this will be one of the
major medical advances of our time.
That Graeme Clark is acknowledged as the leader
in his field, is apparent from the numerous awards and honours that
have been given him. These include the Order of Australia (1983),
the BHP Award for the Pursuit of Excellence (Science and Technology)
(1984), the Advance Australia Award (1986), the James Cook Medal of
the Royal Society of New South Wales (1992) , the
Clunies Ross National Science & Technology Award (1992), the
Sir William Upjohn Medal of the University of Melbourne (1997), and
the 1999 Australia Day Australian Achiever's Award. Tributes to Clark's
excellence in research application and his significant contributions
to Australian industry are also reflected in many of his awards, including
two of the more recent ñ the Rio Tinto Science Hero Award ñ Industry
(1999), and the Victoria Prize (1999). It should be noted that the
Australian company, Cochlear Limited, holds over 80% of the world's
market for the cochlear implant.
Today, Graeme Clark is the Laureate Professor of
Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne; he is Director of the
Human Communication
Research Centre, The Bionic Ear Institute,
and the Cochlear Implant Clinic at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear
Hospital, and is also Principal Scientist for the
CRC for Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid Innovation. However,
the most significant testimonials to Graeme Clark's outstanding achievements
are undoubtedly the thousands of profoundly deaf children and adults,
both present and future, who can now take their full place in the
world.
