As a student, he spent a summer volunteering at a leprosy colony in New Delhi, India where he saw how patients were treated as social outcasts suffering from the stigma of a disfiguring disease although they were no longer contagious.
The following year, whilst on a similar service trip to Papua New Guinea he met social sciences student Judith Healy, whom he married shortly after graduation.
[citation needed] After 18 months in general practice, he was invited to become the PhD student of Professor Basil Hetzel at the new department of social and preventive medicine, Monash University in Victoria, graduating in 1972.
[3][4] While working in South Australia, he uncovered a link between lead pollution and impaired childhood neurocognitive development around an industrial plant in Port Pirie.
UV exposure lessens immune system activity, including misdirected "autoimmune" attacks on the body tissues.
"[3] His team showed that tens of thousands of people were dying each year from climate-induced flooding, malnutrition, and infectious diseases.