Right! I've just returned from my first Australian Medical Conference. And you know what? They're the same all over the world. Obligatory name tags. A 'bon mot' from the grand old man/woman organising the thing before every speaker. A chance to meet collegues and drink expensive wine without actually having to pay for it. Drug reps homing in on this high doctor-density like vultures on a dead horse.

And I loved it. Scientific English, you see, is meant to be read. Not spoken. But through long training, some Distinguished Speakers can make polysyllabic scientese sound like it means something. And I really have a deep appreciation for people who can pull this off. They're in a difficult position, those speakers. To appeal to a broad audience, the subject has to be fairly straightforward and of presumed general interest. Then again, if it actually IS of general interest, the odds are that your audience is better informed than the speaker. So, what can you do?

I'll quickly run through the two topical sessions I've attended.

Number one was a nice pediatric nephrologist. I nicked one of her sweets before her lecture, which gave me the opportunity to confess that I'd never understood kidneys and after long deliberation had proclaimed them incomprehensible. She retorted that it was pretty simple really and started off with a 'case report'.

-On an antenatal ultrasound you detect renal calyces of 10mm at 22 weeks gestation. What ELSE would you like to know??

I immediately asked what size them calyces ought to be and - encouraged by this admission of ignorance- 99% of the audience admitted to not having an ultrasound machine, or expertice to the level of confirming the presence of a foetus in the womb.Things went downhill from there.

Number two had megabytes of Powerpoint presentations on cardiovascular disease in Aboriginals. Everyone started their talk by reiterating the mortality and morbidity figures for Aboriginals compared to other Aussies. None offered any suggestion for improvement. I was about to start screaming when I saw the same depressing figures for the sixth time. Needless to say, CVD stats were high. Major research followed. Blood, sweat, tears and numbercrunching. Conclusion: because diabetes, obesity, smoking and hypertension stats were high.

I managed to catch this speaker before he left to suggest that he had proven that Aboriginals were human after all. For whites, the above has been gospel since the 'fifties.

A long time ago, I championed the introduction of the Kafka as the unit of useful knowledge. In a nutshell, one Kafka is defined as the amount of knowledge, insight and comprehension required to fully understand Franz Kafka's 'The Trial'.

Now, I think that a truly interesting research paper would provide insight into the cost efficiency of conferences. Starting with the Kafka rate (Kafka transfer per hour), and bearing in mind that doctor's time is worth about sixty to a hundred dollars per hour, one could calculate the dollars per Kafka of the conference.

My personal impression is that the taxpayer would be shocked.

Kees