Fundraising for malaria prevention are (front) Tamsin Jones
and Associate Prof Peter Dearden, with (back, from left)
Nathan Kenny, Dr Otto Hyink, Dr Elizabeth Duncan, Dr Megan
Wilson, Sophia Cameron-Christie, Megan Leask, Sarah Morgan,
Rosannah McCartney, Gemma Palmer and Meaghan O'Neill. Photo
by Peter McIntosh.
The science of silence will be under the microscope today
and tomorrow as a team of 13 scientists hold their tongues for
a good cause.
Staff at the University of Otago's Evolution and Development
Laboratory at the Biochemistry Department have vowed to
remain silent for two days to raise money for malaria
prevention.
The group will communicate for work purposes using notes
during the fundraiser, dubbed "the silence of the lab".
Only Associate Prof Peter Dearden, the laboratory director,
can talk, and only then to answer the telephone.
Organiser Tamsin Jones, an assistant research fellow, said
the idea was raised as a joke during a shared morning tea
with the rest of the biochemistry department.
"Someone joked that the department would pay us heaps of
money to shut up," she said.
As the lab was known as the rowdiest in the department, it
seemed apt, Ms Jones said.
Anyone who broke the silence would have to do a "mundane" lab
job for the next month.
By yesterday afternoon, they had already raised $1100, enough
to provide malaria nets for more than 400 children, she said.
Ms Jones said the lab was not carrying out malaria research,
but chose to participate in the Unicef fundraiser because the
lab's work involved insects.
Spread by mosquitoes, malaria kills a million people every
year, most of them children.
Unicef New Zealand is aiming to provide 35,000 bed nets,
enough to protect up to 140,000 children, by the end of the
year.
To give, visit www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/thesilenceofthelab
- eileen.goodwin@odt.co.nz
A name, residential address, and (preferably residential) telephone number is required from readers who comment on ODT Online. These details will not be visible to site visitors.