Welcome to Honorary Membership

Marks family settled in 1870 on the edges of the Whangaroa harbour where they set up a business building wooden sailing ships for local and south pacific trading.  Mark born in 1952 one of the fourth generation of Lanes living in the area and was brought up looking out over the harbour towards Hopekako (st peters), his family’s mountain.

He had decided to go to medical school while in the local high school and had to move to Auckland at the age of 16 to complete 6th and 7th form.  In 1970 his application was successful, and he joined the third entrance class of the new Auckland medical school.

It was in his third year of medical school during his physiology project he had his first contact with gastroenterology, doing a project investigating factors controlling bile flow rate, working with Micheal Eade and Cliff Tasman-Jones names known to many of us as fathers of gastroenterology in the Auckland medical school and early members of the NZSGE.

Mark trained as a general physician in Auckland hospital with an interest in gastroenterology (notably the RACP records do not record him as having undertaken training in gastroenterology) though 3 years of clinical gastroenterology followed by three years of research, (one in Auckland and 2 in Birmingham UK) would probably meet the current training requirements.

Mark returned to Auckland initially as a physician/gastroenterologist at MMH then as a fulltime gastroenterologist at Auckland hospital in 1989 where he worked until his 'semi' retirement in 2021. He is a clinical associate professor at the Auckland medical school. 

He has been a patron of the Coeliac Society of NZ for many years and served on the board of the NZ Crohns and Colitis support group. He has also been an advisor to the HDC and ACC and assisted on a number of MOH advisory groups.

In the early 1990's Mark joined the special advisory committee (SAC) in NZ for gastroenterology which supervised all NZ based trainees in gastroenterology

and served on the committee for 14 years including 6 years as chair.  At the same time, he joined the exec of the NZSGE serving in various roles including a number of years as the secretary then as president. During this time, he represented NZSG on the councils of APAGE and APSDE

Following stepping down as president of NZSG and as clinical head of gastroenterology at Auckland hospital in about 2009 Mark re-engaged with RACP serving in a variety of roles over the next few years culminating with being NZ president in 2014-16 then as college president in 2018-20.

Mark has maintained an interest in research throughout his career supervising many registrar research projects and clinical drug trials. Notable early projects included determining the rate of (presumed) hepatitis c in the community on NZ (called non-a non-b hepatitis at the time and the first published paper showing the a gluten free diet reduced the the risk of cancer in coeliacs to the same as the general population.

Mark is the proud husband of Margaret (46 years) and father of three daughter’s all of whom have strongly supported him throughout his (often stressful) career.  He looks forward to more fishing, gardening and tramping in his retirement.

The NZSG Executive and Society wish Mark all the best as he retires

and hopes he remains active in the Society.