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David Weatherall: Lasker Award for pioneer in molecular medicine
Perspectives
A few minutes with David Weatherall are all it takes to be reassured that for all the honours, the regius professorship, and the knighthood there is nothing remotely pompous about this man. The talk is simple, direct, and liberally spiced with irreverent accounts of people and places encountered during decades in medicine, many of them in its front ranks. Weatherall is a great one for anecdotes; for the human detail that spices the bland facts. Speaking of his teachers as an undergraduate at Liverpool University he mentions Harry Sheehan of Sheehan’s syndrome fame. “Every Saturday morning we had what was called the meat class in which he demonstrated the week’s pathology. He was continually puffing his pipe and the ash used to fall on the specimens with a gentle sizzling. I’ve never forgotten that. But a brilliant teacher, actually.” Thanking the Lasker Foundation for the 2010 LaskerKoshland Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science, which was bestowed upon him earlier this month, Weatherall described how it was the British Army that had introduced him to blood disorders. Fearful, so he claims, of violence and snakes, he’d asked to do his military service at a hospital in the UK. 3 weeks later he was on a troopship heading for Singapore to deal with some of the casualties of the war across the border in Malaya. With no paediatric experience he was put in charge of the children’s ward in the military hospital where he encountered the profoundly anaemic daughter of a Ghurkha solider. The problem turned out to be thalassaemia, previously thought of as a disease of Mediterranean populations. It was a disease that would shape Weatherall’s career. A seed had been sown; one of its early fruits, just 5 years later, was Weatherall’s book The Thalassaemia Syndromes. “It was a book that drew the map and set out all the questions that needed answering”, says Doug Higgs, Weatherall’s successor as Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Molecular Haematology Unit in Oxford, and a fellow researcher who’s known him since the 1970s. “What started from careful clinical observation of certain blood diseases was then combined with an appreciation of what was going on in molecular genetics in the 1960s and 1970s to allow David to make the first forays into molecular medicine.” Weatherall used a novel technique to separate the two globin chains of the haemoglobin molecule and so demonstrated that thalassaemia results from their unequal development and he went on to identify other anomalies that can afflict the make-up of haemoglobin. This work also illuminated links between the thalassaemias and other clinical problems and led to valuable advances in chelating therapy to remove excess iron from the body, which changed treatment worldwide. www.thelancet.com Vol 376 October 30, 2010
The MRC Unit, which Weatherall set up in 1979, was only a beginning. His successor in another post, the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, is John Bell. “David was among the first to recognise how genetics would be a powerful force in medical science”, Bell says. “In Oxford he shaped one of the first and most innovative programmes in molecular medicine in the UK.” The bricks-and-mortar manifestation of this programme was a new institute. Weatherall recalls that “when I first came to Oxford [in 1974] there was little interaction between medicine and the basic sciences, and a lot of doubts about the research capacity of medics”. Undaunted, he went on to propose a research centre devoted to this new molecular approach. Although a suitable building was available, the proposition was greeted with some scepticism, with one colleague saying “he didn’t mind what happened in the building so long as it wasn’t full of doctors writing papers for The Lancet. But that’s all changed now”, says Weatherall. Indeed it has. The new institute came into existence and was later, and fittingly, renamed the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. “David’s commitment to his patients is an important factor in his science”, according to Bell. “It was this interest which led him to pioneer research into developing world health, helping to create a global network of research activities directed at people suffering from then neglected diseases such as malaria.” Indeed, Weatherall’s work with colleagues in developing countries began long before global health became as prominent as it is today. Travelling widely, he established long-standing collaborations between Oxford University and researchers in southeast Asia and Africa. His commitment and vision helped ensure the success of these research projects. “One couldn’t wish for a more inspirational mentor than David”, Bell says. This down to earth, self-effacing man contrives to present his career as a succession of chance events punctuated by occasional stumbles which, through good fortune, eventually worked out for the best. Engaging stuff—but not to be taken seriously. Anyone who has read his 1995 book Science and the Quiet Art will have no difficulty in recognising his broad grasp not just of haematology but of the history and nature of medicine and medical research more generally. The National Portrait Gallery in London has two photographs of Weatherall in its archives. One, from 1996, features him wearing a positively care-worn expression. The other, taken 4 years later, shows Weatherall perched on a stool in front of a laboratory bench, and glancing sideways at the camera with a slightly mischievous grin. That’s more like it.
Lasker Foundation
Profile David Weatherall: Lasker Award for pioneer in molecular medicine
See Online for webvideo For more about David Weatherall see http:// www.laskerfoundation.org/ awards/2010_s_description.htm
Geoff Watts geoff@scileg.freeserve.co.uk
1457
A few minutes with David Weatherall are all it takes to be reassured that for all the honours, the regius professorship, and the knighthood there is nothing remotely pompous about this man. The talk is simple, direct, and liberally spiced with irreverent accounts of people and places encountered during decades in medicine, many of them in its front ranks. Weatherall is a great one for anecdotes; for the human detail that spices the bland facts. Speaking of his teachers as an undergraduate at Liverpool University he mentions Harry Sheehan of Sheehan’s syndrome fame. “Every Saturday morning we had what was called the meat class in which he demonstrated the week’s pathology. He was continually puffing his pipe and the ash used to fall on the specimens with a gentle sizzling. I’ve never forgotten that. But a brilliant teacher, actually.” Thanking the Lasker Foundation for the 2010 LaskerKoshland Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science, which was bestowed upon him earlier this month, Weatherall described how it was the British Army that had introduced him to blood disorders. Fearful, so he claims, of violence and snakes, he’d asked to do his military service at a hospital in the UK. 3 weeks later he was on a troopship heading for Singapore to deal with some of the casualties of the war across the border in Malaya. With no paediatric experience he was put in charge of the children’s ward in the military hospital where he encountered the profoundly anaemic daughter of a Ghurkha solider. The problem turned out to be thalassaemia, previously thought of as a disease of Mediterranean populations. It was a disease that would shape Weatherall’s career. A seed had been sown; one of its early fruits, just 5 years later, was Weatherall’s book The Thalassaemia Syndromes. “It was a book that drew the map and set out all the questions that needed answering”, says Doug Higgs, Weatherall’s successor as Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Molecular Haematology Unit in Oxford, and a fellow researcher who’s known him since the 1970s. “What started from careful clinical observation of certain blood diseases was then combined with an appreciation of what was going on in molecular genetics in the 1960s and 1970s to allow David to make the first forays into molecular medicine.” Weatherall used a novel technique to separate the two globin chains of the haemoglobin molecule and so demonstrated that thalassaemia results from their unequal development and he went on to identify other anomalies that can afflict the make-up of haemoglobin. This work also illuminated links between the thalassaemias and other clinical problems and led to valuable advances in chelating therapy to remove excess iron from the body, which changed treatment worldwide. www.thelancet.com Vol 376 October 30, 2010
The MRC Unit, which Weatherall set up in 1979, was only a beginning. His successor in another post, the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, is John Bell. “David was among the first to recognise how genetics would be a powerful force in medical science”, Bell says. “In Oxford he shaped one of the first and most innovative programmes in molecular medicine in the UK.” The bricks-and-mortar manifestation of this programme was a new institute. Weatherall recalls that “when I first came to Oxford [in 1974] there was little interaction between medicine and the basic sciences, and a lot of doubts about the research capacity of medics”. Undaunted, he went on to propose a research centre devoted to this new molecular approach. Although a suitable building was available, the proposition was greeted with some scepticism, with one colleague saying “he didn’t mind what happened in the building so long as it wasn’t full of doctors writing papers for The Lancet. But that’s all changed now”, says Weatherall. Indeed it has. The new institute came into existence and was later, and fittingly, renamed the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. “David’s commitment to his patients is an important factor in his science”, according to Bell. “It was this interest which led him to pioneer research into developing world health, helping to create a global network of research activities directed at people suffering from then neglected diseases such as malaria.” Indeed, Weatherall’s work with colleagues in developing countries began long before global health became as prominent as it is today. Travelling widely, he established long-standing collaborations between Oxford University and researchers in southeast Asia and Africa. His commitment and vision helped ensure the success of these research projects. “One couldn’t wish for a more inspirational mentor than David”, Bell says. This down to earth, self-effacing man contrives to present his career as a succession of chance events punctuated by occasional stumbles which, through good fortune, eventually worked out for the best. Engaging stuff—but not to be taken seriously. Anyone who has read his 1995 book Science and the Quiet Art will have no difficulty in recognising his broad grasp not just of haematology but of the history and nature of medicine and medical research more generally. The National Portrait Gallery in London has two photographs of Weatherall in its archives. One, from 1996, features him wearing a positively care-worn expression. The other, taken 4 years later, shows Weatherall perched on a stool in front of a laboratory bench, and glancing sideways at the camera with a slightly mischievous grin. That’s more like it.
Lasker Foundation
Profile David Weatherall: Lasker Award for pioneer in molecular medicine
See Online for webvideo For more about David Weatherall see http:// www.laskerfoundation.org/ awards/2010_s_description.htm
Geoff Watts geoff@scileg.freeserve.co.uk
1457