Pioneer of life-saving treatment
Sir David Weatherall Physician and scientist BORN MARCH 9, 1933 – DIED DECEMBER 8, 2018, AGED 85
WITH his pioneering research in the field of inherited blood conditions and a lifelong commitment to improving medical care in the developing world, Sir David Weatherall was quite literally a life-saver.
This humble physician and scientist’s determination to stand up for what was right also provided inspiration for John Le Carré’s bestselling book The Constant Gardener, which was later turned into a Hollywood film.
Sir David was born in Liverpool in 1933, the son of a lab technician who worked at an animal feed company, and was educated at Calday Grange Grammar School.
He studied medicine at the University of Liverpool and passed his membership exam for the Royal College of Physicians before doing his National Service at the age of 25.
Posted to Singapore, he was put in charge of a children’s ward where a meeting with a severely anaemic toddler set the course of his career.
With a biochemist colleague, he confirmed that the child had thalassaemia, an inherited blood disorder which was unknown in that part of the world.
He also discovered the parents were carriers of the gene and his findings were published in the British Medical Journal, the first of more than 600 articles he published and the many discoveries he made that changed the course of medicine. After two years in the Army he took a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in America to study haematology, where he met his wife Stella Mayorga-Nestler and they married in 1962.
The couple eventually returned to Liverpool, where he rose to the rank of Professor of Haematology.
Sir David became an expert on the genetics of thalassaemias, which affects one to two per cent of the world’s population.
He led the way in developing molecular medicine, pioneering techniques which were adopted worldwide and made detection of the disease in pregnancy possible.
Sir David also used his knowledge to control and prevent these diseases in developing countries.
Together with Dr Nancy Olivieri, he was co-founder of the charity Hemoglobal, which works to improve the survival rates of sufferers in Asia. When Olivieri became locked in a David and Goliath-type struggle against a pharmaceutical company for reporting adverse effects of a drug she was trialling, Sir David spoke out in her support.
He was also one of the UK academic clinicians to fight the abuse of Dr Aubrey Blumsohn when he challenged the ethics of drugs companies.
In 1974, he was appointed Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine at Oxford and assumed the prestigious chair of Regius Professor of Medicine from 1992. The university’s MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, which he founded in 1989 and was the first of its kind in Europe, was named after him on his retirement in 2000.
He stepped down as governor of the Wellcome Trust in the same year and chose to forgo a farewell party, requesting the money be put towards a new hospital in Sri Lanka instead.
His knighthood in 1987 was followed by the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire a year ago, the highest rank bestowed by the Queen.
Despite rising to such heights, Sir David was never pompous and never forgot his roots. He was an avid fan of Liverpool FC and passionate about Mozart, classical piano and smoking his pipe.
He was fondly called “Prof” by many, with colleagues and students remembering a man who was good humoured and modest. Sir David is survived by wife Stella, their son Mark and five grandchildren.