Everything about Richard Doll totally explained
Sir William Richard Shaboe Doll CH OBE FRS (
28 October 1912–
24 July 2005) was a
British physiologist who became the foremost
epidemiologist of the 20th century, turning the subject into a rigorous science. He was a pioneer in research linking
smoking to health problems. With Ernst Wynder, Bradford Hill and Evarts Graham, he was the first in the modern world to prove that smoking caused
lung cancer and increased the risk of
heart disease. German researchers had established this association in the 1930s, although that work wasn't widely appreciated until recently (Robert Proctor,
The Nazi War on Cancer, 1999). He also did pioneering work on the relationship between radiation and
leukemia as well as that between
asbestos and
lung cancer, and
alcohol and
breast cancer.
Biography
Doll was born at
Hampton into an affluent family, though his father's work as a doctor was cut short by
multiple sclerosis. Educated first at
Westminster School, Doll originally then intended (against the wishes of his parents that he become a doctor like his father) to study mathematics at
Trinity College, Cambridge. Doll failed the mathematics scholarship from the effects of drinking too much of the College's own-brewed beer the night before. He subsequently chose to study medicine at
St Thomas' Hospital Medical School from where he graduated in
1937. Doll was a socialist, and one of the significant figures in the
Socialist Medical Association whose campaign helped lead to the creation of Britain's postwar
National Health Service. He joined the
Royal College of Physicians after the outbreak of
World War II and served for much of the war as a part of the
Royal Army Medical Corps on a hospital ship as a medical specialist.
After the war, Doll returned to St Thomas' to research
asthma. In
1948 he joined a research team under Dr
Francis Avery-Jones at the
Central Middlesex Hospital, run under the auspices of the statistical research unit of the
Medical Research Council. Over a 21 year career in the unit, Doll rose to become its director. His research there initially consisted of disproving the then-held belief that
peptic ulceration was caused by heavy responsibility, but instead stress. In
1950, he then undertook with
Austin Bradford Hill a study of lung cancer patients in 20 London hospitals, at first under the belief that it was due to the new material
tarmac, or motor car fumes, but rapidly discovering that
tobacco smoking was the only factor they'd in common. Doll himself stopped smoking as a result of his findings, published in the
British Medical Journal in
1950, which concluded;
» "The risk of developing the disease increases in proportion to the amount smoked. It may be 50 times as great among those who smoke 25 or more cigarettes a day as among non-smokers."
Four years later, in
1954 the
British doctors study, a study of some 40 thousand doctors over 20 years, confirmed the suggestion, based on which the government issued advice that smoking and lung cancer rates were related.
In 1955 Doll reported a case controlled study that has firmly established the relationship between asbestos and lung cancer.
In 1966 Doll was elected to the
Royal Society. The citation stated:
Doll is distinguished for his researches in epidemiology & particularly the epidemiology of cancer where in the last 10 years he's played a prominent part in (a) elucidating the causes of lung cancer in industry (asbestos, nickel & coal tar workers) & more generally, in relation to cigarette smoking, and (b) in the investigation of leukaemia particularly in relation to radiation, where using the mortality of patients treated with radiotherapy he's reached a quantitative estimate of the leukaemogenic effects of such radiation. In clinical medicine he's made carefully controlled trials of treatments for gastric ulcer. He has been awarded the United Nations prize for outstanding research into the causes & control of cancer & the Bisset Hawkins medal of the Royal College of Physicians for his contributions to preventative medicine
In
1969, Doll moved to
Oxford University, to sit as the
Regius Professor of Medicine, succeeding the clinical researcher
Sir George Pickering.
Initially, epidemiology was held in low regard, but in his time at Oxford he helped reverse this. He was the primary agent behind the creation of
Green College, from where he retired in
1983.
Doll also helped found the
National Blood Service, and was key in avoiding a system of paying donors for their blood, as had been adopted in the
United States. His continued work into
carcinogens at the
Imperial Cancer Research Centre at the
John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, working as part of the
Clinical Trial Service Unit, notably including a study undertaken with
Sir Richard Peto, in which it was estimated that tobacco, along with infections and diet, caused between then three quarters of all cancers, which was the basis of much of the
World Health Organisation's conclusions on environmental pollution and cancer.
Doll was
Knighted in
1971, and made a
Companion of Honour in
1996 for "services of national importance". He was made a Fellow of the
Royal Society, awarded the Presidential Award of the
New York Academy of Sciences as well as a
UN Award for his research into cancer. In April
2005, he was awarded the
Saudi Arabian
King Faisal International Prize for medicine jointly with Peto for their work on diseases related to smoking. In 2004, he was awarded the inaugural
Shaw Prize for Life Sciences and Medicine for his contribution to modern cancer epidemiology. He was also awarded
honorary degrees by thirteen different
universities.
He died on
24 July,
2005, at the
John Radcliffe Hospital in
Oxford after a short illness.
Building
The Richard Doll Building was named in his honour and opened shortly before his death.
It currently houses the
Clinical Trial Service Unit,
Cancer Epidemiology Unit and
National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit.
A plaque inside the building contains the following quotation from Doll:
"
Death in old age is inevitable, but death before old age is not. In previous centuries 70 years used to be regarded as humanity's allotted span of life, and only about one in five lived to such an age. Nowadays, however, for non-smokers in Western countries, the situation is reversed: only about one in five will die before 70, and the non-smoker death rates are still decreasing, offering the promise, at least in developed countries, of a world where death before 70 is uncommon. For this promise to be properly realised, ways must be found to limit the vast damage that's now being done by tobacco and to bring home, not only to the many millions of people in developed countries but also the far larger populations elsewhere, the extent to which those who continue to smoke are shortening their expectation of life by so doing."
Controversy
After his death, controversy arose over some of his work because his papers, held at the
Wellcome Foundation Library, showed that for many years he'd received consultancy payments from chemical companies whose products he was to defend in court. These include US$1,500 per day consultancy fee from
Monsanto for a relationship which began in 1976 and continued until 2002. He also received fees from the Chemical Manufacturers Association,
Dow Chemicals, and
ICI. Some donations, including a £50,000 gift from asbestos company Turner and Newall, were given in public ceremony to Green College Oxford where his wife was Warden, but most fees and payments remained undisclosed to the public, Oxford University and colleagues until his death. His defenders point out that his connections to industry were widely known by those in the field, that he did his work before formal disclosure of commercial interests became commonplace and that on occasion, he came to conclusions that were unpalatable to the companies who consulted him. His own view, as reported by Richard Peto, was that it was necessary to co-operate with companies for access to data which could prove their products to be dangerous.
Further Information
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