Lasker~Koshland
Special Achievement Award in Medical Science

Acceptance remarks by David Weatherall

In thanking the Lasker Foundation for this wonderful honor, my current mood is one of enormous pleasure tinged with total disbelief. The latter is engendered by the fact that my first effort at research into common inherited anemias was an embarrassing disaster. After qualifying in medicine in Liverpool in 1956 and an internship I received my call-up papers from the British army to serve what was then a compulsory two years of National Service. Terrified of violence, flying or snakes, I volunteered to serve in the UK; three weeks later I found myself on a troop ship bound for Singapore where I was put in charge of the Childrens Ward at the British Military Hospital. There I encountered a Nepalese baby whose father was serving with a Ghurka regiment and who was profoundly anemic and being kept alive on blood transfusion. I discovered that this child had thalassemia, which at that time was thought to be a disease of Mediterranean populations. I thought the world should hear about this and published a case report of this child as my first paper. Shortly afterwards I was told to come and see the head of the Armed Forces for the Far East who asked me whether I had had permission from the British government to publish this work. I said I hadn't and he told me that to publish details about British Military personnel without permission was an offence for which I could be court-martialed. "Never do it again," he said "And anyway it is extremely bad form to tell the world that our best regiments have bad genes." Fortunately I ignored this first piece of career advice.

The second chance event which molded my career came in 1967 when I received a request from the World Health Organization to go on a two month tour of Asia and report back to them on the clinical importance of thalassemia. The Organization always required an en-route briefing by a local expert. Because of the war between India and Pakistan the 'expert' for the Indian subcontinent had been moved to Egypt where I met him to be briefed. He did not speak a word of English and an interpreter told me that he was an expert on building drains and had never heard of thalassemia. Hence the briefing was extremely brief and I set off for my trip not knowing what to expect. In the event I met many groups with whom I later developed long-term collaborations and evolved the whole concept of North/South partnerships which have lasted to this day. They have led to the development of exciting research programs but also allowed us to carry out a considerable amount of capacity building in the poorer countries in Asia.

Given this bizarre background I accept this award with considerable surprise tinged with enormous personal pleasure and also on behalf of the extraordinarily talented colleagues in the hemoglobin field whose work led it to becoming one of the foundations of molecular medicine. But particularly, I thank the Lasker Foundation for telling the world that its extremely distinguished jury is aware of the importance of the inherited blood diseases as a global health problem. If this message can be learned by the major international health agencies and governments there is some hope for the future of the thousands of children with inherited blood diseases in the poorer countries of the world.