Jeanne Bell
This profile was originally published as part of the MRC Annual Review 06/07: People behind discovery. The review tells the stories of just a handful of MRC scientists, the work they do and the career paths they have chosen. Jeanne retired in 2007 and this profile is available for reference purposes only.
Born: August 1942 in Bishop Auckland, County Durham
Education: BSc (Hons) University of Newcastle; MB BS University of Durham; MD University of Newcastle; FRCPath London
Family: Married to Dr Denis Rutovitz MBE, one son, two stepsons, two stepdaughters and four grandchildren
Current job title: Professor of Neuropathology, Western General Hospital, University of Edinburgh
Awards: 2007 CBE; 2001 Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences; 1998 Fellow of the Royal Society, Edinburgh
Career highlight: Establishing internationally recognised brain banks for infective dementias and, more recently, for control brains and psychiatric disorders
“As a child I was taken to India by my parents who were missionaries. My time there imprinted me with the reality of poverty and that made me want to be a doctor. I suppose I imagined myself tending to the sick and curing people, even though I really had no idea what being a doctor was about, coming as I did from a non-medical family.
I went to medical school in Newcastle, which certainly shaped my career. On my first day I met the new Professor of Anatomy, R J Scothorne – he was one of those inspirational teachers who made his subject come alive. During my medical training I did a research based honours degree with him and then, after qualifying, I went back to anatomy. At that stage I thought I’d spend my career in teaching and research. I loved research.
In 1975 I moved to Edinburgh but found that anatomy wasn’t research driven as it was in Newcastle. Instead I found a research post in an MRC unit, investigating human miscarriage, and it gradually became apparent that what I was really doing was fetal pathology. An opportunity arose for me to be trained in pathology and I became a member of the Royal College of Pathologists in 1983 when I was about 40.
I’ve been in neuropathology in Edinburgh since 1984. I spend half my time as a diagnostic neuropathologist. This involves performing post-mortem examinations, as well as helping neurosurgeons with diagnosing brain tissue samples in the middle of surgical operations. For the rest of the time I am occupied with academic activities including teaching and research. For a while in my career I was a full-time researcher but I was never entirely comfortable with that. For me, contact with patients is very important to provide the research direction. I will retire from clinical service this year but I expect to continue with research while my current grants are still running.
Much of my research has been concerned with the effects of HIV on the nervous system. The HIV epidemic was emerging in Edinburgh just as I started working as a neuropathologist and I felt that it would have been wrong not to investigate this new disease. Three main groups of individuals were at risk of developing AIDS in the early days – gay men, drug users and haemophiliacs. The MRC was interested in whether these groups fared differently, particularly with respect to involvement of the brain. For reasons which are still poorly understood, about half of Edinburgh’s drug users became HIV positive, compared with only around one in 20 elsewhere. When the MRC set up brain banks to store tissue from infected people for research, Edinburgh was the logical place to study drug-related HIV/AIDS.
One issue in brain banking is the shortage of control brains for comparison purposes. With the support of the MRC I recently set up the sudden death brain bank to access the forensic post mortem service as a source of ‘normal’ brain tissue. For this I had to get the police, the Scottish Crown Office, the procurators fiscal and the local ethics committee on board. It took me nearly three years to win approval to approach bereaved families. Sometimes the circumstances of death are particularly tragic and post mortem examinations in the very young are always affecting, but my responsibility is to perform a professional job to the best of my ability. We have just completed the two-year pilot study to see whether bereaved families would authorise us to retain tissue samples from their loved one for the purpose of research. We have been overwhelmed by the response – 96 per cent of the families we approach agree to the donation and nearly one in five are prepared to donate whole organs.”
Published August 2007