Former UK Chief Medical Officer and MRC scientist dies
Sir Donald Acheson: 17 September 1926 – 10 January 2010
Professor Sir Donald Acheson, the UK’s Chief Medical Officer from 1983 to 1991 and the first Director of the MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit, died this month at the age of 83. His long and distinguished career encompassed the growth of Aids as a global health concern, the risks posed to human health by the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) and research into health inequalities and the risks associated with asbestos and other industrial materials.
Born in Belfast, Donald and his elder brother Roy both followed in their father’s footsteps and qualified as doctors with a special interest in public health. After graduating from Oxford University, Donald worked at the Middlesex Hospital, London. In 1953 he joined the RAF Medical Board to do his National Service and rose to the rank of Acting Squadron Leader.
Donald returned to Oxford in 1957, where he taught in the Nuffield Department of Medicine and was director of the Oxford Record Linkage Study and Unit of Clinical Epidemiology. Then in 1968, he joined Southampton University as Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and, later, Founding Dean of the University’s Medical School.
In 1979, the Medical Research Council decided to fund a centre of excellence in epidemiological research to study the causes of chronic disease. Donald was appointed director and oversaw the establishment of the new unit at Southampton University. This was the MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit, and it continues its important work to this day, though it is now called the MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre and has shifted its focus to studying the developmental origins of health and disease.
Donald’s own research used a series of cohort studies to examine the impact of industrial materials on workers’ health. A cohort study is a powerful way to research disease because it takes a set of people with no underlying illness and follows them over a long period of time to see what they do and what happens to their health. Southampton was already running several long-term cohort studies, which would help researchers to identify common factors in the onset of certain diseases. For example, Donald set up several cohort studies of workers exposed to industrial chemicals such as formaldehyde and styrene which helped to inform regulatory risk assessment across the world.
Donald later wrote a report for the Health and Safety Executive on asbestos – then widely used in the building trade – which had been shown to be linked to cancer. The report led to the banning of asbestos imports and the introduction of new construction safety standards. Thousands of builders and their families would go on to develop lung cancer from the asbestos dust they had been exposed to, but there would have been many more cases had these restrictions not been imposed.
He also chaired an investigation into the need to improve primary healthcare in inner London. His 1981 report set out more than 100 recommendations for urgent change in the way hospitals, surgeries, GPs and community nurses worked.
Donald accepted the post of Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in 1983. It was a role he would fill for eight years, overseeing the UK’s response to major health challenges such as the growing Aids epidemic and the emerging threat of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) following the outbreak of BSE in the UK’s cattle herds.
Donald’s expertise and experience in public health were in demand throughout his career – after stepping down as CMO, he joined a humanitarian mission to the former Yugoslavia for the World Health Organization and, in 1997, was commissioned by the incoming Labour Government to lead an influential inquiry into health inequalities in Britain.
Knighted in 1986, Sir Donald married twice and had seven children.
