OLD AZURIANS

Later, at UCL’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children and Institute of Child Health, where Ron was investigating inherited immune disorders, he combined the techniques used for deriving and caring for germ-free laboratory animals with surgical isolators to produce  ‘bubble’ isolators to deliver and care for a child in a sterile environment. This type of isolator was first used in 1967 as a precautionary measure for the successful birth of a baby whose earlier sibling had died as a result of immune system dysfunction. After the birth, by caesarean section, into a sterile surgical isolator, the baby was transferred in a second isolator to the main isolator at Great Ormond Street Hospital where it was confirmed that the baby was the first human baby to be born germ-free. Happily the baby was also found to have a functioning immune system and went on to live a normal life.

This ‘first’ attracted worldwide attention in the media, though some years later it was somewhat eclipsed by the popular publicity that surrounded another case in the USA involving a child who actually was born without an active immune system.

As the years progressed Ron transformed from being a medic to a being a scientist specialising in developmental biology. His ongoing research included investigations into relationships between different types of leukaemia, important early work on susceptibility / resistance to tumours, and immunological mechanisms. His findings in the latter field led him to approach the famous Nobel Laureate Sir Peter Medawar who immediately invited him to move his research team to form a new division at the newly constructed MRC Clinical Research Centre to continue this work.