Richard Smithells
Richard Worthington Smithells was a British paediatrician and Emeritus professor of paediatrics at the University of Leeds. Smithells was most notable for research into neural tube defects, congenital abnormality registers, genetic counselling, and rubella in pregnancy and for later suggesting direct examination of the foetus by photography using ultrasonography.
Life
Smithells great uncle and grandfather had been professors of chemistry at the University of Leeds and his father was a Leeds graduate, so Smithells family always had a strong connection to the university. Smithells took his early education at Rugby School and later studied medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital Medical School. This was followed by 2 years of national service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Germany in 1949–1951.In 1948 he married Joy Muriel Foster née Beaver, who died 4 February 2010. They had five children and eleven grand-children.
Smithells died on 13 June 2002 from prostate cancer.
Career
After two years as a senior registrar at Guy's Hospital, in 1959, Smithells became a lecturer at the University of Liverpool and became consultant paediatrician and medical superintendent for Alder Hey Children's Hospital in 1964. In 1968 he took up the chair of Paediatrics and Child Health at Leeds University, and worked in all the hospitals in Leeds. By 1962, Smithells had established congenital abnormality register and genetic counselling service at the University of Liverpool.Smithells retired from the chair of Paediatrics and Child Health in 1988. After his retirement, he continued to work. From 1989 to 1997 Smithells was appointed a medical consultant in vaccine damage tribunals that were established in 1979 to provide payments to children seen to be damaged by a vaccine. Further appointments included a position as a consultant on the European Registration of Congenital Abnormalities and Twins registry. From 1994 to 1996 he also employed as part-time Director of the International Centre for Birth Defects in Rome, Italy.
Contributions
Dick Smithells work during his long career was the prevention of disease in children. Early in his career, Smithells recognized the effects of poor nutrition in pregnant women and how it led to birth defects with studies taking many years. Indeed his most notable research in his career, was the establishing link between folic acid deficiency and neural tube defects. It wasn't until 1991 that the Medical Research Council ratified his decision by recommending that pregnant women's diets should contain sufficient folic acid.Many of Smithells early papers were about the effects of Thalidomide on the foetus, and he developed a special unit to support children damaged by thalidomide, and was later heavily involved in securing compensation for children disabled by the
thalidomide drug, and taking a position in the Thalidomide Trust to facilitate that role.