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.

Awards and honours

In 1985, Smithells was awarded the Harding award in 1985 from Action Research for the Crippled Child In 1992, Smithells was awarded the prestigious James Spence Gold Medal in 1992, by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. The Rank Prize for Nutrition followed and was awarded jointly in 1995. In 1998 he won the Dawson Williams Memorial Prize of the British Medical Association. During 2000, Smithells won the International Research Award of the Joseph P Kennedy Foundation for research into the role of folic acid in preventing neural tube defects.