1 00:00:06,920 --> 00:00:08,660 Just say that again. Yes, certainly. 2 00:00:08,660 --> 00:00:21,620 So although I was born in London, my childhood and adolescence were in Cambridge and I was the youngest of four children of an academic family. 3 00:00:21,620 --> 00:00:26,840 Without doubt, the best decision I made was not to follow my three brothers and go to Clare College, 4 00:00:26,840 --> 00:00:36,710 but to go across on the little train preaching to Oxford, where I went to Merton College and Dennis Parsons as a medical tutor. 5 00:00:36,710 --> 00:00:43,160 Now, are you saying that because it was a good thing to get out of your home city or because of Dennis 6 00:00:43,160 --> 00:00:48,590 Burleson's or because of what happened in Oxford as opposed to what might have happened in Cambridge? 7 00:00:48,590 --> 00:00:56,030 I mean, I think the first point you make has to be true, but actually know just the positives about medicine in Oxford. 8 00:00:56,030 --> 00:01:06,230 I'm talking 1963, and I think probably Dennis Parsons was an unusually gifted human being, a tutor in many other ways. 9 00:01:06,230 --> 00:01:13,760 He wasn't a gifted human, but he had fantastic strengths in getting people to think beyond their comfort 10 00:01:13,760 --> 00:01:18,890 zone and also to get people to have to think hard about joining up subjects. 11 00:01:18,890 --> 00:01:27,350 So he taught the whole of physiology, including neurophysiology, the whole of biochemistry, pharmacology, bit of pathology. 12 00:01:27,350 --> 00:01:36,140 And so that was obvious because it all connected, rather old fashioned to Oxford itself, was full of interesting people. 13 00:01:36,140 --> 00:01:41,390 And hence Cramps was the professor of chemistry. 14 00:01:41,390 --> 00:01:46,160 And there was a very strong group of people in biochemistry around Crib's. 15 00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:53,870 There were still Flori in post or just retired in pathology and Legro Clark in anatomy. 16 00:01:53,870 --> 00:01:56,480 So there were some impressive people. Right. 17 00:01:56,480 --> 00:02:04,640 And do you think the structure or the sort of method of teaching in Oxford was different from Cambridge, from what you gathered? 18 00:02:04,640 --> 00:02:07,790 Yes, I was remarkably ignorant about how it worked in Cambridge, 19 00:02:07,790 --> 00:02:13,880 but I think it probably was a bit different in that I think that Dennis Parsons style of teaching, 20 00:02:13,880 --> 00:02:21,560 which was to focus on three students a year over the first three years, he'd have nine students doing medicine. 21 00:02:21,560 --> 00:02:27,560 I think in a Cambridge environment there would have been many more students and he'd found people out much more. 22 00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:30,800 So I suspect there was some subtle difference there. 23 00:02:30,800 --> 00:02:39,230 Oxford was famous for being a place where people sat on their backside and thought hard about why the experiment wouldn't work, 24 00:02:39,230 --> 00:02:52,560 whereas in Cambridge they just got in. Did it go right that one of the aphorisms and you came over and I think your father was unwell in your school? 25 00:02:52,560 --> 00:02:59,050 Yeah, yeah. Which obviously complicated things a bit. And then you did schools and Perth and back. 26 00:02:59,050 --> 00:03:07,430 Yeah, presumably. Yeah. Did you find it. Well first of all, how did you find the entrance index with that entrance in Oxford involves sitting in I 27 00:03:07,430 --> 00:03:14,030 think it was Christchurch Dining Hall which is not exactly a modest statement of things. 28 00:03:14,030 --> 00:03:24,200 And I remember being baffled by what this was all about, really virtually all young males sitting in this room scribbling on pieces of paper. 29 00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:28,760 It could have been 1863 rather than 1963, erm anyway. 30 00:03:28,760 --> 00:03:40,490 But there was also this issue of having an interview with a panel chaired by the head of college at Merton who was not very distinguished philosopher. 31 00:03:40,490 --> 00:03:44,990 And I remember him asking me what I read and I just read Middlemarch. 32 00:03:44,990 --> 00:03:51,530 And the comment was, do you think George Eliot sees the world through rose tinted spectacles? 33 00:03:51,530 --> 00:03:56,300 And I had not a clue what he was talking about. 34 00:03:56,300 --> 00:04:08,450 It was not a very academic college, Merton, but it was a very nice environment in the sense that it was relatively small. 35 00:04:08,450 --> 00:04:16,790 It was certainly well-heeled. And having a tutor who was interested in thinking about academic intellectual things made a huge difference to me. 36 00:04:16,790 --> 00:04:22,030 Yes. How did you find the practical side of the schools? 37 00:04:22,030 --> 00:04:26,330 Yes, that's again a very good question, Derek, because it's so different from now. 38 00:04:26,330 --> 00:04:34,310 There was a lot of practical work. I remember doing a wonderful practical with a young lecturer in biochemistry called Robinson, 39 00:04:34,310 --> 00:04:38,300 who was a lipid biochemist, went off to needs to be professor. 40 00:04:38,300 --> 00:04:46,760 But, you know, he spent a whole week of his life taking two or three third year schools, undergraduates, 41 00:04:46,760 --> 00:04:50,990 through a project that involved lipid extraction and doing counting of radioactive 42 00:04:50,990 --> 00:04:55,910 incorporation of tritium and things that in those days were absolutely at the front end. 43 00:04:55,910 --> 00:05:02,180 And you got the data and you had to think about it. And that certainly had a very positive effect on me. 44 00:05:02,180 --> 00:05:06,690 I think there is a message a little bit about the importance of having exposure. 45 00:05:06,690 --> 00:05:15,450 To real experimental science, relatively young, and the schools years ago, how did you enjoy that? 46 00:05:15,450 --> 00:05:24,810 It was called animal physiology then and it was broad, which I liked for the reasons I've mentioned. 47 00:05:24,810 --> 00:05:32,880 And there were some good teachers. There was a man called Cox and Victor Coxon, who, in retrospect, 48 00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:37,680 although he wasn't at all an exciting lecturer, actually must have given us very good lectures, 49 00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:46,170 because when I look back on the notes I'd taken, it seemed to me he got a very rounded and interesting view of what then was called body fluids. 50 00:05:46,170 --> 00:05:54,570 There were people like Peter Matthews doing neurophysiology, and Matthews was pretty impressive intellectually. 51 00:05:54,570 --> 00:06:03,820 And I got to know him a little bit better later on. And I just got increasingly impressed by the clarity of a really able brain. 52 00:06:03,820 --> 00:06:08,220 There were quite good people in respiratory physiology, 53 00:06:08,220 --> 00:06:18,390 but I'm afraid I'm not including Brian Lloyd in that because he got so lost in the mathematics that the biology rather disappeared. 54 00:06:18,390 --> 00:06:23,590 There were certainly exciting things in endocrinology once Harris was fully in place. 55 00:06:23,590 --> 00:06:26,490 So that was also good. 56 00:06:26,490 --> 00:06:36,420 The end result of the process was Avivah and I remember being Vibert by a group of people and I thought actually they were very fair. 57 00:06:36,420 --> 00:06:42,340 That's what I was impressed by. I thought these people took trouble and took time to read what one had written into us. 58 00:06:42,340 --> 00:06:47,370 One about it. Yep, that's good enough. And did the marvellous 20 minutes. 59 00:06:47,370 --> 00:06:52,770 Yes, I think it was probably 20 minutes. Yep. Yeah. And then Perth and back in pharmacology. 60 00:06:52,770 --> 00:07:00,450 Yes. Okay. So that I was a bit unusual in that I had a year of research immediately after taking school. 61 00:07:00,450 --> 00:07:03,690 Right. So Path and back happened. Dislocated by. 62 00:07:03,690 --> 00:07:10,710 Yes. I was firstly coming back to doing as it were, didactic learning. 63 00:07:10,710 --> 00:07:14,100 And secondly, I was in a different cohort of students. Yes. 64 00:07:14,100 --> 00:07:19,920 The second point I hadn't really thought hard about, but it was it was quite interesting in some ways a good thing. 65 00:07:19,920 --> 00:07:25,230 But in another way, it's quite challenging. The year of research was exceptionally interesting. 66 00:07:25,230 --> 00:07:28,080 I did that in biochemistry with Parsons. 67 00:07:28,080 --> 00:07:39,330 And as I said, Krebs was the professor then and a very interesting sort of aura that came around with Crib's not a good lecturer, 68 00:07:39,330 --> 00:07:44,850 rather shy, but bossy, a funny combination. 69 00:07:44,850 --> 00:07:50,220 But on a Saturday morning, I was busy doing an experiment because I enjoyed doing experiments. 70 00:07:50,220 --> 00:07:56,520 And I think the only other person in the tool building chemistry was Krenz at eight thirty on a Saturday morning. 71 00:07:56,520 --> 00:08:10,530 And he walked past the lab, looked in, resumed walking past the lab, came back 30 seconds later, said, Your boy, don't you talk to me? 72 00:08:10,530 --> 00:08:18,750 And it turned out that he had had some time in Cambridge after he left Germany. 73 00:08:18,750 --> 00:08:31,530 And Krebs was passionate about both helping young people, particularly not well-heeled people, get into science and passionate. 74 00:08:31,530 --> 00:08:40,860 I think about women. And there was somebody in Cambridge then who fit in both boxes called Miss Solsbury, who'd ended up as my father's secretary. 75 00:08:40,860 --> 00:08:47,150 And the message that Crêpes gave me was, give me Solsbury, my love. 76 00:08:47,150 --> 00:08:53,610 I was nice, but interesting. She hadn't ended up as a scientist. And I said, yes, yes, yes. 77 00:08:53,610 --> 00:08:56,490 Anyway, I mean, I had a lot of respect for crêpes, 78 00:08:56,490 --> 00:09:05,250 but I realised that there were younger academics there who had found somebody as formidable as crêpes, quite hard work. 79 00:09:05,250 --> 00:09:12,150 Denis Parsons got on well with him. So he would and said this interesting comment that he thought when you had a new head of the department, 80 00:09:12,150 --> 00:09:22,180 it was good to have a certain amount of incompatibility because that raised the activity forever, because he was always relentlessly quantitative. 81 00:09:22,180 --> 00:09:27,720 That was the thing I thought about me always asked with what you were doing A, B or C? 82 00:09:27,720 --> 00:09:33,060 I was, yes. Was the subject. The subject was. Yeah, that's quite interesting. 83 00:09:33,060 --> 00:09:38,430 And look back on it was that guy in Denmark called Scow had just discovered the sodium 84 00:09:38,430 --> 00:09:45,660 potassium ATP's and the Nobel Prise was awarded to him forty eight years later. 85 00:09:45,660 --> 00:09:54,240 I think so it was a big discovery, but it was something that biochemists were interested as it fed into physiology, because, of course, 86 00:09:54,240 --> 00:10:02,950 the idea of active pumping of sodium had come straight out of Cambridge and Hodgkins Lab with Caden's, and it was where physiology met biochemistry. 87 00:10:02,950 --> 00:10:06,450 So my project was on the sodium potassium. 88 00:10:06,450 --> 00:10:13,150 Here and the reactions of it, but in the context of the intestinal epithelium, which is what Dennis Parsons worked on, 89 00:10:13,150 --> 00:10:20,470 and there were one or two things that came out of that project that were interesting, like a little bit of fractionation early. 90 00:10:20,470 --> 00:10:27,610 So fractionation and characterisation of these reactions by M and the realisation that you 91 00:10:27,610 --> 00:10:32,800 could get at some of the cytoskeleton elements in these membrane preparations that way. 92 00:10:32,800 --> 00:10:37,120 So we had to paper in the Journal of Cell Biology from that one year research. 93 00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:43,960 And I think when I've met people who are into the cytoskeleton, they're absolutely astonished that I'm not 120. 94 00:10:43,960 --> 00:10:47,770 Because as you. A senior scientist. Yeah. 95 00:10:47,770 --> 00:10:51,400 And that was Perfuse gut was. Yes, it was indeed. Yeah. Yeah. 96 00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:55,090 So then you go back to the person back and we still writing up your thesis. 97 00:10:55,090 --> 00:11:00,020 You know, I wrote my thesis over the summer before starting that, um, 98 00:11:00,020 --> 00:11:07,690 the Pathum Back was interesting because it was clearly a very put together, thoughtful course. 99 00:11:07,690 --> 00:11:14,770 But the day is ex machina. There was Flori who actually retired the summer that I started that course. 100 00:11:14,770 --> 00:11:24,640 So Henry Harris had just been appointed and I think gifted as he was teaching wasn't at the top end of his priorities. 101 00:11:24,640 --> 00:11:32,350 So that that there was a sense in which this wonderful course wasn't actually quite in its prime. 102 00:11:32,350 --> 00:11:36,460 Right. And then that was followed around. 103 00:11:36,460 --> 00:11:47,680 Back to you. Yes, yes. Yes. And, um, it was a very good guy who worked on blood clotting and platelets who I was impressed by. 104 00:11:47,680 --> 00:11:57,460 He was in the done school. And then the pharmacology, which ran side path and back, was taught by Bill Papen, who was an impressive teacher. 105 00:11:57,460 --> 00:12:01,930 Yeah. Then there must have been the possibility of doing clinical in Oxford. 106 00:12:01,930 --> 00:12:05,080 So what made you go? Did you see it? 107 00:12:05,080 --> 00:12:16,240 So I must choose my words, given the nature of this, the Oxford Medical School, it's about the voters up and down the road. 108 00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:19,270 The word that is persons always used maliciously. 109 00:12:19,270 --> 00:12:27,430 And he had done his clinical training in Oxford was that at the clinical school was still very young, Richard. 110 00:12:27,430 --> 00:12:34,690 And it it had great strengths, but some weaknesses for various reasons. 111 00:12:34,690 --> 00:12:41,380 I went to University College Hospital in London where actually, although I found some interesting things going on, 112 00:12:41,380 --> 00:12:49,390 I met a phenomenon which I bumped into subsequently, which is its reputation rested on one or two major figures. 113 00:12:49,390 --> 00:12:55,330 And those major figures, like Max Rosenheim were busy running the Royal College of Physicians or whatever. 114 00:12:55,330 --> 00:12:59,830 So actually you were left with their registrars who weren't terribly special, actually. 115 00:12:59,830 --> 00:13:03,640 What year was that? So I went to do my clinical in 67. 116 00:13:03,640 --> 00:13:08,110 Yes. Yep, yep. And then you had two, three years clinically. I really enjoy it. 117 00:13:08,110 --> 00:13:18,460 Yes, I did. And I did a spell in Uganda working in the MRC nutrition unit there as part of that. 118 00:13:18,460 --> 00:13:25,920 So that was a special part. And again, in retrospect, how do you think your three years at UCLA compared with potential? 119 00:13:25,920 --> 00:13:36,040 Yes, yeah. The thing that really surprised me was to realise that once a week for my three years in Oxford, I had to sit down and write an essay. 120 00:13:36,040 --> 00:13:41,380 And there was only one person who ever suggested I did any written work during the three years of clinical work. 121 00:13:41,380 --> 00:13:47,380 And that was the paediatrician Leonard Strang, who didn't again have some imprint on me. 122 00:13:47,380 --> 00:13:49,630 And I think he was an interesting, clever guy. 123 00:13:49,630 --> 00:14:00,730 So I saw the contrast as the apprenticed clinical learning with the more cerebral academic learning is really very disjointed. 124 00:14:00,730 --> 00:14:07,840 There wasn't a joint Buckners between them. I did indeed enjoy the clinical years and I enjoyed patients. 125 00:14:07,840 --> 00:14:15,760 I didn't particularly enjoy the hierarchy which medical schools had in those times that I wasn't terribly good at sort of wanting to follow. 126 00:14:15,760 --> 00:14:23,110 The SHC around was following the registrar around. Um, but there were some impressive people. 127 00:14:23,110 --> 00:14:26,890 Charles Dent was probably the one who had the biggest imprint on me. 128 00:14:26,890 --> 00:14:35,650 I did a house job with, uh, John Leonard Jones and with John Dickinson and, you know, interesting people. 129 00:14:35,650 --> 00:14:38,590 John as Brian. Yes. Yes, yes. Absolutely. 130 00:14:38,590 --> 00:14:45,580 But somehow or other, the end result was, as I reflected on it, I'd actually enjoyed the three years preclinical. 131 00:14:45,580 --> 00:14:50,470 You. Yeah. Then after has jobs. Yes. To you went to New Guinea. 132 00:14:50,470 --> 00:14:58,390 I did indeed. You're very well briefed, which was interesting because I knew I was going to come back and do a deal in Oxford. 133 00:14:58,390 --> 00:15:06,960 I got married and to a young doctor and we both were, you know, relatively adventuresome and. 134 00:15:06,960 --> 00:15:12,720 We just got married and got one or two rather useless generous presents like silver teapots, 135 00:15:12,720 --> 00:15:20,370 and we took back to wherever it was and bought a ticket to to new it. 136 00:15:20,370 --> 00:15:27,810 How early then had you decided to do the deed? Yes, probably after finishing house jobs, I was still in contact with Dennis Parsons. 137 00:15:27,810 --> 00:15:33,630 As I say, we wrote up some papers and that led to sort of things continuing. 138 00:15:33,630 --> 00:15:38,490 Is that a decision you ever regret? Not the. But staying at the house? 139 00:15:38,490 --> 00:15:45,660 Yeah, I'm very aware. It was probably the big decision in terms of my working life. 140 00:15:45,660 --> 00:15:52,860 Um, and I sort of accepted that life has big decisions. 141 00:15:52,860 --> 00:15:57,330 And sometimes you can say if I had gone down this thing, I would have been different. 142 00:15:57,330 --> 00:16:02,910 I certainly didn't regret going down the route I took. And it's had, you know, a very fulfilling life. 143 00:16:02,910 --> 00:16:08,070 It is worth sharing. But but but certainly, you're right, it was an unusual decision. 144 00:16:08,070 --> 00:16:13,050 So was it two years? And then again, it was just after that. 145 00:16:13,050 --> 00:16:17,070 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm sure that was a sort of wonderful broadening. It was. 146 00:16:17,070 --> 00:16:22,350 And there were some quite interesting academic sort of laterals to that. 147 00:16:22,350 --> 00:16:30,150 The guru's story was just beginning to happen. And although that wasn't in the area of New Guinea we worked in, I was alert to it. 148 00:16:30,150 --> 00:16:38,820 And I was aware that the Australian Medical Research Council were beginning to get interested in putting money into to that sort of activity. 149 00:16:38,820 --> 00:16:46,410 There was a very impressive Australian doctors, one or two only in the in the hospital we worked in. 150 00:16:46,410 --> 00:16:50,760 I was also very taken by the notion of working to one's clinical limits, 151 00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:55,950 which was very different from the then prevailing thing in a hospital in the UK. 152 00:16:55,950 --> 00:17:00,150 If you were at this level, you did that, but you didn't do any more there. 153 00:17:00,150 --> 00:17:06,720 It was nobody else to do it. You did everything you could and that was actually quite it in sort of invigorating. 154 00:17:06,720 --> 00:17:14,010 I think the other academic aspect that intrigued me was the geographical variation in pathology. 155 00:17:14,010 --> 00:17:17,160 I was astonished to find one of the senior doctors saying to me, 156 00:17:17,160 --> 00:17:24,990 if you diagnose somebody with a minor cardiac infarction, you'll be wrong unless they're a Seventh Day Adventist. 157 00:17:24,990 --> 00:17:32,370 And I looked with bafflement at this Australian 60 year old doctor saying this to me. 158 00:17:32,370 --> 00:17:38,310 And actually, he was absolutely right. Asthma didn't occur except the Seventh Day Adventists. 159 00:17:38,310 --> 00:17:44,400 And of course, this all turned out to be related in a funny way to what later became the hygiene hypothesis. 160 00:17:44,400 --> 00:17:50,610 The Seventh Day Adventists were obsessive about cleanliness, was lack of exposure to certain things. 161 00:17:50,610 --> 00:17:55,920 So just seeing these things on the ground was quite interesting. 162 00:17:55,920 --> 00:17:59,730 So then you came back to the pig with Dennis? I did. 163 00:17:59,730 --> 00:18:07,950 Three years on what subject? Yes. So that was funded by an MRC Junior Clinical Fellowship. 164 00:18:07,950 --> 00:18:12,150 I was very lucky with the availability of these sorts of things then I think. 165 00:18:12,150 --> 00:18:24,540 And it was trying to work out how the transport systems that acourt the apical membrane of an epithelium like small intestine and those in the back, 166 00:18:24,540 --> 00:18:34,110 the lateral facing the blood side, are coordinated because it was very obvious that physiologically these things had to be talking to each other. 167 00:18:34,110 --> 00:18:36,990 So that was really the underlying sort of issue. 168 00:18:36,990 --> 00:18:45,390 And we met quite a lot of interest from looking in some detail at the way sugars with different molecular, 169 00:18:45,390 --> 00:18:52,710 um, modifications interacted with the transport systems ethically and Bazza laterally. 170 00:18:52,710 --> 00:18:59,280 And I was examined on that thesis by Richard Caden's from Cambridge, 171 00:18:59,280 --> 00:19:08,190 who had moved from being very, very knowledgeable about the nerve cell membrane to epithelium. 172 00:19:08,190 --> 00:19:19,560 And in a funny way, that was an interesting bovver because his knowledge of epithelium was not deep, but it was based on first principles. 173 00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:22,380 But some of those first principles were terrific. 174 00:19:22,380 --> 00:19:30,290 But I suddenly realised he hadn't really understood something that had recently come out of research in in Germany from the front, 175 00:19:30,290 --> 00:19:38,460 the group that showed that quite a lot of transport across so-called leaky epithelium was between cells rather than through the cells. 176 00:19:38,460 --> 00:19:48,240 So there was an interesting mismatch between a young Cocchi tells me that this senior experienced scientist where I realised I had an insight, 177 00:19:48,240 --> 00:19:56,010 which he didn't, who was the referee? The other examiner and the referee was somebody I've always admired, Charles Michel, 178 00:19:56,010 --> 00:20:00,660 who was capillary physiologist, very distinguished one, and a thoughtful person. 179 00:20:00,660 --> 00:20:07,670 Again, somebody who'd done medicine before he went in to be an academic in. 180 00:20:07,670 --> 00:20:12,150 And in some ways, Charles probably isn't aware of this, he was a little bit of a role model for me. 181 00:20:12,150 --> 00:20:17,950 He would have been five or 10 years older than me. So you're still in biochemistry? 182 00:20:17,950 --> 00:20:21,210 Absolutely. And is the crib are still pervading? No. 183 00:20:21,210 --> 00:20:34,440 The very interesting aura that happened while I was doing clinical Crabb's retard and they appointed Ron Porter and Porter was, if anything, uh, 184 00:20:34,440 --> 00:20:45,240 equally or more impressive than Crabb's because he was a very approachable human being and his 185 00:20:45,240 --> 00:20:52,980 expertise in immunology and the chemistry of the immune responses was obviously very special. 186 00:20:52,980 --> 00:20:56,460 Why he got his Nobel prise for the structure of antibodies. 187 00:20:56,460 --> 00:21:05,790 But he was very keen to be uppity every day in the top floor of the biochemistry tower and would speak to everybody, 188 00:21:05,790 --> 00:21:09,630 would make a point of talking to people, knew a bit about them. 189 00:21:09,630 --> 00:21:14,910 And the week after he got a Nobel prise, he found himself in Japan. 190 00:21:14,910 --> 00:21:26,580 And suddenly my sister-in-law, who's Japanese, got a phone call from Paul to out of the blue saying, I want you to know your brother Richard is fine. 191 00:21:26,580 --> 00:21:30,540 And she was completely baffled because she's Japanese. 192 00:21:30,540 --> 00:21:39,930 I spoke with a lovely, slightly stuttering Lancashire accent, but it sort of was an exemplar of of how to be a good head of department. 193 00:21:39,930 --> 00:21:45,750 I think a lot of time for Porter as a human being. Then we were getting a college attachment around. 194 00:21:45,750 --> 00:21:53,790 OK, so I got interviewed for one or two college things, including by George Pickering at Pembroke College. 195 00:21:53,790 --> 00:22:02,490 And actually, I'm very lucky that I didn't get any of it because it enabled me to do something which, 196 00:22:02,490 --> 00:22:11,100 uh, was completely by chance to apply for a job in Dundee, which was my next move. 197 00:22:11,100 --> 00:22:14,160 I'd also applied for jobs in New Zealand at Dunedin. 198 00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:25,620 And if the letter's offering me a chance to go and see them had come in the reverse order, I might well have spent the next 35 years in New Zealand. 199 00:22:25,620 --> 00:22:33,390 But I went to Dundee Place. I'd look at the map to find out where it was, but I was incredibly lucky in the timing of going there. 200 00:22:33,390 --> 00:22:38,670 Chemistry was really taking off there. But the department I had applied to his physiology, 201 00:22:38,670 --> 00:22:49,200 which had been a very much a backwater until they appointed somebody called Oli Petersen the previous year and early was more or less exactly my age. 202 00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:53,400 He became foreign secretary of the Royal Society, a very distinguished scientist. 203 00:22:53,400 --> 00:22:59,130 But he was fun to work with and very supportive of scientific research. 204 00:22:59,130 --> 00:23:05,770 Danish trained or absolutely Danish trained medical background had done a 205 00:23:05,770 --> 00:23:10,560 postdoc in Cambridge with E.K. Matthews in the pharmacology department there. 206 00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:14,430 So it was European scientists, very strong links with Germany. 207 00:23:14,430 --> 00:23:24,060 And I think he opened my eyes to the way modern science was going to have to happen in the UK and physiology linked up with Kerryn and exactly. 208 00:23:24,060 --> 00:23:27,750 Yeah, Philip Coggan, I think was appointed the same year as me. 209 00:23:27,750 --> 00:23:33,270 And, you know, I was very aware of very good younger people in biochemistry, 210 00:23:33,270 --> 00:23:40,350 that it was a guy called Garland who'd worked with Randall in Cambridge, who was the new head of biochemistry. 211 00:23:40,350 --> 00:23:48,660 So between them, Petersen and he had a big influence on a small university. 212 00:23:48,660 --> 00:23:52,950 It's a bit like the turning circle of the Titanic versus the turning circle of a tug. 213 00:23:52,950 --> 00:24:03,030 If you're a small medical school and Dundee is small and not particularly high profile, you bring in some able bosses and some bright youngsters. 214 00:24:03,030 --> 00:24:12,870 Things really take off rapidly, and the sort of sense of excitement about research there was really very strong. 215 00:24:12,870 --> 00:24:20,250 So was it then as persons with the idea of actually it was a phone call out of the blue from somebody called Charles Philips, 216 00:24:20,250 --> 00:24:30,540 who I've not mentioned was a neurophysiologist towards the end of his career, had taken up the chair of anatomy in Oxford. 217 00:24:30,540 --> 00:24:38,160 I don't think he really enjoyed doing that job, but he was good chatting around and finding out what was going on. 218 00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:42,870 And he phoned me up and said, I see you're coming to a stop meeting in Kings London. 219 00:24:42,870 --> 00:24:47,910 Why don't you call in to have a cup of tea on your way back? And I found the cup of tea, had two other people. 220 00:24:47,910 --> 00:24:52,650 There was an interview for a job. Great. 221 00:24:52,650 --> 00:24:58,230 And it was really just chance it was anatomy rather than the job. 222 00:24:58,230 --> 00:25:06,780 It cropped up because George Fink, who is a very distinguished endocrinologist, I think it's a certainly a physiologist. 223 00:25:06,780 --> 00:25:09,480 I've been appointed to run an MRSA unit in Edinburgh, 224 00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:18,210 so I didn't feel uneasy about going into a department called Human Anatomy because I knew with a tradition of GW Harris, 225 00:25:18,210 --> 00:25:25,800 people like George Fink having been there and was actually an experimental biology department and was think what made the prisoners link. 226 00:25:25,800 --> 00:25:32,490 Yes. So I think I only discovered later had really been Upraise knows, for a relatively short period of time, 227 00:25:32,490 --> 00:25:38,700 taking over from George Gordon, who was a wonderful senior mentor for me later on. 228 00:25:38,700 --> 00:25:42,450 And George, of course, had been appraised for 30 odd years. 229 00:25:42,450 --> 00:25:49,830 But to become a reader and therefore there'd been a vacancy for them, would have somebody to be at the front line of being a medical tutor. 230 00:25:49,830 --> 00:25:54,150 And Fink had been very successful at doing that, I think. Yes. 231 00:25:54,150 --> 00:25:58,980 And I mean, you've had a terrific reputation as a college tutor. 232 00:25:58,980 --> 00:26:03,270 Tell me about that. And first of all, how you sort of grew into it. 233 00:26:03,270 --> 00:26:08,720 And secondly, what were your principles, if you had any? Oh, go ahead. 234 00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:19,080 Yes, I was aware of how lucky I was to be teaching as compared to, for example, colleagues in other universities. 235 00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,860 And I think that's one advantage of having been in other medical schools, 236 00:26:22,860 --> 00:26:30,420 the luxury of choosing your own students and therefore having to live with the positives 237 00:26:30,420 --> 00:26:36,870 and the negatives of the humans who you'd actually picked from a very strong group anyway. 238 00:26:36,870 --> 00:26:40,470 And the other thing was what I'd learnt from Dennis Parsons. 239 00:26:40,470 --> 00:26:45,360 What's the point of learning all these lists of this and the other if you can't make connexions between different things? 240 00:26:45,360 --> 00:26:51,960 And I did feel strongly about that, I would much rather that the students got the sort of big picture, 241 00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:57,360 even if they had quite a lot of work to do in filling in some of it rather than the other way round. 242 00:26:57,360 --> 00:27:00,960 I remember meeting in other universities when I was an examiner, 243 00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:06,180 people who could tell you everything about a calcium channel, but they couldn't tell you which way calcium flowed through. 244 00:27:06,180 --> 00:27:10,560 That seemed rather sad. Yeah. 245 00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:12,660 Now you discovered a Channel two and. 246 00:27:12,660 --> 00:27:22,560 Yes, yes, I had something happen to be in Oxford, which I hadn't expected, which was people wanted to come and work and do sabbaticals in Oxford. 247 00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:25,920 And that wasn't because Richard Boyd was suddenly a different human being, 248 00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:32,220 because I quite liked the idea of someone that was near London but wasn't London that had good things. 249 00:27:32,220 --> 00:27:40,350 And I had a succession of really nice, clever, distinguished, hardworking scientists through my lab. 250 00:27:40,350 --> 00:27:45,870 And that had a big influence on a whole group of people working with me, the graduates and the postdocs. 251 00:27:45,870 --> 00:27:53,340 So I think it was without doubt a fantastic advantage, which I hadn't predicted when I did come to Oxford. 252 00:27:53,340 --> 00:27:58,650 One of them was somebody who was interested in amino acid transport in red blood cells. 253 00:27:58,650 --> 00:28:03,610 And I thought there might be some quite nice ways of modelling what was going on in the intestine where, 254 00:28:03,610 --> 00:28:08,550 as I say, of these quite interesting, more complicated things by looking in red blood cells. 255 00:28:08,550 --> 00:28:14,250 And indeed there was a way of which a new system was found in the red blood cell turned out 256 00:28:14,250 --> 00:28:23,040 to be absolutely applicable to a problem about amino acids leaving the intestinal epithelium. 257 00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:33,720 We gave this transport system a name Y plus L for reasons that history could explain. 258 00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:40,890 But fascinatingly, within a year there was a mutation of the gene encoding this transport system 259 00:28:40,890 --> 00:28:46,200 that explained the rare but rather devastating metabolic disease in children. 260 00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:52,440 And that sequence of going from a red blood cell to the intestinal epithelium to a bit of physiology to a molecule 261 00:28:52,440 --> 00:29:01,470 encoded to a genetic defect of that in children I found very exciting because although one knows that happens in theory, 262 00:29:01,470 --> 00:29:08,220 to say that lab was unusual. And the idea, of course, is the treatment was possible. 263 00:29:08,220 --> 00:29:12,480 Yes, there's there's quite a lot of work still ongoing with that. 264 00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:21,060 And funnily enough, a treatment which involves lowering the level of circulating lysine and arginine has been developed around this. 265 00:29:21,060 --> 00:29:25,110 There's some attempt to try and do genetic manipulation of this. 266 00:29:25,110 --> 00:29:30,470 I think more realistically, there's also quite a lot of effort now to do prenatal diagnosis. 267 00:29:30,470 --> 00:29:42,640 If it's in the family and now in the college, would you recommend a particular textbook or how did you interact with textbooks in the first two years? 268 00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:47,160 Yes. Okay. So I'm glad you raised the question the way you did, Derek, 269 00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:55,950 because later on I was thrown by the arrival of the Internet and kids using the Internet for everything all the time in a mindless sort of way. 270 00:29:55,950 --> 00:30:06,430 And I became quite twitchy about helping students actually evaluate whether things were or weren't intellectually robust. 271 00:30:06,430 --> 00:30:11,710 Textbooks, yes, I think early on I did get involved in thinking quite hard about textbooks 272 00:30:11,710 --> 00:30:16,360 and the way I would do it was sort of say there are three or four textbooks, 273 00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:24,880 all of which have strengths and weaknesses. I want you to spend the first term deciding really which one suits your style best. 274 00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:31,930 And then I want you to buy a copy and they go, but actually they all got money from the college to help them do this sort of thing. 275 00:30:31,930 --> 00:30:39,490 And then I expected them to take those books away over the vacations, not to learn them in a mindless way, 276 00:30:39,490 --> 00:30:47,980 but to do things like read the introduction or read the chapter on comparative aspects or read the chapter on what happens in old age. 277 00:30:47,980 --> 00:30:58,660 I think that sometimes students need help to realise it isn't just Chapter 17 on Starling's two of the heart that they need to know, 278 00:30:58,660 --> 00:31:09,190 they need to see it again. Back in a more general context. And how much did you find you had to tailor interactions to the individual student? 279 00:31:09,190 --> 00:31:13,990 How much did you expect them to tailor them sort of pro forma you had? 280 00:31:13,990 --> 00:31:16,690 Yeah, yeah, very much the former. 281 00:31:16,690 --> 00:31:27,160 I wasn't terribly interested in the pro forma because I think the danger about that is that it just is cannon fodder for exams. 282 00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:33,310 I wasn't keen on them taking the exams certainly in the first two years too seriously. 283 00:31:33,310 --> 00:31:39,280 I was keen for them to pass the exams. I was always rather sad that Oxford was driven really, 284 00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:47,560 I think by the GMC to get increasingly involved about whether a student was number fifty six in the batting order or sixty seven. 285 00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:57,640 That didn't seem to be terribly useful. The other aspect of the exams was really what you mentioned earlier. 286 00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:01,000 The the final honours school, which still exists, 287 00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:11,770 I think does give the most able and most motivated young scope to do some wonderful, wonderful work, including projects. 288 00:32:11,770 --> 00:32:16,930 But it doesn't include much in the way of experimental lab science. 289 00:32:16,930 --> 00:32:21,460 And you hand them out references or do they find the references themselves? 290 00:32:21,460 --> 00:32:26,320 Yeah, I wouldn't hand them out more than one or two references. 291 00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:30,610 I'd want them to use that as a way of finding out the literature for themselves. 292 00:32:30,610 --> 00:32:41,920 But I think the they would come back from lectures sometimes with incredibly long reading lists, which I think were a bit scary for them. 293 00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:51,730 And I noticed that it was on the whole the most or least experienced lecturers who gave out the longest reading list. 294 00:32:51,730 --> 00:32:57,130 So I thought there was an element of sort of help needed for the lecturers about that. 295 00:32:57,130 --> 00:33:03,820 So yeah, I think I was probably not not in any sense a tyrant as a tutor. 296 00:33:03,820 --> 00:33:10,120 And there were probably students who'd been, you know, would have done better quotes if I'd been a bit more tyrannical. 297 00:33:10,120 --> 00:33:19,240 But I'm not sorry that I had a reputation of being accessible rather than just somebody trying to make them jump through 298 00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:30,110 hoops or Merton by this stage and become famous for having a group of tutors who crack the whip under the influence of a, 299 00:33:30,110 --> 00:33:35,680 you know, a rather strong head of house. And I was aware of that. 300 00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:45,580 But I wasn't sorry that I wasn't you know, at some stage, Fisher and Persons would have been doing more work on the guard or perhaps, you know. 301 00:33:45,580 --> 00:33:53,500 Yeah, that led to the recommendations about colour. So I wasn't involved in that, Denis, but I was with Denis, 302 00:33:53,500 --> 00:34:03,010 but I certainly was aware of it and fascinated by really because I knew the two individuals very well. 303 00:34:03,010 --> 00:34:07,000 Fisher, as you mentioned, his RB Fisher called David Fisher, 304 00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:13,960 had been involved in the war in operational things to do with bombing and statistical analysis of that. 305 00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:16,660 So he was very strong quantitatively. 306 00:34:16,660 --> 00:34:24,670 Dennis was, I think, with his medical background, more of a biologist, but again, strongly influenced by the quantitative thinking. 307 00:34:24,670 --> 00:34:31,390 So between them, they produced data which they thought about very hard. 308 00:34:31,390 --> 00:34:41,920 And the data that led to the oral rehydration story was to do with how did the luminal constituents affect water absorption in preparation. 309 00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:49,240 They prepared and it was very striking that glucose had some sort of magical effect, that stimulating water absorption. 310 00:34:49,240 --> 00:34:59,950 They found that galactose metabolised much less had a much smaller effect, and they found that arns were required for the glucose effect to happen. 311 00:34:59,950 --> 00:35:06,080 The issue really was the mechanism of this, and they had various hypotheses. 312 00:35:06,080 --> 00:35:12,140 But it was all very, if you like, blue skies, academic science, 313 00:35:12,140 --> 00:35:22,250 they weren't doing it to try and aid hydration status of dehydrated people and it was really groups in the States. 314 00:35:22,250 --> 00:35:26,820 I think Phillips was involved in this, who later on picked up on it. 315 00:35:26,820 --> 00:35:33,650 There was an editorial in The Lancet in the late 1970s which said that Fisher and Parsons 316 00:35:33,650 --> 00:35:39,050 discovery was perhaps one of the major biomedical discoveries of the 20th century. 317 00:35:39,050 --> 00:35:43,070 That was hyperbole. I know Chris wrote that article, 318 00:35:43,070 --> 00:35:52,220 but it certainly made me realise how very important practical things could come out of clear thinking, academic studies. 319 00:35:52,220 --> 00:35:58,190 And that drove me quite a lot in how I viewed education as well as my own research. 320 00:35:58,190 --> 00:36:07,380 I wasn't frightened of being called not translational because it seemed to me the translation was, you know, not what I was doing. 321 00:36:07,380 --> 00:36:16,190 I was there trying to decide how the thing worked. But you mentioned the Dukas connected to work on the different sugar as the vaguely yes. 322 00:36:16,190 --> 00:36:19,220 No, you're absolutely right. So, I mean, I fitted in with that. 323 00:36:19,220 --> 00:36:24,440 And there was a very interesting story about one sugar with a little group on the cob and one 324 00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:30,380 position that very interestingly was able to get into the cells but not able to get out. 325 00:36:30,380 --> 00:36:35,430 That had rather a sort of a deep consequence in that relationship. 326 00:36:35,430 --> 00:36:43,490 Yeah. Then in college, there's you as the medical tutor, but there's all the rest of the college going on. 327 00:36:43,490 --> 00:36:50,600 And how much do you think the ethos of the undergraduates and of the various effects of that? 328 00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:59,660 I think the chance which you mentioned earlier, crops up again and again in these sorts of issues. 329 00:36:59,660 --> 00:37:09,330 I was exceptionally lucky and having colleagues I really liked and maybe I could do things with in interesting ways. 330 00:37:09,330 --> 00:37:14,840 So I'm talking about, for example, Peter Cook, who was a cell biologist, and particularly Nick Proudfoot, 331 00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:20,840 who was the biochemistry tutor, both very distinguished scientists with Nick Proudfoot. 332 00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:28,670 He did the biochemistry teaching and I did the physiology teaching for each other, which meant I taught the biochemistry students a bit. 333 00:37:28,670 --> 00:37:30,290 And, uh, 334 00:37:30,290 --> 00:37:39,050 Nick pointed out when I myself retired that his students were always intrigued to find out things that weren't particularly on their syllabus, 335 00:37:39,050 --> 00:37:43,980 but made them think when they were doing these things, they thought, why am I doing it? 336 00:37:43,980 --> 00:37:49,970 But actually, later on when it came to their final exams or whatever, they saw the benefit of having some teaching. 337 00:37:49,970 --> 00:38:00,140 That was a little bit coming in left field. Um, and had you been fairly influential in getting Proudfoot and cooked into Bresnitz? 338 00:38:00,140 --> 00:38:07,880 The cook was there when I arrived and Peter was very, very assiduous in welcoming me, which I really appreciated. 339 00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:10,760 Nick Proudfoot. Yes, I was involved in that appointment. 340 00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:17,750 And as always, there are interesting tales to be told, but not quite yet about people who didn't get that job. 341 00:38:17,750 --> 00:38:20,360 And Nick was a wonderful colleague. 342 00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:27,980 And, you know, the fact he became so distinguished scientifically and was a full time tutor doing his tutorial work, 343 00:38:27,980 --> 00:38:32,990 not looking for buyouts and all the current ways of trying to minimise the late always strikes me as a 344 00:38:32,990 --> 00:38:39,520 good example of Oxford at its best is because Brezhnev is built up into a very strong medical college. 345 00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:47,210 Yeah. And what how did you come together, as it were, a second meeting, or do you go out and do a well, well, well, well, Derek, 346 00:38:47,210 --> 00:38:53,300 I'm going to embarrass you by saying it was already a strong medical college and I think your generation and certainly helped do that. 347 00:38:53,300 --> 00:39:00,470 George Gordon, particularly. But I think the scale that you're mentioning was an opportunity when it happened. 348 00:39:00,470 --> 00:39:10,220 Briseno sold some playing fields for a building development, which meant that there was the possibility of one or two subjects increasing in number. 349 00:39:10,220 --> 00:39:21,650 I just been over to Queens College in Cambridge, which is our sister college, where, again, there were some very nice, warm, welcoming tutors there. 350 00:39:21,650 --> 00:39:24,770 And I was struck by the difference in scale. 351 00:39:24,770 --> 00:39:33,170 You know, when they sat down, there were maybe a dozen academics and nearly 100 students in biomedical subjects. 352 00:39:33,170 --> 00:39:38,900 As Appraise knows, there would be two or three academics and maybe 15 students. 353 00:39:38,900 --> 00:39:49,100 And so when the opportunity came for me to put in a bid to spend the medical side, I did definitely have keys model in the back of my mind. 354 00:39:49,100 --> 00:39:59,780 I had a helpful head of house and a helpful bursar, and I managed to persuade my colleagues I please leave any area with the principle. 355 00:39:59,780 --> 00:40:06,230 That was during the Windrush. Yes, yes. Goodhand David Wilson was somebody who I found. 356 00:40:06,230 --> 00:40:12,980 Somebody said he was a very good chairman, he wasn't an executive director, if you know what I mean, 357 00:40:12,980 --> 00:40:17,270 but the person at the time, Robert Cassa, was very good at doing the executive stuff. 358 00:40:17,270 --> 00:40:24,810 And actually, I think it was quite an effective combination. Meanwhile, there have been the invention of research fellowship, 359 00:40:24,810 --> 00:40:29,630 something called the Senior Research Fellowships and the Junior Gerti Research Fellowships. 360 00:40:29,630 --> 00:40:33,270 And again, unsurprisingly, with the strength of Oxford Medicine, 361 00:40:33,270 --> 00:40:38,450 those are very good people appointed to those like Russell Foster and later Peters A.G. 362 00:40:38,450 --> 00:40:44,690 and a really distinguished biomedical senior people and a whole raft of junior people. 363 00:40:44,690 --> 00:40:48,200 How do you found Herbert had and Herbert Heart? 364 00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:52,670 I really only met towards the end of his time. He was charming. 365 00:40:52,670 --> 00:41:00,920 He knew who I was. He would come and sit next to the young fellows. He would talk about things that were interesting him. 366 00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:07,670 So the patenting of genes was something that as a lawyer he was interested in, even in the late 70s. 367 00:41:07,670 --> 00:41:14,190 And it's very interesting to me that in 2013, the American Supreme Court had suddenly decided you can't patent. 368 00:41:14,190 --> 00:41:22,010 And I think Herbert would have been, you know, delighted and intrigued by that because that was very much the line I to him. 369 00:41:22,010 --> 00:41:28,130 And you've got the development of time, really. 370 00:41:28,130 --> 00:41:31,790 You mentioned earlier about the Internet and. Yes. 371 00:41:31,790 --> 00:41:35,300 How have you seen that going on? I mean, it must have advantages as well. 372 00:41:35,300 --> 00:41:40,850 No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't get me wrong. I think I think the advantages are completely overwhelming. 373 00:41:40,850 --> 00:41:48,470 And Southern, who followed Porter as the professor of biochemistry, once wrote a piece for a book I edited where he said, 374 00:41:48,470 --> 00:41:58,010 and this is 15 years ago, there will be a time where no scientist doesn't start their research by looking at a computer screen. 375 00:41:58,010 --> 00:42:04,970 And this was the notion of databases, which, of course, I was only involved in, in looking at sequencing and databases. 376 00:42:04,970 --> 00:42:12,050 And, you know, he absolutely was correct, but it happened much quicker than even he might have predicted. 377 00:42:12,050 --> 00:42:15,680 So it's changed quotes, everything quotes. 378 00:42:15,680 --> 00:42:26,480 But I think like everything in human activity, it requires a lot of thought about how to do it intelligently and not, you know, mindlessly. 379 00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:38,000 Uh, Southern is a good example of the sort of group of people that Porter represented of being, uh, very nearly unworldly. 380 00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:43,610 He gave a lot of resource to Third World countries from the prises. 381 00:42:43,610 --> 00:42:47,390 He he won and he came to work on his bike wearing sandals. 382 00:42:47,390 --> 00:42:50,690 And whether I admired having people like that around, 383 00:42:50,690 --> 00:42:58,640 because there are an awful lot of the suited sort and the medical school, as ever, is always changing. 384 00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:03,380 And what would you say the important changes in your time and have they helped? 385 00:43:03,380 --> 00:43:14,210 Yeah, yeah. Well, there are big changes in terms of structures, not least of which the scale of the medical school, 150 students a year. 386 00:43:14,210 --> 00:43:16,760 But it's actually the psychology that's really changed. 387 00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:22,850 And I think David Weatherall is probably the human who caused that more than any other individual. 388 00:43:22,850 --> 00:43:27,410 I'm aware of this self-confidence in the medical school. 389 00:43:27,410 --> 00:43:30,650 The notion that the Oxford Medical School is the best, of course, 390 00:43:30,650 --> 00:43:37,140 it's the best was different from the world I was telling her about when I was making a decision whether to stay in Oxford or not. 391 00:43:37,140 --> 00:43:43,490 I think the self-confidence is very justifiable. 392 00:43:43,490 --> 00:43:50,990 When you think of the research activities and the scale of that. It is an amazingly strong, successful medical school. 393 00:43:50,990 --> 00:43:59,960 However, I think sometimes there's less reflection than there might be about actually it's a small south Midland City. 394 00:43:59,960 --> 00:44:07,340 If you want to find out the diseases of urban deprivation, it's not going to be so easy to show those to students, 395 00:44:07,340 --> 00:44:15,680 particularly if there are more students in in Oxford than it would be in Leeds or Bradford or other places. 396 00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:27,050 I'm aware, too, of how good the educational activities have been by young academic clinicians and particularly by the NHS clinicians. 397 00:44:27,050 --> 00:44:37,340 Derek, as the as the people with the relatively few university positions have been trying to drive major research activities, 398 00:44:37,340 --> 00:44:42,470 a lot of the teaching has been handed over de facto to to the NHS. 399 00:44:42,470 --> 00:44:46,190 And I think the clinical and that's the clinical emerging. Absolutely. Yes. 400 00:44:46,190 --> 00:44:52,220 So, I mean, you probably didn't in any way, in any strong way influence rather inform. 401 00:44:52,220 --> 00:44:58,050 But how did you see preclinical as they came up to making their decision where to do clinical? 402 00:44:58,050 --> 00:45:06,000 Yeah, yeah, yes. I teased some of them because they had so much angst about it and the angst was usually about. 403 00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:13,530 Will I get into the Oxford Medical School or not? And one student up on campus said this is the most important decision of the whole of my life. 404 00:45:13,530 --> 00:45:19,140 And I remember teasing him some years later because it did become rather absurd. 405 00:45:19,140 --> 00:45:27,180 As I say, pendulum swing. The fashion was for people not to go to Oxford, changing the fashion for people desperate to stay in office. 406 00:45:27,180 --> 00:45:33,070 But I always thought it was quite a good thing that people came to the clinical school from places other than Oxford, 407 00:45:33,070 --> 00:45:38,760 a place called Cambridge, for example, though I know that that's currently back in subject of discussion. 408 00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:45,450 Should it be one medical course over six years rather than have the potential for a break in the middle? 409 00:45:45,450 --> 00:45:50,850 I benefited actually from going to London was a good time for me to be in another place. 410 00:45:50,850 --> 00:45:56,880 But I think most students now are desperate to stay in the clinical course in Oxford. 411 00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:04,800 Are any of them going to Cambridge? You know, interestingly enough, not and Cambridge has changed the way it does things, 412 00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:09,330 I gather, so that I think that that isn't going to happen, which is sad. 413 00:46:09,330 --> 00:46:16,320 And somebody told me that Cambridge has changed the word physiology to homeostasis. 414 00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:20,670 Is that right? And is there an end to physiology as we know? There's going to be talk of it. 415 00:46:20,670 --> 00:46:29,730 I was at a big international conference this summer where physiologists spent a lot of time wondering about what they should be called. 416 00:46:29,730 --> 00:46:35,160 But the end result was an incredibly strong scientific programme of people doing everything possible. 417 00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:45,810 There's less overt biochemistry, a huge amount of genetics, huge amount of neuroscience, huge amount of clever technology with physics and optics. 418 00:46:45,810 --> 00:46:52,950 And it seems to me what people call themselves is increasingly not very interesting. 419 00:46:52,950 --> 00:46:56,940 Now, your undergraduates in the last year, they do. 420 00:46:56,940 --> 00:47:06,300 How much of a practical project? Six weeks. Yes, six weeks, which contrasts with the biochemists in their last year who are a years of research. 421 00:47:06,300 --> 00:47:09,210 And, you know, that's a fourth year. That is a fourth year. 422 00:47:09,210 --> 00:47:16,020 They are trying to draw the comparison just in order to say the break between the person who's 423 00:47:16,020 --> 00:47:20,580 going to be a doctor and the person who's going to be a scientist has become more and more stark. 424 00:47:20,580 --> 00:47:33,180 And I think that that has a cost because it means there's less chance for youngsters now to do what I did, which was slightly move across the border. 425 00:47:33,180 --> 00:47:41,820 And it's obvious that you don't want that many people starting medicine not to end up looking after patients. 426 00:47:41,820 --> 00:47:50,190 That's why they sign into it. But I think there are benefits in having a fraction who do slightly different sorts of courses, 427 00:47:50,190 --> 00:47:56,160 whether it is going to public health at one end or go into fundamental research at the other end. 428 00:47:56,160 --> 00:48:05,040 I think medicine, funnily enough, does benefit from being a broader college than just saying were cannon fodder for the NHS needs, 429 00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:08,940 which became a little bit of a mantra for a few years ago. 430 00:48:08,940 --> 00:48:17,790 So I'm I'm saying that I think six weeks research project is really not quite enough to engage seriously in science. 431 00:48:17,790 --> 00:48:21,520 I mean, do they ever come back to the same project or write it up? 432 00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:26,250 Yeah, some some definitely do. And some definitely come back over the long back. 433 00:48:26,250 --> 00:48:31,440 And it depends a bit on the luck of the draw or how the science goes with that supervisors. 434 00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:39,600 But I think it's one of the things that Oxford endowment pockets could be picked up, 435 00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:45,730 you know, moderately focussed way, but fairly fruitfly to try and help that interface. 436 00:48:45,730 --> 00:48:52,560 Yeah. Now, am I right that the course before you start your clinical is now three years running now? 437 00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:56,460 Three years, three terms within four years. Yeah. And is that an advantage? 438 00:48:56,460 --> 00:49:04,350 Yeah. So the path and back went some, some time ago and Derek and and it's been three years and includes the pathology and the 439 00:49:04,350 --> 00:49:09,840 pharmacology during that three years it has had consequences that are quite interesting, 440 00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:17,940 one of which is I think the first year has less time for thinking because it has more subject matter in it. 441 00:49:17,940 --> 00:49:26,040 And that first year is important in terms of how students approach the whole of their first three years degree. 442 00:49:26,040 --> 00:49:35,430 The other aspect is that it's forced subjects like pathology to try and distinguish themselves from clinical pathology, 443 00:49:35,430 --> 00:49:37,770 which is making the clinical years. 444 00:49:37,770 --> 00:49:48,420 I think I'm not terribly well placed to comment on that, but there does seem a disproportionate amount of immunology in the current cause. 445 00:49:48,420 --> 00:49:59,410 Um, the other aspect that's relevant is about who will examine subjects. 446 00:49:59,410 --> 00:50:05,830 Now there are fewer and fewer people who feel competent to even examine. 447 00:50:05,830 --> 00:50:10,600 The whole pathology, if it includes virology as well as bacteriology, 448 00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:20,830 that's a problem and increasing specialisation has happened all the time and the increasing number of academic teachers has increased, 449 00:50:20,830 --> 00:50:27,660 presumably because of that. And do they get, as it were, lectures from all these different people? 450 00:50:27,660 --> 00:50:34,060 Oh, yeah. Yeah, they do. But I think in an ideal world, 451 00:50:34,060 --> 00:50:42,940 there would be a bit more effort to try and reduce the number of people giving the lectures and to have a bit 452 00:50:42,940 --> 00:50:49,930 more coherence about the way the lecture series is structured and the interaction between different lectures. 453 00:50:49,930 --> 00:50:59,620 Um, one always looks back and say, yes, there was a good series of lectures by so-and-so who felt they took on board teach the whole of that. 454 00:50:59,620 --> 00:51:07,720 Now you sometimes run into the problem of one person coming in and giving a single lecture and not really knowing how that fits in. 455 00:51:07,720 --> 00:51:11,980 I think these things, again, will be changed as the technology develops. 456 00:51:11,980 --> 00:51:18,760 If actually the young have the possibility of hearing a moderately standard lecture in Oxford or to hear 457 00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:24,530 a stellar lecture from Harvard on the Internet that they may change the way they view these things. 458 00:51:24,530 --> 00:51:33,640 But that hasn't happened yet. Its it's beginning it's beginning to hear, um, which is anything I the last year that. 459 00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:40,660 No, I mean I think I would want to emphasise how lucky I feel to have had this fulfilled life with between teaching research. 460 00:51:40,660 --> 00:51:44,770 I was never forced to make that decision. Was I cheap or was I a goat. 461 00:51:44,770 --> 00:51:49,030 And that's really the biggest message I want to hand. And on to the next generation. 462 00:51:49,030 --> 00:51:55,790 Yeah, I'm just coming back. There are much more many more choices in schools now, if I'm right. 463 00:51:55,790 --> 00:51:59,980 Yeah. So they end up concentrating on just a fraction. Yes, yes. 464 00:51:59,980 --> 00:52:05,320 Yes, they do that. They dig deeper in a smaller area. 465 00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:05,950 However, 466 00:52:05,950 --> 00:52:14,620 there is an attempt and I was involved in setting up the revised course to have a paper where they have to show they can connect different areas, 467 00:52:14,620 --> 00:52:18,790 a synoptic paper assignment that was very involved in doing that. 468 00:52:18,790 --> 00:52:25,720 And I think it's definitely something I applaud the medical school taking on as an ambition. 469 00:52:25,720 --> 00:52:35,980 I think, like all things, it needs fine tuning, but it's an attempt to try and have both the depth through the subjects studied focussed way, 470 00:52:35,980 --> 00:52:41,500 but also the breadth in trying to force them to collect things. And I know it's an impossible question, 471 00:52:41,500 --> 00:52:50,480 but how do you think in general the Oxford Preclinical School has evolved in competition in Glass at Cambridge? 472 00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:59,350 Yeah, yeah. No, I think this competition, which goes on in rather quiet, understated British way, has to be a good thing. 473 00:52:59,350 --> 00:53:05,830 But I also think that applies within each of those medical schools with colleges very alert of the fact 474 00:53:05,830 --> 00:53:13,450 that some college who hasn't particularly been strong in an area suddenly has a change in strategy, 475 00:53:13,450 --> 00:53:21,550 says it wants, for example, more women teaching or it wants a better state applicant ratio. 476 00:53:21,550 --> 00:53:25,120 They're small enough to be able to do that a little bit. 477 00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:31,660 Fine, tune it and then look at the results over time, realising that other people will be looking over their shoulder. 478 00:53:31,660 --> 00:53:35,950 So there is some element of Darwinian sort of active pressure going on there. 479 00:53:35,950 --> 00:53:40,520 I think the Cambridge one's really interesting because Cambridge is bigger and scientifically it's, 480 00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:46,660 you know, incredibly strong, particularly obviously in the physical sciences. 481 00:53:46,660 --> 00:53:53,290 But its strategy of having the tripod system is an interesting compare and contrast with Oxford. 482 00:53:53,290 --> 00:54:02,470 Oxford goes for the style of saying if a school even knows they want to do biochemistry, come to Oxford and you can do it from day one in Cambridge. 483 00:54:02,470 --> 00:54:07,990 You'd have to wait till year three till you really become a fully differentiated chemist. 484 00:54:07,990 --> 00:54:13,690 But in terms of the medical schools, because of the GMC requirements, an awful lot of them are in common. 485 00:54:13,690 --> 00:54:16,690 I and know that because I've examined quite a lot in Cambridge, 486 00:54:16,690 --> 00:54:21,460 but there are some subtle differences and I think each one has strengths and weaknesses. 487 00:54:21,460 --> 00:54:24,820 You mentioned you tend to do it. It's seven books or. 488 00:54:24,820 --> 00:54:31,900 Right books. Yes, I wrote books and I edited some books and I edited one book, particularly with Dennis Noble, 489 00:54:31,900 --> 00:54:39,520 which I really enjoyed doing because it was a fairly broad brush thing and I was rather astonished to find people like David Weatherall had read it. 490 00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:47,170 And, you know, I I enjoyed being part of a community where there was some intellectual, uh, 491 00:54:47,170 --> 00:54:52,960 discourse really between individuals who might not necessarily think they bumped into each other. 492 00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:56,470 Now, you'd have been writing a lot of papers to. Yeah. 493 00:54:56,470 --> 00:55:01,960 And you were also an editor of the journal. Yes. Editing is really par for the course. 494 00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:05,730 But I did I did a big journal for some time. That was. 495 00:55:05,730 --> 00:55:10,620 Good in terms of meeting colleagues and thinking a bit about broader subjects, 496 00:55:10,620 --> 00:55:19,200 I think probably it was writing research papers, that was what really gave me fun. 497 00:55:19,200 --> 00:55:26,130 The flip side of that was writing research grants and that sort of increasingly dominant for scientists now. 498 00:55:26,130 --> 00:55:32,490 And, you know, if you have a 19 percent chance of getting your ground funded statistically, even if you like, 499 00:55:32,490 --> 00:55:41,520 you think you're better than average, it means you're writing an awful lot of grants that are actually quite a wasted effort. 500 00:55:41,520 --> 00:55:44,340 But, of course, they gradually refine the next set. 501 00:55:44,340 --> 00:55:52,500 Of course, they do know and I'm all in favour of having grant funding that requires people to be at the top of their game to get funding. 502 00:55:52,500 --> 00:55:56,400 But I'm saying I much more enjoyed writing papers than I did I in grants. 503 00:55:56,400 --> 00:56:00,480 And did you sit on grant awarding bodies? Yes. Yes, I did. 504 00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:08,940 And the MRC, I was on there a higher level awarding bodies, 505 00:56:08,940 --> 00:56:19,560 and I chaired various groups that were involved in setting up research activities in certain areas in the UK for the MRC. 506 00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:24,930 When I look back on those, Darick, I see those as less fulfilling. 507 00:56:24,930 --> 00:56:32,760 For me personally, at the time, you thought you were quite important helping the MRC make decisions. 508 00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:38,520 Actually 10 years later, you know, a little bit less than nothing. 509 00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:45,000 But did you feel they were impinging too much on your mainline activities? 510 00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:55,890 And there are people who are tough at saying no because their research was the only thing that really worked them in the middle of the night. 511 00:56:55,890 --> 00:57:05,490 I think I saw myself as a bit broader than that, which is a way of saying I didn't have views, that my research trumped everything else. 512 00:57:05,490 --> 00:57:14,040 And I quite like to try and see how things connected. Tissue engineering, for example, was something I didn't know anything about specifically. 513 00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:22,260 But I chaired the entire Research Council group on whether the UK should go in terms of putting resource into tissue engineering. 514 00:57:22,260 --> 00:57:30,750 And that made me think quite hard, obviously with expertise from engineers and so biologists about how that worked. 515 00:57:30,750 --> 00:57:36,410 And I have kept a bit of an eye on that field and I don't think we got it entirely wrong. 516 00:57:36,410 --> 00:57:39,500 Yeah, no. Great. Well, thank you very much, Richard.