Commentary: Professor Harry Keen, clinician, epidemiologist, diabetologist, basic scientist and defender of the UK national health service

摘要

Harry Keen is arguably the grandfather of diabetes epidemiology, establishing himself at a time when neither specialty was regarded as either interesting or important. He was born in 1925 and qualified in medicine from St Mary's Hospital Medical School in 1948, shortly before the inauguration of the National Health Service, for which he acquired and retained a strong loyalty. After house jobs and National Service, he embarked on his formative years at St Mary's under Professor George Pickering, who remained a strong influence. Harry began clinical research at King's College Hospital, where Pickering had arranged for him to study hypertension in diabetes in the clinic headed by R.D. Lawrence, the second of Harry's mentors. In 1960-61 he spent a fruitful year with James B. Field in the National Institutes of Health, where he was introduced to the fascinations of laboratory research, including bio-assays for insulin and preliminary attempts to isolate islets of Langerhans. He returned to London to join the Department of Experimental Medicine under Professor John Butterfield. Here he was introduced to epidemiology via the planning and execution of the pioneering Bedford Study, later to be followed by participation in the Whitehall Study (now Whitehall 1) originated by Donald Reid and Geoffrey Rose. These studies provided, inter alia, much valuable information about the relations between cardiovascular disease, diabetes and glucose intolerance. The prospective elements of these studies provided much of the data which led to a new definition and classification of diabetes. Indeed, Harry chaired the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Committee which pronounced on these matters in 1980 and also the WHO Study Group which modified the original proposals in 1985. Largely due to his initiative, a further involvement with WHO led to the Multinational Study of Vascular Disease in Diabetes, a notable example of international scientific collaboration.