Richard Smithells

Richard Worthington Smithells

In 1948 he married Joy Muriel Foster née Beaver, who died 4 February 2010. They had five children and eleven grand-children.[5]

Smithells died on 13 June 2002 from prostate cancer.^[4]

Career

After two years as a senior registrar at Guy's Hospital,^[3] 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.^[1] By 1962, Smithells had established congenital abnormality register and genetic counselling service at the University of Liverpool.^[6]

Smithells retired from the chair of Paediatrics and Child Health in 1988.^[5] 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^[7] to provide payments to children seen to be damaged by a vaccine.^[5] Further appointments included a position as a consultant on the European Registration of Congenital Abnormalities and Twins registry.^[5] From 1994 to 1996 he also employed as part-time Director of the International Centre for Birth Defects in Rome, Italy.^[5]

Contributions

Dick Smithells work during his long career was the prevention of disease in children.

Many of Smithells early papers were about the effects of Thalidomide on the foetus,^[6] and he developed a special unit to support children damaged by thalidomide,^[4] 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.^[3]

Bibliography

These are Smithells most important papers:

• Smithells, R W; Sheppard, S; Schorah, C J (1976). "Vitamin dificiencies and neural tube defects". Archives of Disease in Childhood. 51 (12): 944–950.
  PMID 1015847
  . Retrieved 9 July 2018.
• Smithells, R. W. (June 1962). "The Liverpool Congenital Abnormalities Registry". Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. 4 (3): 320–324.
  S2CID 33805465
  .
• Smithells, R. W. (December 1962). "Rubella in Pregnancy". Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. 46 (6): 640–642.
  S2CID 37159310
  .

Smithells wrote the following books that described diagnostic methods before the rise of ultrasound scans.^[8]

• The Early Diagnosis of Congenital Abnormalities., R W Smithells. Cassell: London, 1963.
• Why are babies born deformed? R W Smithells. University of Exeter, 1983.
• Clinical examination of children., S R Meadow; R W Smithells. Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1991

Awards and honours

In 1985, Smithells was awarded the