...we did a series of studies, paid for in part by the Ministry of Health. It was most unusual in those days for the Department to admit that they didn’t know something and to pay us to find the answer, but the sad part was they never paid any attention to the answers that we provided. We did a series of studies, first of all on the absorption of radioactive iron and then a feeding trial in the Rhondda – one of the most ambitious studies I think that the unit ever did – where for two years we had a special bake of bread for 300 women and a little van went up and down the valley supplying the daily bread to 300 homes and we monitored the change in haemoglobin level over the two-year period. Dr Peter Elwood, Population-based Research in South Wales: The MRC Pneumoconiosis Research Unit and the MRC Epidemiology Unit
Prof Peter Elwood FRCP (b. 1930) was a member of the scientific staff of the Epidemiological Research Unit (South Wales) from 1963 and its Director from 1974 until its closure in 1995. He qualified in medicine at Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1954 . He is currently Honorary Professor at the Institute of Primary Care & Public Health, University of Cardiff.
Prof Elwood also contributed to our Wellcome Witness seminar on The Recent History of Platelets in Thrombosis and Other Disorders
