Richard Doll

Soon after I started at the Medical Research Council's Social Medicine Research Unit in 1961, Dr. Joan Faulkner, secretary of the MRC, came by on a visit. She asked me why I’d moved from family doctoring to epidemiology and obviously approved of my career plans. Afterwards, my colleagues told me that this unassuming women not only had considerable power and influence as MRC secretary, she was Richard Doll’s partner. At the time they had only recently married – they had to wait until her divorce from the disreputable Faulkner had been finalized. Joan Faulkner was a frequent visitor to the SMRU. Years later she told me that one reason for her visits was that she felt ideologically ‘at home’ – all but 1 or 2 of us were left of centre, some considerably so. Joan also acted as conduit between the SMRU and the Statistical Research Unit where Richard worked with Austin Bradford Hill, leading the team that was already famous for its work on carcinogenic consequences of tobacco use. 

Richard Doll, about 1995

 In September 1961 Joan Faulkner introduced me to Richard Doll at the annual meeting of the Society for Social Medicine. My first impression of  an effete Brit  with an upper class drawl was rapidly changed by what he said. He had a tremendous array of facts to support his arguments for a more equitable distribution of the nation’s resources.  He was a member of the Communist Party from his student days until the Soviet invasion of Czechoslavakia. At the SSM banquet, Richard and Joan entertained all of us with their witty impressions of American life and “culture” – among other things they quoted from a large collection of lapel buttons, political support buttons of course, and many they had acquired at a shop in Times Square with slogans such as “Save water; shower with a friend” and “Be Alert; the world needs more lerts.”

I met Richard again at the IEA meeting in Princeton New Jersey in the summer of 1964, when he listened with approval while I told a small group of American and British epidemiologists why Wendy and I were moving back to the UK, to the Usher Institute of Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, rather than taking a higher-paying job with Kerr White at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore.

Joan and Richard Doll, Carol Buck

In 1973 many distinguished guests helped to celebrate the opening of the medical school at the University of Calgary.  The following week at the annual meeting of the Canadian Public Health Association in Edmonton, I took this photo of Joan and Richard Doll with the Canadian epidemiologist Carol Buck, who was head of the department of epidemiology at Western University in London, Ontario.  We all came back to Ottawa where Joan and Richard Doll stayed with us.  By this time he was Sir Richard and she was Lady Joan.  This didn’t faze Wendy in the least: she had Joan shucking strawberries in our kitchen when one of our rather pretentious neighbours, eager to meet these British aristocrats, invited herself over to be introduced.  I didn’t tell her until the following week that Richard had been an active member of the Communist Party most of his life and remained committed to the socialist cause.  

A few years later the Dolls returned the hospitality when I stayed with them at their home in Oxford. I saw them quite often after that. At the IEA meeting in Florence in 2004 the local host Rodolfo Saracci was a friend of both the Dolls and me, and a highlight of the meeting was a conducted tour of Palazzo della Signori led by a friend of Rodolfo who happened to be mayor of Florence at the time. Another highlight was the banquet, held at a mediaeval castle high in the hills overlooking Florence on a lovely warm evening. We got there on a fleet of tour buses and on the drive back to Florence after the banquet I sat with Joan and Richard Doll. They had been distressed by a personal attack on Richard by enemies who accused him of falsely testifying about the absence of evidence for carcinogenic effects of certain chemicals. I agree with Richard and Joan - and Richard's biographer - that there was in fact no convincing evidence of carcinogenicity of the chemicals in question, that the accusation was without foundation. Richard was a rigorous scientist who relied on thoroughly validated scientific evidence.  Without question he was among the greatest medical scientists of the 20th century and I am proud to be able to say he and his wife Joan were personal friends of Wendy and me.