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Ethel Bidwell
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Ethel Bidwell PhD (12 July 1919 – 23 October 2003) was a British research scientist who investigated blood coagulation and whose discoveries have been used to successfully perform major surgery on patients with severe haemophilia.
Key Information
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Biography
[edit]Bidwell was born on 12 July 1919 in Haslingden, Lancashire. She studied to become an enzyme chemist.[1]
During World War II, Bidwell worked at the Wellcome Foundation on the toxins of anaerobic bacteria involved in gas gangrene.[1]
In 1950, Bidwell joined the University of Oxford team headed by Gwyn Macfarlane. Two years later, she began to study ox and pig plasma concentration and selective extraction of the blood-clotting protein factor VIII. For her research, she would collect the animal blood from local slaughterhouses, which she transported in large glass containers.[1]
By 1953, she had devised a technique to extract and concentrate bovine factor VIII that was 8000 times stronger than human blood plasma.[1] This was a major clinical advance because could be stored frozen.[1] The research was published in 1954.[2]
In 1959 Bidwell was working on the preparation of human coagulation factors at the Medical Research Council Blood Coagulation Research Unit at Churchill Hospital, Headington, Oxford, assisted by Ross Dike.[1]
Bidwell's research was used to successfully perform major surgery on patients with severe haemophilia through intravenous therapeutic use,[3] with the first patient (after clinical trials) recorded in 1961.[4][5]
Bidwell retired in 1981.[1] She died in 2003 in Durham, England, aged 84.
Legacy
[edit]In 1999, British neurochemist and head of the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group (from 2012 to 2017) Tilli Tansey wrote of inviting Bidwell to participate in a witness seminar convened by the Makers of Modern Biomedicine: Testimonies and Legacy project at the Wellcome Collection and chaired by Christine Lee:[6]
"She was extremely reluctant to attend, telling me over the phone when I invited her that she had nothing to contribute. But I knew, from reading the journals of the time and from a casual conversation with a haematologist friend that she was the person who, in the 1950s, had discovered factor VIII, the first reliable treatment for haemophilia, and I wanted to hear her story."
Further reading
[edit]- Denson, K. W. E. (2004). "Oxford, the Mecca for blood coagulation research in the 1950s and 1960s". Thromb Haemost. 2 (12): 2085–2088. doi:10.1111/j.1538-7836.2004.00969.x. PMID 15613008.
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g Tilli Tansey; Daphne Christie, eds. (1999). Haemophilia: Recent history of clinical management. Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine. History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group. ISBN 978-1-84129-008-9. OL 12568267M. Wikidata Q29581631.
- ^ Macfarlane, R. G.; Biggs, Rosemary; Bidwell, Ethel (26 June 1954). "BOVINE ANTIHÆMOPHILIC GLOBULIN IN THE TREATMENT OF HÆMOPHILIA". The Lancet. 263 (6826): 1316–1319. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(54)92208-4. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 13164381.
- ^ Hougie, Cecil (2004). Thrombosis and Bleeding: An Era of Discovery. Trafford Publishing. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-4120-3240-7.
- ^ Lee, Christine A.; Berntorp, Erik E.; Hoots, W. Keith (3 June 2014). Textbook of Hemophilia. John Wiley & Sons. pp. xvi. ISBN 978-1-118-39824-1.
- ^ Rizza, C. R. (1995). "The first patient to receive factor IX concentrate in the UK: a recollection". Haemophilia. 1 (3): 210–212. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2516.1995.tb00073.x. ISSN 1351-8216. PMID 27214545.
- ^ Story, Holly (24 September 2014). "Reality behind research: 21 years of oral history with Wellcome Witness". Wellcome Trust Blog. Archived from the original on 20 April 2015. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
External links
[edit]- Ethel Bidwell on the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group website