Robert Maurice Lipson Winston, Baron Winston (born 15 July 1940) is a British professor, medical doctor, scientist, television presenter, and Labour peer.
Early life Robert Winston was born in London to Laurence Winston and Ruth Winston-Fox, and brought up as an Orthodox Jew. His mother was mayor of the former borough of Southgate. Winston's father died as a result of medical negligence when Winston was nine years old. Robert has two younger siblings: a sister, the artist Willow Winston, and a brother. Winston attended firstly Salcombe Preparatory School until the age of seven, followed by Colet Court and St Paul's School, later graduating from the London Hospital Medical College in 1964 with a degree in medicine and surgery. He achieved prominence as an expert in human fertility. For a brief time, he gave up clinical medicine and worked as a theatre director, winning the National Directors' Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1969.
Medical career
Winston joined Hammersmith Hospital in the capacity of registrar in 1970 as a Wellcome Research Fellow. He became an associate professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1975. Between 1975 and 1977, he was a scientific advisor to the World Health Organization's programme in human reproduction, after which he joined the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (based at Hammersmith Hospital) as a consultant and reader in 1977. After conducting research as a professor of gynaecology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in 1980, he returned to the UK to run the IVF service set up at Hammersmith Hospital, which pioneered various improvements in this technology, becoming Dean of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology until its merger with Imperial College in 1997. He was the director of NHS Research and Development at the Hammersmith Hospitals Trust until 1994. As a professor of fertility studies at Hammersmith, Winston led the IVF team that pioneered pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to identify defects in human embryos and published early work on gene expression in human embryos. He developed tubal microsurgery and various techniques in reproductive surgery, including sterilisation reversal. He performed the world's first fallopian tubal transplant in 1979, a technology that was later superseded by in vitro fertilisation. Together with Alan Handyside in 1990, his research group pioneered the techniques of pre-implantation diagnosis, enabling screening of human embryos to prevent numerous genetic diseases. Winston was the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 2004 to 2005. Together with Carol Readhead of the California Institute of Technology, he researched male germ cell stem cells and methods for their genetic modification at the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology, Imperial College London. He has published over 300 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Winston was appointed to a new chair at Imperial College—Professor of Science and Society—and is also emeritus professor of fertility studies there. He was chairman of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Trust and chairs the Women-for-Women Appeal. This charitable trust, which has raised over £80 million for research into reproductive diseases, was renamed the Genesis Research Trust in 1997. From 2001 to 2018, he was chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University. Winston is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, and the Royal Society of Biology. He holds honorary doctorates from twenty-three universities, is a trustee of the UK Stem Cell Foundation, and a patron of the Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Opinions
Fertility treatment Winston holds strong views about the commercialisation of fertility treatment. He believes that ineffective treatments result in great anguish to couples and is alarmed that so many treatments for the symptom of infertility are carried out before proper investigation and diagnosis have been made. He is also sceptical about the effectiveness of current methods for screening human embryos to assess their viability.
Gender identity During the House of Lords debate on the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, Winston offered a scientific argument in favour of the act, explaining that "There are so many different fluctuations in this broad spectrum of sexuality that I urge the House to be very cautious about defining it in terms of chromosomal, genital or any other simple definition. It simply is not medically just, and I am sure that it would produce bad law." More recently, Winston has described gender-affirming surgery as "mutilation" and asserted that "we can remove bits of our body and change our shape and so on but you can't change your sex because that is embedded in your genes in every cell of your body".
Science as truth Winston has said, "I think there has to be a clear understanding that science is not the truth. It's a version of the truth."
Media career
Winston has been the presenter of many BBC television series, including Your Life in Their Hands, Making Babies, Superhuman, The Secret Life of Twins, Child of Our Time, Human Instinct, The Human Mind, Frontiers of Medicine, The Story of God, and the BAFTA award-winner The Human Body. In 2003, he presented the BBC documentary Walking with Cavemen, a series that introduced some controversial views about early humans but was endorsed by anthropologists and scientists. One of its theories was that Homo sapiens have a uniquely developed imagination that helped them to survive. Winston's documentary Threads of Life won the international science film prize in Paris in 2005. His BBC series Child Against All Odds explored ethical questions raised by IVF treatment. In 2008, he presented Super Doctors, about decisions made in frontier medicine.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
