Who We Are - HPAD Steering Committee
Professor Ray Tallis FRCP FMedSci (Chair) |
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Ray was Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford 1988-2006. He wrote 200 research publications in the neurology of old age (epilepsy and stroke) and neurological rehabilitation. Ray is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. His recent awards include the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing. He has published fiction (a novel and short stories), three volumes of poetry, and 20 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art, and cultural criticism. Ray was awarded two honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon Causa) University of Hull, 1997; and LittD (Hon Causa) University of Manchester 2002. Since 2008 he has been Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool. |
Karen Sanders MA(London) RNT RGN (Deputy Chair) |
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Karen is a Senior Lecturer at a leading London University where she lectures in Healthcare Ethics and Law, Nursing and Research. Earlier in her career Karen worked as a registered nurse within Adult Intensive Care Units and Neurosciences Units. Karen has undertaken several roles within the Royal College of Nursing over the last 20 years including the Ethics Advisory Panel and she is presently on the London Regional Board. Karen also serves on a registered charity and several bodies within the Church of England. |
Sir Iain Chalmers MB BS |
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Iain qualified in medicine in the mid-1960s, and practised as a clinician in UK and the Gaza Strip until 1973. He trained in health services research at London School of Hygiene and London School of Economics. Iain was Director of National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (1978-1992); Director of UK Cochrane Centre (1992-2002); Coordinator of the James Lind Initiative (2003). He has been a member of Dignity in Dying for over 20 years. |
Sir Terence English KBE FRCS |
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Sir Terence performed the first successful heart transplant in the UK at Papworth and Addenbrooke's teaching hospitals of the University of Cambridge, in 1979, and set up a heart transplant programme at the Papworth Hospital. He directed the British Heart Foundation Heart Transplant Unit there from 1980 to 1998, during which time many hundreds of successful heart transplants were performed and Sir Terence received the Clement Price Thomas Award for distinguished services to surgery from the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Sir Terence's association with the city of Cambridge continued with his appointment as Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Cambridgeshire, and with its university by his appointment as Master of St Catharine's College. He has published more than 100 papers on heart transplantation and related issues and has contributed more than 20 chapters to medical textbooks. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England from 1989 to 1992; his efficiency, patience and charm eliciting the description of him in the British Medical Journal as ‘perhaps the best president of any of the medical royal colleges since the war’. He also served as President of the International Society of Heart Transplantation and as President of the British Medical Association. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa in 1991 and holds honorary fellowships of at least another nine medical colleges in the UK and throughout the world. Sir Terence was made a Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1991. |
Professor Sir David Goldberg KBE FKC FMedSci FRCP |
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David is Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. He trained in Oxford, St Thomas’s Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital where he studied psychiatry under Sir Aubrey Lewis, and later returned in 1993 as Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Research and Development. David was presented with the lifetime achievement award in 2009 at the inaugural Royal College of Psychiatrists Awards ceremony in recognition of his dedication throughout his career to alleviating suffering, and leading to on research and service development. He is also a Fellow of King’s College, London and Hertford College, Oxford. |
Professor Isky Gordon FRCR FRCP |
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Isky is Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Imaging, UCL, Institute of Child Health, London, and retired consultant from Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS trust. While still active in research, Isky continues to teach and hold seminars on different aspects of end of life. This includes medical students, GP practices as well as age concern. A special interest has been the Mental Capacity Act (2005) and its importance to advanced decisions. Isky has been on the Board of Dignity and Dying from 200. Isky is a member of the steering group of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying. |
Professor Philip Graham FRCP FRCPsych |
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Philip is Emeritus Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Institute of Child Health, London. He was a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London for over 25 years. He has acted as Dean of the Institute of Child Health, London, Co-ordinating Consultant to the World Health Organisation Child Mental Health Programme, Chair of the National Children's Bureau and President of the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. His recent publications include The End of Adolescence and So Young, So Sad, So Listen. |
Dr Evan Harris |
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Evan began his career at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in 1991 as a Pre-Registration House Officer, then moved to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, specialising in acute medicine and surgery. In 1994 he moved to Oxfordshire Health Authority, becoming an honorary specialist registrar in public health and working on issues to do with NHS staffing and training. In addition to being elected to the BMA's National Council, Evan is Vice President of both the British Humanist Association and Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, and the Patron of the Oxford Secular Society. He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1985, joining the newly formed Liberal Democrats in 1988. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1997 General Election for Oxford West and Abingdon and remained the MP there until 2010. |
Dr Elisabeth MacDonald FRCR MA |
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Dr MacDonald has spent her career working in cancer medicine in the UK as well as 2 years as a Consultant in France and 18 months in research at Stanford University California. She worked as a consultant Cancer Specialist at the teaching hospitals, Guys, Kings and St Thomas' Hospitals London, from 1988-2000 and retired from clinical medicine in 2006. Her book on communication in medicine, entitled “Difficult Conversations in Medicine” was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press. Together with Mary Warnock she is co-author of “Easeful Death: Is there a case for assisted dying?” published by OUP in 2008. She currently teaches Communication Skills at Guys Hospital. She also continues a medico-legal practice as an “Expert Witness” in Oncology.
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Professor Dame Jill Macleod Clark DBE PhD RGN FRCN |
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Jill is Professor Nursing at the University of Southampton where she headed up a large Health Faculty and, at a national level, she has acted as Chair of the UK Council of Deans of Health. She has published widely and her academic interests focus around communication in healthcare, health promotion and interprofessional education. Jill also contributes to policy development and change in nursing and healthcare through membership of a number of government committees, think tanks and independent review panels.
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Dr Peter Townsend |
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Peter is currently a Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine and Anaesthesia, with a specialist interest in cardiac anaesthesia, in Birmingham. He recently completed a law degree, during which he developed an interest in the legislation of assisted dying. His interest in the interaction between the law, medicine and the patient continues as a part time PhD student in law at Aston University. |
Dr Graham Winyard CBE FRCP FFPH |
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Graham is a public health physician who retired in 2007 after a career in senior posts in the NHS and Department of Health, including six years as Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Medical Director of the NHS in England. He promoted assessing and improving the effectiveness of NHS services and played a major role in the creation of NICE. His long standing belief in the need for a change in the law on assisted dying was powerfully reinforced by his experiences nursing his late wife Sandy during her illness and death from cancer. His current interests include local politics and campaigning, music and Buddhism, while family and grandchildren remain central in his life. |
Dr Sarah Wookey MRCGP |
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Sarah came to Banbury to train as a GP in 1984 and has been there ever since. She is treated with tolerant condescension by her practice team who are learning to talk to her loudly and concisely, a skill her children learnt years ago. Having trained GPs for 20 years, she is now interested in the health needs of marginalised people and works with Doctors of the World UK. In her spare time she provides medical backup for charity fundraising challenges. Despite working as a clinical assistant in dermatology she managed to miss her own malignant melanoma. |
“I’m feeling pretty bloody awful. The nurse and doctor came today to incise the abscess around my chest drain and made the unhelpful suggestion that I might need some antibiotics even though antibiotics make me sick. The GP certainly understands where I am coming from, but when I said that I can’t understand why I have to carry on living like this and why I can’t just die, the nurse said, ‘Well you might change your mind.’ I think it very unlikely I will change my mind, and even if I did I don’t care. It is nice to see people but if I had the choice there is no question that I would prefer to be dead than to see people. Because I feel so ill."
"I know everyone is different. It’s nothing specific: I just feel ill, and there seems to be nothing that can make that better. I feel really furious at this. I think it is cruel. In my practice I saw people who felt like this, and I felt I had let them down. I think my GP thinks that, but all she can do is say she is sorry and squeeze my hand.”