Interview
Clinical Chemistry 62:1
12–19 (2016)
By Misia Landau
An Interview with David Millington
David Millington was born under a lucky star. To hear
him tell it, his life story consists of one serendipitous
event after another. Certainly from a historical point
of view, he has been at the right place at the right time.
In 1941, just three years before he was born, the Americans George Beadle and Edward Tatum made a discovery that paved the way for the modern science of
molecular biology. Mutating genes in Neurospora, a
type of red bread mold, they were able to alter specific
enzymes in the metabolic pathways of the mold,
thereby confirming a hypothesis put forth in 1902 by
the British physician Archibald Garrod that hereditary
diseases are due to “inborn errors of metabolism.” This
discovery was followed 20 years later—just as Millington was entering college—when the American microbiologist Robert Guthrie came up with the first blood
test for phenylketonuria (PKU), which opened up the
field of newborn screening. Millington wrote his own
chapter in the tale in the late 1980s when he and
colleagues had the idea to apply the cutting-edge technique of tandem mass spectrometry to the analysis of
newborn blood samples. Their work—which has saved
thousands of lives not just in North America but
worldwide—revolutionized the field of newborn
screening, turning it from a backwater into a scientific
success story. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control
called newborn screening one of the great public
health achievements of the past 10 years. Millington,
who held the post of Medical Research Professor of
Pediatrics and Director of the Biochemical Genetics
Laboratory at Duke University Medical Center, spoke
with me from his office in early July. He had just
retired after over 30 years of service.
This is a great moment—you’ve just retired!
Two days ago.
After a long and illustrious career.
I don’t know (laughs). It’s not all that illustrious, to be
honest with you. It’s a perfectly ordinary career. I just
got lucky enough to be in the right place at the right
time to make an impact on a particular field. That’s probably true of many scientists born in my time period, because
you’re looking at a new technology. In terms of mass spectrometry, I was in on the ground floor.
© 2015 American Association for Clinical Chemistry
12
David Millington
You were born in 1944 in the town of Bury near
Manchester, England.
It’s now part of Greater Manchester but in those days it
had its own identity as a town. My dad married my mum
during the war and then went off and fought on two
fronts—Germany and then India. My mum and he had
three children. I’m the middle one so you could call me a
war baby.
Did the war cast a shadow on your childhood?
The postwar period was an unusual time, probably the
only time in recent history when you could say almost
everybody was in the same boat. They were all struggling.
Men who had come back from the war were trying to find
jobs. My dad was a roofing contractor— he installed
roofing tiles— until he found a better job with a building
company as a representative. I thought we were special
because we were one of the first families that had a car in
the streets.
Had the Millingtons lived in the same area for
generations?
My dad’s family were definitely long-time residents. Millington is quite a common name in Lancashire. My mum
was born in Cardiff. She was working in a hotel. My dad
was on leave and he met her in this hotel, called the
Carlton. It was the posh hotel in Cardiff at that time.
Interview
They started dating and got married around the time that
the war broke out. Then they had these three children
who didn’t see much of him until he came home from the
war.
When did he come back?
In ’45. He was drafted in late ’39. He was trained as a
signalman. That meant he would be up near the front
lines, which was kind of dangerous.
Was he especially adept with technology?
To be able to receive Morse code and transmit it at 21
words a minute—that was the minimum and I think he
was faster than that. He had a skill that not many people
could get to grips with.
Would you trace your interest in technology to your
dad?
Certainly there’s a gene there. My grandfather also was
very interested in technology. He always had a mechanized transport, either a motorcycle or a car. That was
fairly unusual for the time. My dad, as I said, was one of
the first on our street to own a car. We were one of the few
families that could escape on the weekend and take day
trips.
Where did you go?
Local beauty spots—the seaside, the beach. Blackpool
and Southport were popular destinations.
Were you the first in your family to show an interest
in science?
My father talked about a relative of his, an uncle, who was
one of the lead scientists at ICI [Imperial Chemical Industries], which was one of the big pharmaceutical or
chemical companies in England. I was certainly the first
of my generation in the family to go to university. Going
to university was quite rare. Less than five percent of the
young population, if I’m not mistaken, actually got a
place in university in the early ’60s. To get a PhD, you’re
talking about fractions of a percent.
Would anyone have predicted that you would be
among that five percent?
Maybe one or two of my teachers. I didn’t. I just happened to be a bright student who was interested in
everything. I was lucky enough to go to a good school,
Canon Slade Grammar. There was an entrance exam.
It was relatively small, which set you on a course of
being connected with good teachers. Those teachers
inspired me. Many of the students that were in the top
stream, and I got into the top stream, would go on to
university. That was the expectation. All of it was paid
for under scholarships—there were no parents or students paying for any of this.
I read that the school was founded a hundred years
earlier in 1855 and that its motto is “Ora et labora.”
Pray and work.
Were you required to pray at school?
No. The requirement to attend that school was that you
have a connection with the church there—it had to be the
Church of England. My father was brought up as a Methodist in the Church of England but he was not a devout
Christian in any way. Neither am I. I made up my own
mind about Christianity and what I believed in. I’m not
really a true believer, to be honest, but I liked the exposure to that environment. We had assembly every morning and we would sing hymns, and of course there were
school rules and school uniforms. I liked that structure. It
put you in awe of the system. You didn’t challenge it so
you became a part of it. The focus on the academic environment that that presents is valuable.
You mentioned good teachers. Did any spark your
interest in science?
Teaching of science was not the highest priority in that
particular school—it was more classics. But they had appointed new teachers with science degrees the year I
came. One of the teachers was a physics teacher, a Welsh
teacher by the name of Mr. Goronwy Jones. He had a
strong personality. He was actually a bit scary, but a darn
good teacher. He, more than anybody, influenced my
interest in science.
Canon Slade focused on the classics so you must’ve
explored the humanities and arts.
We were required to do Latin and English language and
English literature. Also, French and German. Most of our
curriculum was required—there was very little choice.
But I did choose to do Russian and music. I’m interested
in music yet I have no musical talent whatsoever.
What is it about music that resonates with you?
Its structure and architecture, especially the classic
composers—Mozart, Beethoven. I was unusual in my
time. I’m the only kid I knew that was interested in
classical music from when I first heard it at the age of
about ten. I couldn’t get enough. On the BBC radio,
there used to be quite a lot of classical music, so I would
listen to that on my own.
You described the intellectual appeal of the music but
it must’ve had an emotional pull as well.
Yes, these classical tunes would go around in my head like
pop tunes go around in other people’s head. I think music
is a language. It resonated with me. I could see and understand what the music was trying to tell. It’s like I could
sense the emotions that were being transmitted by the
Clinical Chemistry 62:1 (2016) 13
Interview
composers. Some people could see in art, in pictures,
what life meant. I could hear it in music.
Did you play an instrument?
I tried the violin. One day my teacher recorded my playing. That was the day that I decided to quit.
Does your affinity for music relate to more general
aspects of how your mind works?
I was always interested in astronomy. There were astonishing discoveries being made about the stars and the
heavens. Reading about that was more incredible than
any science fiction. The reality of the discoveries coming
out about stars, supernovae, pulsars, quasars, the expanding universe, the structure of the universe and the structure of atoms—all that was interesting to me. My mind
would see order in things and like to make sense of it.
When did you become interested in chemistry?
I was making meals in the kitchen when I was ten for my
family. That’s chemistry to me. I wanted to understand
what was behind the processes of flour rising, for example. Our school science curriculum was based on fundamental principles. You were either going to be a physicist,
which I thought was going to be too challenging. Or
mathematics, which is even more challenging. Or chemistry. I chose chemistry because I thought it would get me
into the life sciences. At school it didn’t fascinate me all
that much because it was not very well taught. At college
a light bulb came on.
You went to the University of Liverpool in 1962.
Liverpool required you to do both physics and chemistry
and one other subject in the first year. I had this idea all
along that I was going to take chemistry so I focused on
chemistry and stayed with it.
How did you become interested in mass spectrometry?
The last year of your bachelor’s degree, it’s called the
honors year, you get assigned to a professor to do a science project. The person I was assigned to, Dr. Robert
Johnstone, happened also to be the custodian of the university’s mass spectrometer. I started reading about it and
its applications. It was the applications in the life sciences
that interested me the most.
Liverpool in the early sixties was the home of the
Beatles. Did you ever see them perform?
I never saw them play at the Cavern but I did get tickets to
see a concert just outside of Liverpool. When I got there you
couldn’t get in—you couldn’t hear or see anything, it was
so packed. The din was phenomenal from the screaming.
The thing about being at the University of Liverpool was
there was music everywhere. If you walked down the
street where I lived, if you walked down any street in that
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Clinical Chemistry 62:1 (2016)
district, you could hear on any given evening at least one
band practicing. There were so many of them. On the
weekends when the University had its dances, you had
about five groups on the bill. On the top of the bill was
somebody quite well known and the others were
would-be rock bands, trying out. The students were actually the deciders of whether they would make it. Think
of all the names—the Moody Blues, the Beatles, the
Searchers, the Seekers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, plus
many others. They all had to make it in Liverpool.
Did you have a favorite group?
I preferred the Stones because I felt they spoke to the
generation. They were out there and a bit more coarse but
they were real. They were renegades. But the musical
talent that I was exposed to at Liverpool University was
amazing. I saw Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Dave
Brubeck and his quartet, and many others.
There was also soccer in Liverpool—and Manchester,
come to think of it. Were you interested in sports?
I was interested in two sports growing up as a kid. One of
them was golf. My dad was interested in golf and when I
saw what golf was all about, I immediately took to it.
What is golf about?
Golf is about learning how to grow up. It’s the most
difficult game of all.
What makes it so difficult?
You’re hitting an object with a singularly unsuitable
other object, the golf club. You have to learn how to
move your body in such a way to make proper contact.
You’re on an open course with no barriers. Every hole is
different. Every time you play the course is different because wind, rain, the conditions of the sky all affect the
game. It really is a challenging game. When you play, it
can be very frustrating. You see people losing their tempers. You learn how to control your emotions. You learn
how to accept reality—you can’t be perfect at this game.
Is there a connection to science?
Well, you’re certainly on your own in the sense that it’s
not a team game and you’re fighting your own demons.
Your ability and skill level all play a role, but you’re really
battling against yourself. A lot of it is in your head. It
teaches you the value of being patient and diligent. And
of practice.
What was the other sport?
Cricket. It’s a team sport and a very English one. I
wasn’t terribly good at it but I played because I was
very interested—it’s a scientific game. There’s a lot of
strategy involved. Again, though, it’s a team game.
Interview
But science is a combination of individual and team
sport.
Absolutely. I think that the individual part of science is to
get the inspiration. You have to be a bit of a loner to
explore the ideas or learn how you might apply them.
That means library work, it means thinking. It means
being on your own. Of course you might be inspired by
other people that you work with but you have to come up
with your own ideas. Once you’re in a group of people that
you have to depend on to explore these ideas further, it
becomes teamwork. You have to also be a good team player.
sented. In America you could make a mistake and correct
it. You could make a mistake in your career, have a setback in your business, and you could still recover from it.
You started your graduate work on mass spectrometry
at Liverpool in 1966. What appealed to you about the
technique?
It was the fact that you could take such a tiny amount of
material, put it in the machine and learn so much about
it. In less than five minutes you would generate enough
information to give you a lot more structural knowledge.
Why was it so difficult?
By that time there was a glut of chemists and the opportunities were few and far between.
How would you describe the essential principle of the
approach?
In a nutshell, mass spectrometry gives you massmolecular weight, and structural information, with almost no work. One of the things I find very fascinating
about mass spectrometry is the pace of development
that’s enabled us to go from small molecules, like steroids—which Nobel prizes were won on—to mediumsized molecules, to macromolecules all in the space of
15 to 20 years. It’s absolutely astonishing.
You were in on the ground level. What were you
learning about your own strengths and weaknesses as
a scientist?
I wouldn’t describe myself as a great scientist. I did not
have a good pair of hands in the lab, for example. I was
not a great chemist. There are some people who have the
patience and ability. Laboratory science, especially chemistry, is a bit like a black art in some ways.
Or like a green thumb in gardening.
Yes, you’re either good at it or you’re sort of average. You
can get results but you’re not brilliant, that was me. I
could follow instructions—I could do certain things—
but that was not my forte. That’s another reason why I
like mass spectrometry. It’s looking at molecules in an
isolated environment out of the lab. A whole different
chemistry goes on there than in solutions where you’re
mixing things together in the test tube.
You came to the University of Illinois at Champagne
Urbana after finishing your thesis. How did you like
life in the States?
What we loved was the friendliness of the people, the
openness, the space, and the opportunities that were pre-
You came with your wife. Where did you meet her?
I met my first wife locally—she came from a town called
Darwen in Lancashire. I asked her if she would marry me
and come to America. We didn’t have children yet. Then
I went back to the UK. I couldn’t get a job. We couldn’t
start a family until I felt like I had a job. It was
challenging.
You decided to do a post doc at University College
Cardiff and stayed on for a lectureship at Tenovus
Institute for Cancer Research.
My predecessor there was a physicist. It was thought at
the time that physicists should be in control of mass
spectrometers. This particular physicist realized that it
really needed a chemist to run this thing. So he contacted
me. I got the position. The mass spectrometer at Tenovus
was one of only two of its type in the country. It came
from Germany—it was very high end. I was almost afraid of
it. It was such an expensive and large piece of equipment. I
decided that I didn’t know enough about the mass spectrometer’s insides, the guts of the machines. I needed to
know more and that’s what drew me into industry.
You took an appointment in industry in 1976.
This company that I joined was a mass spectrometry
company—their mission was to make and sell and develop technologies around mass spectrometry. It was one
of the few companies that actually built mass spectrometers from scratch.
Was your work fruitful?
It was. I was applications manager and my job was to
expose potential clients to these instruments and help
them to solve their problems. The field was changing and
expanding and new technologies were being developed
all the time. I could name ten or more really significant
advances that I saw while I was in that company. If you
left to go on vacation and came back there would be
something new to see. Lots of very good scientists were
there working in those companies—they were true pioneers. If a client was interested I would be the person who
would entertain them, take them to dinner, and lunch,
talk to them about their application. Of course, they
always brought the most challenging problems. It was a
very difficult job—probably the most difficult job I ever
did. But it was very rewarding. After five years of that—
and there were some upheavals from a management point
Clinical Chemistry 62:1 (2016) 15
Interview
of view—I decided that I should get out of that environment and back into academia.
In 1981 you spent a few months as a visiting professor
at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel
Hill. How did that come about?
I was a very frequent visitor to the US and came to know
many scientists in both industry and academia. I had
started to ask colleagues over here if they knew a place
that I might fit in. One of them suggested UNC because
they had just bought a new mass spectrometer from the
company that I worked for. They thought I could help
them establish a basis for that machine, to teach the faculty how to make effective use of it.
How did you come to Duke?
I was introduced to a professor at Duke who had knowledge of mass spectrometry. He was one of the few people
in North Carolina who had a gas chromatograph–mass
spectrometer. He had done some training in the UK and
learned the applications of mass spectrometry to solve
problems with metabolism.
Was this Charles Roe?
Yes. He wanted to analyze a group of compounds that I
had never heard of before. This was a medical science
opportunity that appealed to me.
He came to you with a specific case of a child with a
metabolic disorder.
That’s absolutely right. I was seduced by the whole story.
This was a child with propionic acidemia.
It’s one of those inherited metabolic diseases that was
very difficult and challenging to diagnose at the time.
You need a gas chromatograph–mass spectrometer to do
it and he had one. He diagnosed the child, who unfortunately had a very bad course. It was a devastating disease.
In those days you weren’t expected to survive into early
childhood with that condition. He had a theory about it
and he wanted to explore that theory.
From what I gleaned, in an effort to save the boy, Roe
had given him a dose of L-carnitine, which led to his
theory that L-carnitine is a detoxifying agent. Is that
correct?
What L-carnitine does is help transport fatty acids into
the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell. In addition it can help to get abnormal species out of the mitochondria. One of these abnormal species is called propionyl-CoA—it’s a cytotoxic agent. Carnitine can combine
with it and get it out of the cell and thereby free up the
metabolism again. The theory was that it should be able
to do that, but no one had actually had the guts to give it
to a patient. What I heard is that the child was about to
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Clinical Chemistry 62:1 (2016)
expire and this was a last ditch effort to save his life. The
last rites had been given. So when Dr. Roe gave him this
and it revived him—Dr. Roe tells the story that the kid
was sitting up, laughing at everyone within four hours of
giving the drug. They thought, “Oh it’s a miracle.”
That’s a dramatic story!
When I heard it for the first time, I was captivated. Then
he said to me, “I have this mass spectrometer. Can I
analyze these compounds with it?” I said, “You can’t. You
need something more sophisticated.” That’s when we got
into the conversation about tandem mass spectrometry
and its application.
Was that the challenge that led you to tandem mass
spectrometry?
I already had exposure to tandem mass spectrometry in
the company. I’d already developed applications and
published some of them, again with colleagues in
academia.
You had been pairing mass spectrometry with gas
chromatography and liquid chromatography to break
analytes into components. Does the second mass spectrometer take the place of the gas chromatography–
liquid chromatography?
If you like, yes. When you have a mixture, some of them
are so complicated you can’t analyze them at one go.
What the tandem mass spectrometer does is to ionize the
mixture components that you put in without breaking
them apart. In other words, it uses a “soft” ionization
technique, which means that instead of breaking the molecules apart they stay intact. Then one by one, according
to the mass-to-charge ratio, you introduce them to the
second part of the mass spectrometer, where they are
broken apart and give you the structural information.
Why would anyone use anything but tandem mass
spectrometry? Why use gas or liquid chromatography?
You still often need an extra separating component because you’re looking into the details, the small stuff that
we don’t normally see. To get into that depth of analysis
you may still need to have separation prior to the mass
spectrometry.
How did you apply tandem mass spectrometry to the
case of the child?
During our first meeting, Dr. Roe had something that
was sticking out of his shirt pocket. It turned out to be
a test tube. Eventually he pulled it out and showed
me—this was part of the seduction, I’m sure. There
was a dry powder in the bottom of it. He said that was
the freeze-dried urine from this child after the carnitine had been given. He wanted me to figure out how
to analyze that material for the propionyl carnitine,
Interview
which he was expecting to find there. Using the tandem mass spectrometer, we were able to detect a signal
in the mixture of urine that had the correct molecular
weight for propionyl carnitine. We were able to analyze the structure of that and show that it was the same
as the pure material [propionyl carnitine] that we had
made earlier in the lab.
You ended up leaving UNC and moving to Duke to
work with Charles Roe. How did that happen?
The reason I got into the work with Dr. Roe in the first
place is because I knew something about it—I’d worked
with this company that had developed those techniques.
I knew there was a solution to this problem that Dr. Roe
had. That’s serendipity— him being interested and maverick enough to actually try the therapy out and me having the knowledge to give him. He eventually said, “Well,
look, you must come and work for me.”
I’ve spoken with other scientists who have emphasized
the role of serendipity in their scientific careers.
In my case, it was all to do with serendipity! I had a
perfectly good career in environmental chemistry going
at UNC. I watched Michael Jordan play basketball
there—I was obviously a UNC guy. You’d have to convince me to come over to Duke.
Now you’re eternally grateful!
I made the decision because of the excitement that was
brewing in his mind about what you could do with this
technology. There was no tandem mass spectrometry at
that time in the clinical diagnostics labs. They were notoriously conservative. It needed someone like Charlie
Roe to break the mold.
A big turning point in your career was your decision
to introduce tandem mass spectrometry into newborn
screening. How did that come about?
Dr. Steven Kahler came with me from UNC. Dr. Roe
hired him at the same time that he hired me. He came as
a clinician but he was also by chance on the board of
advisors to the newborn screening lab for the state of
North Carolina. We had established a clinical diagnostic
test for a group of metabolic disorders, which didn’t exist
before, that became known as the acyl carnitine profile.
We were applying tandem mass spectrometry to accomplish this, first on urine and then we figured out how to
do it on plasma. Dr. Kahler came to me one day and said,
“Have you ever thought of trying this technique on dried
blood spots?” I didn’t know what a dried blood spot was.
He educated me. The idea was crystallized that we should
retrieve newborn dried bloods spots from patients that
had been diagnosed, at Duke, with inborn errors of metabolism within the last five years; who were still alive;
and for whom we could ask the parents’ permission to get
David Millington and Charlie Roe
these cards. We were then able to show by retrospective
analysis of those spots that we could’ve diagnosed them at
birth had we had the opportunity. That’s what got us into
the business of newborn screening.
Was it a technological challenge or was it simply
applying what you’d been doing before to this new
kind of sample?
We had to learn how to manipulate the dried blood spot.
It turned out to be relatively straightforward and, to our
amazement, we could see all the same signals that we were
seeing in the plasma of the same patients when they were
in the diagnostic lab.
What were the next steps?
What we’re talking about is public health. We needed the
right spirit at the newborn screening lab in North Carolina, and they had it. That generosity of spirit allowed us
to collaborate with them—they actually funded part of
the project. The money was used to help drive the new
technology to apply it to large numbers of samples. The
population of newborns in North Carolina is 120,000 a
year. That’s a lot of samples for a technology like this.
You need high throughput and that was what the money
was for.
At what point did you know that this was a successful
approach?
To be honest, we were trying to develop a method that
was going to become obsolete within a couple of years,
without us realizing it. A new technology called electrospray was being developed. It was much easier to
analyze samples on the fly one after the other in sucClinical Chemistry 62:1 (2016) 17
Interview
cession with electrospray than it was with the method
that we had, which was fast atom bombardment. Nevertheless, we were publishing papers through the
1990s and other laboratories across the world were
starting to use our technology in newborn screening
labs in Australia, South America, and Saudi Arabia and
elsewhere.
The 1990s were a defining period for you.
Most people in my position would’ve published a couple of papers and then walked away from it— gone on
to the next thing. I had to make a commitment to this
because of the importance of it and the fact that we had
to keep pressing to get over the barrier of resistance.
You need powers of persuasion to get through the
layers of bureaucracy to start his process. That’s what I
decided to do, to spend a lot of time doing that and
educating people.
You were probably working around the clock. What
was happening with your family?
When I came to take the job at UNC—at first it was
temporary and later a permanent position—I brought
my wife and two small children, a son and a daughter.
That first experience was just a look-see: is this going
to be an experience we’d like to do together? It was a
universal “yes” from all of them. That’s why I decided
to apply for the position at UNC. That was around
1979 –1980. So my daughter would be 7, my son 5
when we came.
Did they turn from British children into American
children?
My daughter was able to switch her accent when we went
to England—it was quite interesting to see that— but she
gradually became more American than British. My son
went to school here from when he was 5 years old so he’s
pretty much Americanized.
Back to newborn screening, is it implemented in every
state?
Oh yes. But it took until 2008 for all of them to come on
board.
This has saved and improved many lives. Is there any
estimate of how many diagnoses are made every year
that would otherwise have been lost?
I don’t keep track but I know that in this country we have
at least four million newborn births annually. We’ve now
been doing this since 1997. If you think about all the
babies that have been screened in this country, that’s
probably approaching 50 million, if not more. Then
worldwide, you’ve got Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
Mexico, South America; almost all of the countries in
northern Europe. England, Germany, Switzerland, Aus18
Clinical Chemistry 62:1 (2016)
tria, Italy—they’re all doing newborn screening by this
method.
That must make you feel amazing!
I tell you what it’s done for me, what I see as its main
contribution. It’s put newborn screening on the map. It’s
done more to promote an awareness of how it can save
lives than I could’ve possibly imagined. It’s become like a
mission for me to pass on the knowledge. I could’ve easily
gone off in another direction and become an expert in
protein chemistry—that’s where I started. Protein chemistry has been revolutionized by mass spectrometry. I
chose to stay with small molecules in this area because I
thought it could make a bigger impact.
You’ve written about new approaches to newborn
screening such as digital microfluidics that could address
some of the limitations of tandem mass spectrometry.
Tandem mass spectrometry is right now having its best
years but something will supersede it. There’s talk
about genetic screening, which is actually becoming
feasible from a dried blood spot. Imagine that every
single known mutation that causes disease could be
screened from one dried blood spot. That is likely to
happen whether we want it to or not. Where I’m coming from with resources like digital microfluidics is if
you keep taking dried blood spots from babies, sooner
or later you’re going to run out of material. If you
miniaturize everything down to droplet level, then
you’re able to do several analyses that normally
wouldn’t be possible with a mass spectrometer. I’m a
techno-geek—I love technology. I see something and I
think, “That could be useful.”
You don’t sound like someone who is retiring. You’re
so engaged and involved. Why are you retiring?
I’m retired from the nitty-gritty of being full time lab
director—that’s a very time-consuming job.
That’s true—you’re responsible for analyzing thousands of samples.
And reporting on them. Also, as a faculty member you
have other responsibilities. Showing up for work to do
that routine stuff everyday—I’m 71 years old, 72 is coming up—I have to admit it’s getting tiresome. I hope to
stay working on the education side of newborn screening.
I hope to stay involved with digital microfluidics as a
consultant or advisor. Have you heard the expression
“Old professors never die, they merely lose their faculties”? That’s maybe what’s happening. I’m going to lose
my faculties but I’ll still be able to contribute where
there’s an opportunity and a need. I like traveling—my
wife and I will do some traveling, see some of the things
that we haven’t had time to visit.
Interview
Anything else?
Playing more golf with my son. I’ve been out of golf for a
long time so I’m going to start practicing again. I’m still
fit enough that I can enjoy that. I like to do projects
around the house. I’m sure my wife has a ‘honey-do’ list
that’s a mile long. I haven’t seen it yet but I know that
she’s got one.
I asked you earlier whether your kids had turned into
Americans. What about you—are you still British?
I’m both. My wife too. I guess we have to say we’re
Americans first because this is our home. We chose to live
here. We’ve had a really, really good experience in North
Carolina, especially the Chapel Hill Research Triangle
area. Our family in the UK also mean a lot to us. We want
to be able to go back to visit and see some of the things in
the UK that we have not seen. We’ve seen Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Mesa Verde—we’ve probably seen more of the wonders of America than most
Americans will ever see. Now we’re going to go into
Europe and do what we missed and failed to do when we
lived there.
I’d like to end with a quote from Harry Hannon,
who is chief emeritus of the newborn screening and
molecular branch of the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention. He said, “Newborn screening
creates a passion that drives people to put in much
more than 40 hours a week. You can see the impact
of your work immediately.” That must resonate
with you.
Definitely. Those of us who are in newborn screening,
we’re not in it for the money—we want to do it because
we know it makes a difference in people’s lives.
Are you still passionate?
Yes. As long as I can be useful, I’ll continue doing it. The
opportunity that this has created for me has been wonderful. I’ve been very lucky. To still be healthy enough to
do all this, and enjoy doing it, is a blessing. Many of us are
not that fortunate. You have to have a lot of luck—that’s
true both in life and in science.
Sponsored by the Department of
Laboratory Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
Misia Landau
e-mail [email protected]
DOI: 10.1373/clinchem.2015.238584
Clinical Chemistry 62:1 (2016) 19