Vivienne Nathanson

Vice-Chancellor,

I have the honour to present to you Dr Vivienne Nathanson for the Degree of Doctor of Science.

Vivienne Nathanson had a slightly unconventional beginning to her life, having only very narrowly avoided being born in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. She grew up as one of a family of four, with her father a doctor and her mother a nurse [It is a great pleasure to us to have her mother and her mother’s partner Roy with us today] and with her brothers and sisters having successful careers varying from acting to anaesthetics. As a girl she attended Birkenhead High School and went on to attend Medical School in London. She claims that her interest in swimming and lifesaving persuaded the Dean of the Middlesex Medical School of her vocation. She then spent six years as a clinician in a variety of medical posts, but showed a growing interest both in representing junior colleagues and in medical ethics. In 1978 this resulted in a move to the British Medical Association as a management trainee. In fact she has the distinction of being the first, last and only management trainee at the BMA, but we are not sure what to conclude from that. There she moved steadily through the ranks. In 1990 she became Chief Executive Officer of the BMA in Scotland. At that time some here today may remember her columns in the Herald on health care and health care politics which she wrote under the nom de plume of Hillary Millman. Others may remember her presence at fringe meetings of all the major political parties in Scotland. She also played a leading role in charitable work, raising funds for a gynaecological unit at the Royal Infirmary.

In 1994 she moved back to London, continuing her rise to her present post as Director of Professional Activities. As well as contributing internally to the re-organisation of the BMA, she developed her own professional interests, publishing in peer reviewed journals, but showing a growing skill as a regular interpreter of medical issues for the lay public. Her professional career drew growing recognition. She was an external examiner and lecturer at Cambridge, a visiting Professor at Stirling, and is currently a visiting Professor at Durham. She has written guest editorials for the BMJ and edited guest issues, and has been a guest speaker at a host of political meetings and presented evidence to Commons Select Committees.

But it is perhaps her passion for almost every issue related to medical ethics that distinguishes her career. Dr Nathanson is one of those people whose face looks curiously familiar, but you can’t quite be sure why. It is because she appears regularly on national and local television news where she is the very public face of British Medicine. Her credits range from Newsnight to CNN and the Moral Maze. She has, incidentally faced her own moral dilemmas. Walking through a minefield in Cambodia on the narrow cleared path, what does one do when a venomous snake approaches? Stay on the path and face the snake or jump into the minefield? The answer will come later.

The range of her interest and competences is truly staggering. She has given evidence to Parliamentary Committees on Drugs and Driving; on NHS Preparedness for Terrorist Attacks; on the Financing of Long Term Care; On the Medical Uses of Cannabinoids; on the Interface between Western and Complementary Medicine; she speaks publicly on Euthanasia, Asylum Policy and Health, on Cloning and most recently on in-flight medical preparedness; she meets with Ministers on Bioterrorism; on Police reform; on Data Protection and Public Health; on the control of research on human subjects; on the response to the Bristol Enquiry and much more.

But of all her areas of interest, the one closest to her heart, is international humanitarian law. She is a Council Member of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims and advised the Diana Princess of Wales Trust on grants to support activities in relation to landmines, that dreadful scourge of our times. She works with the World Health Organisation on issues ranging from tobacco control to the Global Programme on AIDS and with the International Committee of the Red Cross on landmines, biological weapons, the forensic examination of war crimes and on other matters of International Humanitarian Law.

What this long list of activity exhibits is not just someone who is overworked, but a woman of great convictions and grand passions; a woman who is not willing to stand by and watch man’s inhumanity to man; a woman who walks on the larger stage to try and make the world a better place. She has faced down the secret police in Turkey and walked through minefields in Cambodia. She asks difficult questions of scientists about the harmful effects of science and the two edged effects of research which can produce bioweapons as well as wonder drugs.

But, like all of us, Vivienne is not entirely a paragon. That grand passion is also manifested in a love of high opera and low detective fiction, the gorier the better in both cases. She is an aficionado of bridge – last played she tells me by candlelight in the Mekong Delta. And by the way when approached by a snake in a minefield you stay on the path and have the guide jump in the minefield, to clear the way.

Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present to you Dr Vivienne Nathanson, a doctor whose surgery and practice is the world, who is a communicator and interpreter and intermediary between medical science and the public at large and someone who cares passionately. With the Authority of Senate I therefore ask you to confer on Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.