Dame Anne McLaren

Dame Anne McLaren


Geneticist resolute in addressing the techniques and ethics of fertility

John Biggers
Tuesday July 10, 2007
The Guardian

Dame Anne McLaren, who has died aged 80 in a car accident while travelling with her former husband Donald Michie from Cambridge to London, was one of Britain's leading scientists in the fields of mammalian reproductive and developmental biology and genetics.
Her research in the basic science underlying the treatment of infertility helped develop several human-assisted reproduction techniques. Her work also helped further recognition of the importance of stem cells in the treatment of human disease. As she put it, she was interested in "everything involved in getting from one generation to the next". Both of these areas raise serious ethical issues, and Anne was a leading contributor to the debates in the UK needed to develop acceptable public policy regulating them. Among her many honours, she was the first woman to hold office as vice-president and foreign secretary in the more than 300-year-old Royal Society.
Anne was the daughter of Henry McLaren, 2nd Baron Aberconway, and Christabel McNaughten. The family had homes in London and Bodnant, north Wales, and she gained a zoology degree at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. During postgraduate years at Oxford, she worked under JBS Haldane, Peter Medawar and Kingsley Sanders, and in 1952 obtained her DPhil.
The topic of her thesis concerned murine neurotropic viruses, which she studied under Sanders, and in the same year that she obtained her doctorate she married Donald Michie. They then worked together at University College London (1952-55) and at the Royal Veterinary College, London (1955-59). During this period they were interested in the nature versus nurture problem, studying the effect of the maternal environment in mice on the number of lumbar vertebrae.
This work led them to take an interest in the technique of embryo transfer and implantation, and in collaboration with me, in showing it was possible to culture mouse embryos in a test tube and obtain live young after placing them in the uterus of a surrogate mother. In 1959 Anne and Donald were divorced, although they both moved to Edinburgh. Anne continued her work on mammalian fertility, embryo transfer techniques, immunocontraception and the mixing of early embryos to form chimeras (organisms consisting of two or more genetically different kinds of tissue) at the Institute of Animal Genetics. Her book on chimeras, published in 1976, is a classic in the field.
In 1974 she became the director of the Medical Research Council mammalian development unit at University College London. It was there that she developed her enduring interest in the development differentiation of mammalian primordial germ cells. She wrote another classic book, this time on Germ Cells and Soma, in 1980. After retirement from the Medical Research Council in 1992, she became principal research associate at the Welcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, a position she held at the time of her death. During her career she was an author of more than 300 papers.
Many of the areas in which Anne worked are associated with serious ethical issues. One of her principal contributions was as a member of the Warnock Committee, which produced a white paper that played a major role in the passage of the 1987 Family Law Reform Act and the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. The latter established the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, on which Anne served for 10 years. More recently she had been participating in the discussions on the ethical issues involved in developing embryonic stem cells and the use of therapeutic cloning.
Anne remained very informal, unpretentious and approachable even after she had acquired a wide international scientific reputation. Her visits to research laboratories were always popular with even the shyest of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. After willingly listening to a description of their research projects, she would quickly identify the salient problems and come up with valuable suggestions. She always conveyed the feeling that research is fun.
Her hospitality was renowned, and many visitors to London stayed in her house. She was an avid football fan, and when any international match was on television it was a waste of time trying to talk to her.
Anne was also a great communicator. She became known as a fascinating lecturer and had many invitations to speak at meetings all over the world. Her thoughts were always clearly presented in perfectly enunciated English, and she was a "natural" on television. She interviewed the philosopher Bertrand Russell with ease, and on another occasion when she explained that she and I had successfully cultured mouse embryos in a test tube and produced young after putting them into the uterus of surrogate mothers, she had a white mouse running up and down her arm.
She was always concerned that science be explained simply but accurately to the public. Frequently she would come out with a succinct statement such as: "When the embryo is outside the woman's body, genetics tells us that father and mother have equal rights. When the embryo is inside the body, physiology tells us that the woman's right is paramount."
Politically Anne was a liberal. During the early stages of the cold war she and Donald kept in active contact with scientists behind the iron curtain. For a while they were penalised by being denied entrance to the US. The barrier was finally overcome when the US government wanted her advice on several committees, including one relating to Nasa.
Anne never felt she was discriminated against as a woman, although she was aware of the problem. In an interview in Cambridge for the Association for Women in Science and Engineering (AWiSE), of which she was president, she said: "When I was young I never thought of myself as a woman scientist, just as a scientist, and as a woman. There was no statutory maternity leave, we just had children and got on with things as best we could."
She received innumerable honours. In 1975 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, in 1986 a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and in 1993 she was made a DBE. She was also president of the Society for the Study of Fertility, president of the Society of Developmental Biology, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1993-94, and fellow of King's College, Cambridge, from 1992 to 1996. At the time of her death she was a member of the European group on ethics that advises the European Commission on the social and ethical implications of new technologies. Among her many awards were the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London (1967), the Pioneer Award of the International Fertility Society (1988, with Donald Michie) and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society (1990).
A symposium attended by close friends and colleagues was held in Cambridge in April on the occasion of her 80th birthday. She was an inspiring colleague, and my oldest, dearest friend.
Although her marriage to Donald was dissolved, they remained good friends, taking regular holidays with their children. She leaves her son Jonathan, two daughters, Susan and Caroline, and stepson Chris from Donald's first marriage.
Mary Warnock writes: I have never enjoyed working with anyone more than with Anne McLaren. For me and the other "lay" members of the committee of inquiry set up by government in 1982 to examine the then new technique of in vitro fertilisation and related questions, she was an indispensable teacher and guide.
She taught me what a true scientist should be: a combination of vision and caution, of enthusiasm and a strict demand for evidence. Above all, she had patience, not only with the slow progress of scientific proof, but with the ignorance of her pupils. She was also a model of good sense, a rock in the increasingly fraught atmosphere of the committee, as our differences emerged, our sometimes irrational fears escalated, and our deadline approached.
She described herself as an ethical ignoramus, and was sometimes amazed by the passions her work among the pregnant mice seemed to arouse. But her judgment was always listened to with respect.
We continued to work closely together in the six years that elapsed between the publication of our report in 1984 and the legislation that incorporated it. In those years she always seemed to find time for us to address groups of MPs, students or members of local women's institutes. Our double act was not only informative, but always, for me, enormous fun.

· Anne Laura Dorinthea McLaren, scientist, born April 26 1927; died July 7 2007



Anne McLaren, 80, Expert on the Embryo, Is Dead
By JEREMY PEARCE

Anne McLaren, a leading developmental biologist and expert on the embryo who in the 1950s conducted experiments on mice that were important in the development of human in vitro fertilization, died on July 7 in Britain. She was 80.
Dr. McLaren died in a car accident near London while traveling with her former husband, Donald Michie, an authority on artificial intelligence and robotics. Their deaths were confirmed by the Gurdon Institute at Cambridge University, where Dr. McLaren conducted her fertility research.
Throughout her career, Dr. McLaren delved ever deeper into biological as well as ethical questions of reproduction and what she termed “everything involved in getting from one generation to the next.”
In 1958, in work at University College London, Dr. McLaren and another researcher, John D. Biggers, were able to remove mouse embryos and hold them in culture for days before implanting them in the uterus of another mouse.
The novel transfer between different strains of mice was part of a larger experiment to determine if offspring were formed by genetics alone or if there would be a measurable influence on development within a surrogate mother’s womb.
Their findings were startling: the embryos implanted in a surrogate developed with a different number of vertebrae from that found in their genetic mother. Dr. Biggers and Dr. McLaren concluded that there was indeed some unknown effect on the embryos while in the uterus.
The work was later useful in refining techniques for human in vitro fertilization. Dr. Michie, who was then a geneticist and Dr. McLaren’s husband, contributed to the research. They divorced in 1959.
Dr. McLaren went on to study chimeras in mice, in which individuals have two or more populations of genetically distinct cells. She wrote an influential book on the subject, “Mammalian Chimaeras” (1976).
Brigid L. M. Hogan, a professor of cell biology at Duke University and chairwoman of the department of cell biology there, said that Dr. McLaren had employed chimeras to pose fundamental and penetrating biological questions about how an organism’s sex is determined as well as how many cells are needed to form a particular type of bodily tissue.
In 2002, for her work in using embryos and chimeras to help explain basic questions of reproduction and growth in mammals, Dr. McLaren was awarded the Japan Prize for developmental biology. She shared the prize with Andrzej K. Tarkowski, a Polish scientist, who also studied mouse embryos.
Dr. McLaren’s research led her to examine the reproductive cells, known as germ cells, that make up sperm and egg — how they formed, and how they interacted with surrounding tissue. The work was detailed in another well-received book, “Germ Cells and Soma: A New Look at an Old Problem” (1980).
She also became increasingly aware of the ethical concerns attached to biological research and spoke about them on British and European ethics panels, gaining further stature when she became president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1993 to 1994.
Dr. McLaren argued in favor of pursuing research on adult stem cell lines as well as those derived from human embryos because, she said, “perhaps some diseases may benefit from one and some from the other.”
Anne Laura Dorinthea McLaren studied zoology as an undergraduate at Oxford. She received her doctorate, also from Oxford, in 1952.
She joined the Institute of Animal Genetics at the University of Edinburgh in 1959 and conducted her research there until 1974. Dr. McLaren then returned to London, as director of the Medical Research Council’s mammalian development unit.
She was elected to the Royal Society in 1975 and became its first female foreign secretary in 1991.
Dr. McLaren married Dr. Michie in 1952. She is survived by their son and two daughters.
Addressing ethical questions about stem cell research, she wrote in the journal Nature in 2001: “Let a thousand stem cell lines bloom — but let them bloom in full view of all.”
Such bloomings, Dr. McLaren continued, would require a critical audience, “so that they can be subject to scientific and ethical review, freely available for research and one day, perhaps, for treating diseases.”

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