Archie Cochrane
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Archibald Leman Cochrane[1] (1909–1988)[2] was a Scottish doctor whose name is synonymous with scientific method in medicine.
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[edit] Biography
Cochrane was born in Kirklands, Galashiels, Scotland. He qualified in 1938 at University College Hospital, London, at University College London and joined the Medical Research Council's Pneumoconiosis Unit at Llandough Hospital, a part of Cardiff University School of Medicine in 1948. Here he began a series of studies on the health of the population of Rhondda Fach — studies which pioneered the use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs).
Cochrane’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War, where he served as a member of a British Ambulance Unit within the International Brigades, and later during World War II as Medical Officer at a number of prisoner of war[3] camps, led him to believe that much of medicine did not have sufficient evidence to justify its use.[1][4]
He said, "I knew that there was no real evidence that anything we had to offer had any effect on tuberculosis, and I was afraid that I shortened the lives of some of my friends by unnecessary intervention." As a result, he spent his career urging the medical community to adopt the scientific method.[1]
[edit] Academic life
In 1960 he was appointed David Davies Professor of Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases at the Welsh National School of Medicine, now Cardiff University School of Medicine and nine years later became Director of the new Medical Research Council’s Epidemiology Research Unit at 4 Richmond Road, Cardiff.
His 1971 Rock Carling Fellowship monograph Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services, first published in 1972,[5] was very influential. These ideas and his advocacy of randomized controlled trials eventually led to the development of the Cochrane Library database of systematic reviews, the establishment of the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford and the international Cochrane Collaboration.
[edit] Autobiography and archive
One Man's Medicine: An Autobiography of Professor Archie Cochrane was published in 1989 and co-authored by Professor Max Blythe. The book was out of print for a number of years but a paperback edition was published by Cardiff University in April 2009 to celebrate the centenary of Cochrane's birth.[6]
The Cochrane Archive [7] is held at Llandough Hospital, Penarth.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Who was Archie Cochrane? AAAS Member Central, August 15, 2011, Aria Nouri, MD
- ^ Cochrane, Archibald L; Blythe, Max (1989), One Man's Medicine: An autobiography of Professor Archie Cochrane, London: British Medical Journal, ISBN 0 7279 0277 6
- ^ Cochrane, A L (1984), "Sickness in Salonica: my first, worst, and most successful clinical trial", Br Med J (Clin Res Ed) 289 (6460): 1726–1727, doi:10.1136/bmj.289.6460.1726
- ^ Archie Cochrane (1984). "Sickness in Salonica: my first, worst, and most successful clinical trial (extract)" (pdf). http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/resources/scolar/extracts_from_salonica.pdf.
- ^ Cochrane, A L (1972), Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services (2nd ed.), London: Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust (published 1989), ISBN 0 7279 0282 2
- ^ The Cochrane Collaboration http://www.cochrane.org/docs/archieco.htm#ByAC
- ^ Archie Cochrane Archive
[edit] External links
- "The name behind The 'Cochrane' Collaboration". The Cochrane Collaboration. Archived from the original on 20 May 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060520102827/http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane/archieco.htm. Retrieved 2006-06-27.
- "Professor Archie Cochrane CBE". Oxford Brookes University Medical Video Archive. http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/lifesci/medical/synopses/cochrane.html. Retrieved 2008-06-27.
- The Cochrane Library
- Goldacre, Ben (19 August 2006), "Objectionable 'objectives'", Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/aug/19/badscience.uknews, retrieved 2010-03-09
- Harford, Tim (July 2011), Trial, error and the God complex, http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford.html, retrieved 2011-07-17
