Ron Asherson
Ricard Cervera
Lupus 2008; 17; 863
DOI: 10.1177/0961203308096664
OBITUARY
Dr Ronald A Asherson died in May 2008 at the age of 73 in Johannesburg, South Africa. His friends, fellows and colleagues remain profoundly affected by this
sudden loss, but wish to pay tribute to his memory and the immense human and professional legacy that he leaves.
Ron Asherson was serving as Honorary Deputy Director of Clinical Research at the Lupus Unit, St Thomas’ Hospital, London, when I joined Graham Hughes’ team in 1989, in a postdoctoral fellowship that became the most exciting and gratifying period of the professional and personal lives of many overseas fellows that trained – and became good friends – at the unit at that time. Many of the currently well accepted clinical associations of the antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), including the most severe variant of the disease – the ‘catastrophic’ APS, were described in these very productive years, always with the clever clinical vision and quick paper writing of Ron.
However, Ron’s life had been very avid of knowledge long before that time. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1934, and qualified in Medicine
at the University of this city in 1957. After completing his internship, he moved to England in 1960 and become House Officer to Professor Sir Christopher
C Booth at the HammersmithHospital, London. In 1961, he accepted a fellowship at the Columbia Presbyterian and Francis Delafield Hospitals in New York, returning to South Africa to become Senior Registrar at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town from 1961 to 1964. After 10 years as a Clinical Tutor in its Department of Medicine, he went back to the United States and was appointed as Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center under Professor Henry O Heineman, sharing his time with private practice. From 1981 to 1985, he was associated with the Rheumatology Department at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School of London (Hammersmith Hospital), working under Dr Graham RV Hughes. It was at that time that he developed his interest in systemic autoimmune diseases and antiphospholipid antibodies.
In 1985, he moved with Dr Hughes to the Rayne Institute at St Thomas’ Hospital. In 1991, he took a sabbatical at St Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, working with Professor Robert Lahita. In 1992, he returned to South Africa, where, in addition to a very active private practice, he took a position as a Principal Scientific Officer at the Rheumatic Disease Unit, Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, and later as an Associate Professor at the Division of Immunology, School of Pathology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He was also a Visiting Professor at the Department of Autoimmune Diseases, Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The research output ofRon Asherson has been prodigious, with a total of over 500 scientific articles published and he contributed chapters to more than 100 leading textbooks on Rheumatology and Internal Medicine. He was also the editor of several books, including Phospholipid Binding Antibodies, Vascular Manifestations of Systemic Autoimmune Diseases and two editions of The Antiphospholipid Syndrome, as well as series editor of the 10 volumes Handbooks of Systemic Autoimmune Diseases, where he was working when his terrible disease was declared. In 1988, he was elected a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP) as well as a Founding Fellow of the American College of Rheumatology (FACR). From 1988 to 1991, he was on the Council of the Royal Society of Medicine in London. In 1992, he was the co-winner of the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) Prize and in 1993 was part of Graham Hughes’ team awarded the International League Against Rheumatism (ILAR) Prize, both for research on antiphospholipid antibodies. In 1994, he was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) of London. In 2001, he was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Pleven in Bulgaria.
Dr Asheron was an invited speaker and visiting professor at most leading Universities and Hospitals in the world, served on the International Organizing Committee of many conferences, including the biannual International Conferences on Antiphospholipid Antibodies, and on the Editorial Boards of several international journals, as well as co-chairing the 1st Latin-American Congress on Autoimmunity in Galapagos, Ecuador.
Until the end, Ron continued visiting patients in his private practice clinic, writing papers, planning new projects and receiving a lot of love and respect. In his last e-mail to me, just 2 days before his sudden death, he wrote – in addition to the many comments to the articles that we were writing together at that time (i.e., his last ‘obsessions’: the relapsing catastrophic APS and the microangiopathic APS): ‘…people have been wonderful… I had no idea how much love and respect I have managed to acquire in my life and this strengthens me greatly…We will be in touch in a few days. Ron’. But we were not. He fought tenaciously against the disease, but also provided an example to all by continuing with a full work load, sustained by his faith and never yielding to despair. His life and the manner of his death will remain a lasting memory to all who had the great fortune to know him.
Ricard Cervera
Department of Autoimmune Diseases, Hospital
Clínic, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
For Full .pdf: http://lup.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/17/9/863?ct=ct
