Robert Winston - Medical Career

Medical Career

Winston joined Hammersmith Hospital as a registrar in 1970 as a Wellcome Research Fellow. He became an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) in 1975. He was a scientific advisor to the World Health Organisation's programme in human reproduction from 1975 to 1977. He joined The Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London as consultant and Reader in 1977. After conducting research as Professor of Gynaecology at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1980, he returned to the UK setting up the IVF service at Hammersmith Hospital which pioneered various improvements in this technology, and became Dean of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in London until its merger with Imperial College in 1997. As Professor of Fertility Studies at Hammersmith, Winston led the IVF team that pioneered preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which identifies defects in human embryos.

He was the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 2004 to 2005. Together with Carol Readhead of the California Institute of Technology, Winston is researching male germ cell stem cells and methods for their genetic modification at the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology, Imperial College London. He has published over 300 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. He was appointed as a new chair at Imperial College, Professor of Science and Society. He is Chairman of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Trust and chairs the Women-for-Women Appeal charity.

Winston is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (HonFREng) and Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (FRCOG), and of the Royal College of Physicians of London (FRCP), and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS Edin), Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons (FRCPS Glasg), and the Institute of Biology (FIBiol). He holds honorary doctorates from sixteen universities. He is a member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council where he chairs the Societal Issues Panel, and patron of The Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Winston holds strong views about the commercialisation of fertility treatment. He believes that ineffective treatments are sometimes used so that the patients will return and pay for repeat treatments. He is also skeptical about the effectiveness of screening for conditions such as cancer and heart disease.