Ronald Finn

Short abstract

One of the team that solved the riddle of Rh haemolytic disease

While still a medical registrar in Liverpool Ronnie Finn started working on the enigma of Rh haemolytic disease, an immunological problem clearly caused by sensitisation of the Rh negative mother during her first Rh positive pregnancy. He was part of a team led by the head of Liverpool University's department of medicine, Cyril Clarke (obituary BMJ 2001;322: 367). Finn's initial task was to drive around town taking blood samples from parents and children, and he began wondering why only 20% of high risk babies had the disease. Was something protecting the other 80%? The answer soon became clear—the protected babies were ABO incompatible, and although the usual micro-transfusions of fetal red cells across the placenta were still occurring at delivery, these cells were destroyed before the mother's immune system could become sensitised to rhesus.

Figure 1.

Finn demonstrated that sensitisation in Rh negative men could be prevented by administration of extraneous anti-Rh (D) serum, thus opening the way to prevention of the disease—work that has so far saved around half a million lives. This work was honoured by the Albert Lasker award (often known as the American Nobel prize in medicine) in 1980. But more important in his eyes than prizes and fame was the humanitarian aspect—a lifelong traditional Jew, in later life Finn sometimes referred to the work as “giving back some of what the holocaust took.”

Ronnie Finn was born in Liverpool in 1930. After national service he entered Liverpool Medical School, graduating in 1954. After junior hospital posts in various Liverpool hospitals and a Fulbright fellowship to Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States, his first consultancy was in renal disease at Sefton General Hospital in 1966. He moved to the Royal Liverpool Hospital, as director of the renal unit, in 1978. He retired from clinical work in 1997 and was appointed visiting professor in immunology at the University of Liverpool in 2000.

An interest in allergy was, for him, a logical extension of clinical immunology, and he carried out research on food intolerance and was a founding member of what is now the British Society for Allergy, Environmental and Nutritional Medicine.

He leaves a wife, two children, and grandchildren.

Ronald Finn, emeritus consultant physician Royal Liverpool University Hospital and visiting professor in immunology University of Liverpool (b 1930; q Liverpool 1954; MD, FRCP), died from gastric cancer on 21 May 2004.