Donald Stewart McLaren

bmj;379/oct27_10/o2562/FAF1faDonald Stewart McLaren (“Don”) was one of a group of pioneers in the area of nutrition and its effects on childhood blindness. As a teenager, he was inspired to become a missionary by the exploits of Owen Warren and Albert Schweitzer, and medicine by the untimely death of his headmaster’s son and his own illness with rheumatic fever. On graduating from the University of Edinburgh, he completed house jobs at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and in Hull. While an undergraduate in Edinburgh, he met his future wife, Olga, whom he soon persuaded to travel to India with him. While in Odisha in the 1950s as a medical missionary, he was struck by the incidence of childhood night blindness and visual issues without a clear explanation. Motivated to research this, the clinical research formed the basis of his award for his MD thesis, and preclinical research on vitamin A for his PhD…
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