William Liley

Sir Albert William ("Bill") Liley KCMG (born March 12, 1929 in Auckland , † June 15, 1983 ibid) was a New Zealand gynecologist and obstetrician .

Live and act

Albert William Liley, who preferred to call himself Bill Liley, was born in Auckland in 1929. He attended the Royal Oak Primary School, later the Auckland Grammar School.

Liley received the University National Scholarschip in 1947 and enrolled at the Universities of Auckland and Otago . Because of his good performance, he received an advanced scholarship in 1950. He graduated from Dunedin in 1954 and won a follow-up scholarship. However, he then went to the Australian National University , where he did research in the field of physiology , in particular on various aspects of synaptic transmission. He later returned to Auckland as a Sandoz Research Fellow . In 1968 Liley was appointed to the Chair of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the University of Auckland . Here he devoted himself to the problems of unborn and newborn children, in particular haemolyticus neonatorum disease , which at that time was associated with mortality . William Liley is considered to be the first doctor to treat the fetus as a patient. He developed the technique of intrauterine blood transfusion for fetuses that were too young to survive outside the uterus . The first successful procedure he succeeded in 1963.

Liley founded the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (now Voice for Life ) in 1971 and was its first president. In 1977 there was a series of interviews with Liley and Jérôme Lejeune entitled The Tiniest Humans.

In 1983, William Liley passed away voluntarily at the age of 54. He left his wife Margaret Liley, née Hunt, whom he met at university and married in 1953, five biological children and one adopted child.

Fonts (selection)

• Liley AW: Liquor amnii analysis in the management of pregnancy complicated by rhesus sensitization. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 82: 1359-70 (1961)
• Liley AW: Intrauterine transfusion of fetus in haemolytic disease. British Medical Journal ii (1963), 1107-9

Honors

• Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by Elizabeth II (1972)
• Royal Society of New Zealand
• 1958 Research fellowship of the Medical Research Council of New Zealand
• 1972 to 1978 member of the Medical Research Council of New Zealand
• 1973 to 1978 chairman of the South Pacific Health Committee
• Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
• Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
• Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (although atheist )
• from 1968 member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on maternal and child health

The international scientific society The Fetus as a Patient has awarded the William Liley Medal for advances in pregnancy therapy since 1997 . The Health Research Council of New Zealand also awards a Liley Medal for excellence in medicine and healthcare.

literature

• Monica J. Casper: The making of the unborn patient . Rutgers University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8135-2516-0 , PMC 479278 (free full text) - (English).
• Jérôme Lejeune, Albert William Liley: The Tiniest Humans: . Ed .: Robert Sassone. Stafford, Virginia 1977 (English, online PDF 555 kB [accessed on January 19, 2016] The Tiniest Humans is composed from transcripts of testimonies given by Professors Lejeune and Liley to the Sub-Committee on Constitutional Amendments of the Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session. 7 May 1974. and the Royal Commission on Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion, New Zealand, 1977).

Web links

• Biography Sir William Liley (1929–1983) ( Memento from October 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) at hrc.govt.nz (PDF file; 10 kB, English)
• DT Zallen, DA Christie, EM Tansey: The Rhesus Factor and Disease Prevention. at neonatology.org (PDF file: 840 kB, English)