Obituary PBC
Dr Pat Morris Jones
Dr Morris Jones who was President of SIOP in 1980/81 died on March 16
2020 at the age of 87. She was one of the first doctors in the UK to
specialise in the care of children with cancer and over her 40 year
career from 1953 to 1993 she saw survival rates improve from cancer
being mainly a fatal disease to one where there was a real chance of
cure with more than half of children surviving. She was an only child
,born in Oswestry ,close to the border with Wales. She trained in
medicine at the Royal Free Medical School in London and found her way to
Manchester to specialise in paediatrics. There she came under the
influence of Basil Marsden, a paediatric pathologist and Dr Dorothy
Pearson a radiotherapist. In 1954 Marsden had established the world’s
first population based children’s malignant disease registry which
became a prototype for registries all over the world. Dr Pearson was a
founding member of SIOP and its second president. In the late 50s and
early 60s the only real treatments available were surgery and
radiotherapy but the emerging success of chemotherapy pioneered in the
US, France and Germany led to a need for paediatricians to sub
specialise in paediatric oncology. By the time Pat became involved the
antagonism towards giving children chemotherapy had largely dissipated
but how to use it to best advantage remained to be determined. She took
up this challenge and built up one of the largest units in the UK. For
many years she was single handed and absolutely dedicated to the care of
children. She rarely took a day off. . Before people were talking about
evidence based medicine she was adamant that treatment should be given
in trials where we could learn what was best for the future. She was
especially interested in Wilms’ tumour and very involved in the Medical
Research Council embryonal tumour group and in the MRC UKALL trials. In
1977 she helped found the UK Children’s Cancer Study Group (UKCCSG)
which eventually ensured that all children in the UK with cancer had
access to the most up to date treatment. The early involvement of
Manchester in the pre chemotherapy era using radiotherapy, and the
registry, led her to take a real interest in the late effects of
treatment. She had a collection of slides which she used to illustrate
the late effects of radiotherapy when given to young children. Failure
of skeletal growth could ensue from radiotherapy to growing bones and
second malignancies occurred within radiation fields. She became heavily
involved with Anna Meadows in Philadelphia in setting up the Late
Effects Study Group which received substantial funding from NIH. This
work was extended and has been perpetuated by Les Robison and his
colleagues and has hugely influenced the design of clinical treatment
protocols in recent years. She wrote an influential paper in 1990
entitled Childhood Cancer; Cure at what cost? In which she
described the evolution of treatment for childhood cancer from one of
cure at any cost to cure at least cost. Her fervent hope was that we
would eventually get to a stage of cure at no cost. Pat was an
inspirational teacher and leader and many of the young aspiring
paediatric oncologists in the 70s turned to her for career advice and
then once appointed to a post used her as a source of support and advice
on patient management. She was most people’s “phone a friend”.
The psychosocial problems faced by both children and parents became much
more obvious once potentially curative treatments were being used.
Paradoxically parents seemed to be able to cope better with the near
certainty of death of their child than with the possibility, but by no
means certainty, of long term survival. She worked closely with Peter
McGuire, a psychiatrist, and with social workers to define the problems
faced by children and their families and devised interventions to try
and help. It was clear from the early leukaemia trials, which involved
cranial irradiation and brain tumours that endocrine insufficiency was a
real problem and she worked closely with Professor Steve Shalet, a
paediatric endocrinologist, to not only define what these problems were
but also how to follow up and screen survivors. She was always much in
demand for conferences once causing consternation in Bruges when,
invited to take a shot at the men only archery club she hit the bull’s
eye first time. The local tradition was that anyone who did this was
invited to become a member.
Her retirement at the age of 60 was marked by an enormous party in
Manchester Town Hall attended by many of the patients whom she had
successfully treated and the parents of many of those who had died. She
remembered all of their names. She was short in stature but big in
personality, loved clothes and is remembered for her leather skirts and
red shoes. In later years her hair was often a shade of blue and always
well coiffeured . She was always a straight talker and had lots to say
in meetings. She was direct and always had strong opinions. She was once
quoted in a national newspaper that money was being wasted on sending
children to Disneyland.
Throughout her career she loved foreign travel which was often
associated with scientific meetings. She built up a wide circle of
friends including Anna Meadows, Dan D’Angio, Mark Nesbit and Audrey
Evans whom she would call upon to offer training places to her aspiring
young colleagues
When she retired from clinical work in 1993 she decided to move to
London. “As a single lady why would I want to move into a country
cottage? Soon after her move to central London she met and married her
Italian hairdresser, Alfonso Cassarini, and enjoyed 20 blissful years
travelling widely and exploring the capital’s culture.
Pat Morris Jones was a forceful and formidable pioneer who always had
the best interests of children and their families at the forefront of
everything that she did. The incredible survival rates for children with
cancer in the present era using treatments which are designed to
minimise late effects are built on the shoulders of giants like her who
dared to try.
Alan Craft
Tim Eden