Professor Dame Pamela Shaw
Pamela Shaw on her headmistress telling her young ladies didn't need physics and chemistry
Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Neurologist who directs the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience and developed a breakthrough MND drug.
On the island
Pamela Shaw on her headmistress telling her young ladies didn't need physics and chemistry
Eight records
London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus
I go up to my study and play it whenever there is some momentous, joyful thing that's happened in life.
Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra
It just reminds me of childhood in Kuwait, but also in Northumberland.
I always used to play Joni Mitchell when I was about to go into the medical school for an exam, and somehow it just sort of calmed me down.
I wanted to think of something that would make me remember happy holidays.
Sull'aria... che soave zeffiretto
Edith Martis, Gundula Janowitz, Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Karl Böhm
it gave such hope in the grey, dismal prison environment.
Alison Krauss and Union Station
If you're having a difficult day for one reason or another, it's a count your blessings song.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:45What made you want to focus on MND?
I always knew, even when I was still at school, that I was interested in the brain and the nervous system, and when I was a trainee neurologist helping with clinics and so on, just something about the plight of M and D patients really got to me. It made me feel like a bit of a useless doctor, really, because...
Presenter asks
2:33What were things like back then? What sort of prognosis did people have?
There were no drugs of any sort to help protect the motor neurons. We didn't even intervene very well with troublesome symptoms like swallowing difficulties or breathing difficulties. So I used to almost dread getting a set of notes for an MND patient because I felt I could do so little to help.
Presenter asks
3:00How do you feel about that change, about MND being in the spotlight?
...Those high-profile sportsmen, it's so courageous of them to show their symptoms to the world when they have been such powerful athletes themselves. But they've done an awful lot to raise awareness, and their families have as well.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Three rose plants (L.D. Braithwaite, Sir David Beckham, Lady of Shalott)
I would try and find a place where they might thrive.
Presenter asks
3:41Why is that? What kind of balance does [being both a clinician and researcher] bring?
If you're a researcher as well as a clinician, what you're trying to do is harness your research to do some good in the clinic. And that's why our research institute at the University of Sheffield is called a translational neuroscience institute. So we're trying to harness all the exciting scientific discoveries in neuroscience and translate those into benefits for patients in the clinic.
Presenter asks
28:29How did friends and colleagues react when you said this [MND] is the specialism you want to do?
Some of them said, Why on earth would you want to do that, Pam? Is is it not very depressing? And It is in a way. I write condolence letters to families almost every week. But you have to learn to control the sadness that you feel for families, I guess. You don't stop feeling the sadness or compassion, but you learn to control how it displays itself, I suppose.
“I used to almost dread getting a set of notes for an MND patient because I felt I could do so little to help.”
“The headmistress at the time did not think that young ladies really needed to know anything about physics and chemistry.”
“I described CITRAM. I said I would make a dedicated research institute. I'd have clinical doctors and scientists under the same roof, having coffee and lunch together, and keeping each other right.”
“They weren't alive when the DBAE was awarded. But interestingly, the ceremony at Buckingham Palace was on the twelfth of October, and they both had their birthdays on that day the same day. So it's amazing.”