Michael A Crawford PhD, FRSB, FRCPath Michael Crawford was born in Edinburgh and did national service with RCAF Winnipeg and RAF Oldenburg. In 1965 he obtained a doctorate at the Royal Post Graduate Medical School, Hammersmith, then established biochemical teaching at the Makerere College, Medical School in Kampala, Uganda. The UK had built a new teaching hospital in Mulago as a goodbye present for independence in 1962. With Sandy Rankin, he helped create the Muhimbili Medical School in Dar-es-Salam in 1963, returning to London in 1965. The experience in East Africa taught him the power of nutrition in health and non-communicable diseases which were in total contrast to those in the UK. At the Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine, he and Andrew Sinclair published the first evidence of the role of DHA and arachidonic acid in the evolution of the brain in 1971. This was followed by the first evidence of an omega 3 deficiency causing severe behavioural disorders in a primate in 1973. He then turned his attention to maternal nutrition during pregnancy, when most of the human brain cells divide. On retiring in 2010 he was invited to work at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital campus of Imperial College, London, as a visiting professor. The prime interest of the team under Professor Mark Johnson, head of obstetrics and gynaecology, is in preventing preterm birth and the neurodevelopmental disorders which handicap a child for life. He has won many international awards and was elected as a Freeman of the City of London in 2017. web: www.imperial.ac.uk/people/michael.crawford David E Marsh Dip Agric David trained initially in agriculture (Shuttleworth College, Bedfordshire) with ten years experience farming in Bedfordshire. In the late 1970s and early 1980s David interviewed many medical doctors and scientists who had unusual ideas regarding the noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and began writing the storyboard for a television series… thus meeting Michael Crawford in 1981 whilst he was director of Nutritional Biochemistry at the Nuffield Foundation Laboratories at London Zoo, (ZSL)’ David then moved to human nutrition and co-authored The Driving Force; Food in Evolution & the Future (1989) – later Nutrition and Evolution (1995), with Professor Michael Crawford (Inst. Brain Chem. & Human Nutrition, Imperial College London). He has since written broadly (for Resurgence, Positive Health, Positive Health Online, Healthy Eating, Nutrition and Health amongst other publications) about nutrition, evolution, environment and integrated medicine, including a series in the Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine on energy or vibrational medicine. This book is of particular interest to the author as it brings his special interests in nutrition and food production together in full circle. The Origins of Diversity: Darwin’s Conditions and Epigenetic Variations, (Nutrition & Health 2008) won him the presitigious Cleave Award from the McCarrison Society for Nutrition and Health in 2016. David edited the McCarrison Society for Nutrition and Health Newsletter, together with many and various articles with it, and for the society’s Journal Nutrition & Health; (see www. mccarrison.com). He lectures very occasionally on the history of evolution theories. David can be reached at davidmarsh.dip.ag@gmail.com www.davidmarsh.org.uk
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