JEROLD FRANCIS LUCEY

Jerold Lucey’s career was characterised by two instincts that, although apparently contradictory, formed the bedrock of his contribution to neonatal medicine. One was an enthusiasm for new ideas and technologies. “He had a passion for innovation, he loved trying things out”, according to Professor Lewis First, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington, VT, USA. “That’s what drove him.” Lucey’s other instinct was restraint: a conviction that no novelty, however appealing, should be adopted in routine clinical practice until it had been properly tested. The balance he achieved between these two tendencies, coupled with his long stint as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pediatrics, offered him the opportunity to exercise a beneficial influence on his specialty, not only in the USA but beyond it. With a degree in medicine from the then New York University College of Medicine, and following a training in paediatrics in that city and at Harvard Medical School, Lucey joined UVM as an instructor in 1956, and never left. He was appointed Professor of Pediatrics there in 1967. The impetus for a life in his chosen specialty had emerged early on. Before medical school he’d studied zoology and become peripherally involved in a research project on renal clearance in baby seals. Persuading them to eat had proved to be a problem until Lucey came up with the simple idea of putting their fish in a blender and feeding them though a gavage tube. The realisation that newborns are different from adults fostered a lifelong fascination with the early years of human life. “Jerry was keen on evidence-based medicine and doing clinical trials”, says First. “A lot of his research was about bringing discoveries that started in other parts of the world…and conducting randomised controlled trials here in Vermont and around the country.” The development most associated with Lucey is phototherapy for jaundice in premature babies. Although first described in 1958, the technique had not been subject to a proper trial and had never caught on in the USA. In the 1960s, challenged about this by a visiting doctor from Chile, Lucey set up a rigorous study and proved that phototherapy worked. A decade later, it was much the same story with surfactant for neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. In the late 1970s, on a sabbatical in Germany, he learned about the development of transcutaneous measurement of infant blood oxygen levels: another innovation to be championed. And so it went on. In 1988, Lucey founded what came to be known as the Vermont Oxford Network (VON), a collaboration for improving the quality of neonatal care through research, education, and quality improvement projects. It was partly inspired by a 1986 UK sabbatical at Oxford’s National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit of which Professor Sir Iain Chalmers was then director. “The network was dreamed up while he was here”, explains Chalmers. “Considering his eminence he was incredibly approachable and collegial”, he adds. But while Chalmers himself has largely stood outside the medical establishment, Lucey was clearly within it. “He was able to promote things that he and I both believed in… having an ally within [the establishment] was really great.” Lucey’s editorship of Pediatrics, which began in 1974, saw a steady rise in the journal’s influence and circulation. “He was among the first to understand what the internet would do to medical journals”, says First, the current Editor of Pediatrics. “Jerry could see into the future”, says Professor Jeffrey Horbar, Chief Executive and Scientific Officer of VON. “He could pick out big new ideas ahead of time. As an editor, this allowed him to recruit articles and authors that others might not yet have recognised as important.” In 1980, in a similar vein, Lucey set up an annual meeting titled Hot Topics in Neonatology. “Jerry was a mentor to many young neonatologists”, Horbar recalls. “He was always willing to spend time with someone young and not yet established.” First agrees. “Jerry was down to earth”, he says. “He answered his own phone. He made himself available to anyone who wanted to engage him in thinking about a problem. He loved teaching and learning—and chocolate chip cookies.” Lucey leaves a wife, Ingela, and a son, Patrick, and also two daughters, Colleen and Cathy, and a son, David, from a previous marriage.