When posed with the question “Are we prepared to have a go at tackling leukaemia?” Dr Hardisty gave an emphatic “Yes!”, despite Gordon Piller, LLR’s founder, likening the problem to climbing Everest with little equipment or knowledge of how to get to the top. Out of this came the country’s first leukaemia research unit, based at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and its partner the UCL Institute of Child Health, and led by Dr Hardisty. And so this new unit began looking for the origins of the disease, testing new treatments against a background of near total fatality.
Right: Article from The Times, 7 December 1961.
1961 UK’s first leukaemia research unit opens at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
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