GOODBYE AND THANK YOU

Professor Ron Asherson died suddenly in May 2008. Ron diagnosed me with APS in 2002. I am eternally grateful to Ron for not only saving my life, but helping me to understand APS and encouraging me to start the APSSA foundation. Thanks Ron for all you have done for me and for the thousands of people affected worldwide.

The following obituary was written by a friend and collegue Richard Cervera. I am sorry for your loss of such a good friend. You can look at his site on http://www.tinyurl.com/ashersonobit

Ricard Cervera

Lupus 2008; 17; 863

DOI: 10.1177/0961203308096664

OBITUARY

Dr Ronald A Asherson died in May 2008 at the age of 73 in Johannesburg, South Africa. His friends, fellows and colleagues remain profoundly affected by this

sudden loss, but wish to pay tribute to his memory and the immense human and professional legacy that he leaves.

Ron Asherson was serving as Honorary Deputy Director of Clinical Research at the Lupus Unit, St Thomas’ Hospital, London, when I joined Graham Hughes’ team in 1989, in a postdoctoral fellowship that became the most exciting and gratifying period of the professional and personal lives of many overseas fellows that trained – and became good friends – at the unit at that time. Many of the currently well accepted clinical associations of the antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), including the most severe variant of the disease – the ‘catastrophic’ APS, were described in these very productive years, always with the clever clinical vision and quick paper writing of Ron.

However, Ron’s life had been very avid of knowledge long before that time. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1934, and qualified in Medicine

at the University of this city in 1957. After completing his internship, he moved to England in 1960 and become House Officer to Professor Sir Christopher

C Booth at the HammersmithHospital, London. In 1961, he accepted a fellowship at the Columbia Presbyterian and Francis Delafield Hospitals in New York, returning to South Africa to become Senior Registrar at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town from 1961 to 1964. After 10 years as a Clinical Tutor in its Department of Medicine, he went back to the United States and was appointed as Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center under Professor Henry O Heineman, sharing his time with private practice. From 1981 to 1985, he was associated with the Rheumatology Department at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School of London (Hammersmith Hospital), working under Dr Graham RV Hughes. It was at that time that he developed his interest in systemic autoimmune diseases and antiphospholipid antibodies.