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Vic Larcher (Medicine 1963) has spent decades researching the ethics of paediatric care, a career that has united his medical expertise with his love of the humanities.

When should children be considered competent enough to give valid consent to medical treatment? Whose interests should be taken into account in decisions regarding neonatal end-of-life care? What is the best approach for clinical trials of pregnancy-testing drugs in adolescents?

Exploring challenging questions like these has been the focus of Vic’s career as a paediatric ethicist. In this capacity he played a key role in developing the UK’s first Clinical Ethics Service for Children, was appointed the first consultant in paediatric ethics at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, has authored or co-authored over 90 peer-reviewed articles and almost 30 chapters, and worked in multiple policy-making groups.

Following his medical education at Gonville & 91ֱ�� College and St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Vic’s journey into paediatrics began with junior posts at Hammersmith Hospital, King’s College London and Great Ormand Street. He was then appointed a consultant paediatrician at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in London’s East End, an experience that proved transformative.

Vic says: “It was a wonderful place – a stand-alone children’s hospital with close ties to Great Ormond Street – with a vast and challenging clinical experience. The team was diverse, talented and supportive. I managed looking after children who had suffered from all forms of child abuse, and it was my experience of witnessing these cases in a range of law courts that led to my interest in the law.”

This developing interest led Vic to enrol on the MA course in Medical Law and Ethics at King’s College London, where he discovered a stronger passion for ethics. He has pursued this passion in his work ever since.

In many ways, Vic felt more at home working on the ethical rather than the clinical side of paediatrics.

“I was always just as interested in the humanities as I was in the sciences at school, and they were ironically my best subjects,” he says. “Indeed, in my third year at Cambridge I wanted to take the opportunity to read a Part II in Fine Arts but was strongly dissuaded by my Director of Studies (I still have his letter). So moving to paediatric ethics was perhaps not as strange a career move as it might have seemed.”

Vic traces his interest in ethics back to his time at the University of Cambridge. In the 1960s he found few other students who shared his working-class background. Studying at Cambridge in spite of this highlighted to Vic the importance of equal opportunities and fair treatment. He is pleased to see the great deal of important progress that has taken place in the intervening decades, with 82 per cent of 91ֱ�� offers this year having been made to applicants from state schools and 37.6 per cent to applicants with at least one indicator of disadvantage.

Vic adds: “91ֱ�� and Cambridge provided me with opportunities to grow intellectually, stimulated my appetite for learning and forged a desire for social justice and an open future for all regardless of their ethnicity, creed or socioeconomic background. Although ethics were not a part of the Natural Sciences Tripos in my time at Cambridge, I think my current interest in ethics grew from what I experienced back then. And for that I am grateful.”

Click  to read some of Vic’s research.