A chapter in Andy Whitelaw’s memoir is called “Brainwashing (literally)”. Flushing out blood clots from a newborn’s brain to prevent damage was just one technique evolved by the pioneering neonatologist, who has died aged 79. Among his other innovations was temporarily cooling oxygen-deprived newborns to prevent brain damage.
In the 1970s, when Whitelaw began his career, he said the human brain was largely a mysterious “black box”. But improvements in scanning technology made it possible to discover (and therefore treat) conditions in babies that would otherwise have only been found at autopsy, after the baby had died.
Neonatology – the care of newborns and premature babies – rapidly evolved and Whitelaw was in the vanguard. He was a neonatology consultant at the Hammersmith hospital in London from 1981 to 1989, before spending eight years in Norway as professor of paediatrics at Aker University hospital in Oslo, having passed an exam in Norwegian to work there. He then moved back to the UK, and was professor of neonatal medicine at Bristol University from 1998 to 2011.
A premature baby’s health can be on a knife-edge, and one issue that scanning could reveal was a bleed in the brain (intraventricular haemorrhage). It could result in tiny blood clots blocking drainage channels so that fluid builds up, risking irreversible brain damage.
To treat it, a shunt tube was inserted into the brain to drain the excess fluid. It was not ideal as the shunt had to remain there permanently and could become blocked. Whitelaw collaborated with others including his second wife, Marianne Thoresen, a professor of neonatal neuroscience, in years of preliminary research, and in 2003 his Drift trial (drainage, irrigation and fibrinolytic therapy) got under way. It attempted to flush the blood clots from the brain.
A surgeon inserted a catheter at the front and back of the brain and ran fluid containing a clot-busting drug through it. The staff were on tenterhooks. Whitelaw wrote: “I watched the first baby like a hawk, hardly daring to leave for the first 16 hours.”
Whitelaw spent years teaching the exacting technique in centres across the world and was vindicated when a follow-up study, Drift10, showed that children at 10 years old who had been treated with it had improved IQ compared with those who had had the standard treatment.
A second cause of brain damage in newborns is oxygen deprivation, which can result from a difficult birth or problems with the placenta. Whitelaw and Thoresen posited that cooling might prevent brain damage, and in 1999 Whitelaw began the CoolCap trial to see if reducing an oxygen-deprived baby’s temperature for 72 hours could preserve brain function.
Getting consent for what could seem a very strange procedure from parents was a delicate task that he did not think fair to leave to junior staff. So for the next 30 months Whitelaw had to be ready at a moment’s notice to drive to hospital to speak to new parents, often at night or the weekend.
But it paid off: the trial was successful and he led a similar but larger trial in 2002, known as Toby (total body hypothermia trial), which instead of cooling just the baby’s head cooled the whole body. “Therapeutic cooling” is now standard for newborns with oxygen deprivation to prevent brain swelling and damage.
Whitelaw was interested in any practice that could help premature babies, and in the 1980s skin-to-skin “kangaroo care” in Bogotá, Colombia, caught his eye. It involves placing a premature baby against the parent’s chest, and originally arose out of expediency as there were insufficient incubators to treat premature babies in Colombia.
On a visit there in 1984, Whitelaw was impressed at how well mothers and babies took to it. He returned to the Hammersmith to carry out a trial into its practice and advocated its use widely. Kangaroo care is now widely endorsed by the NHS.
Whitelaw, an only child, was born in Derby. His Scottish father, Robert, was an obstetrician, and his English mother, Cicily (nee Ballard), a radiographer and Liberal councillor. The family moved to Dunfermline, where Whitelaw, aged seven, said a girl with cerebral palsy and unable to walk made a lasting impression on him.
He was educated at George Watson’s college in Edinburgh, where he played the bagpipes in the school band, before studying medicine at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1964, and then trained in paediatrics. A car crash in 1969 left him with a permanent injury to one eye, which, he said, combined with the stress of the job, led to “migraines that blighted all my clinical years as a neonatologist”.
Whitelaw worked at Northwick Park hospital in London for much of the 70s, where he was inspired by the sight of an early ventilator and other technology saving the lives of premature babies. He also gained vital experience working at Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London and at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, before becoming a consultant and senior lecturer in neonatology at the Hammersmith hospital in 1981.
In 1969, Whitelaw married Sara Sparks, a nursery teacher, with whom he had three children: Nicola, Ben and Rebecca. They divorced in 1988. In 1990 he married his colleague Marianne, and they had a son, Thomas. In 1998 he and Marianne went to work in Bristol, and in 2006-09 he was president of the Neonatal Society.
After he retired in 2011, Whitelaw divided his time between Norway and the UK and enjoyed cross-country skiing and playing the guitar. He also played the bagpipes in a marching band in Bristol.
Whitelaw is survived by Marianne, his four children, two stepchildren, eight grandchildren and six step-grandchildren.
• Andrew George Lindsay Whitelaw, neonatologist, born 31 August 1946; died 9 November 2025
