In 1970, Valerie Beral was a young doctor working in a London family planning clinic. The pill had been licensed in the UK for nearly a decade, but evidence on its use was far from complete and when patients asked about its effects she reluctantly had to say: “We don’t know.”
This frustrating experience prompted Beral, who has died aged 76 after a year-long illness, to leave clinical medicine and study epidemiology to find the answers she felt women deserved. A gifted mathematician and exceptionally focused, she became one of the pre-eminent epidemiologists of her generation.
