Alan Clemetson

Charles Alan Blake Clemetson FRCOG, FRCSC, FACOG (31 October 1923 – 30 August 2006) was a medical doctor, scientist and researcher who published over 48 medical papers and a three-volume monograph, Vitamin C.

During his hospital and teaching career, he specialised in obstetrics and gynecology.

Clemetson was born in Canterbury, England, attending Wootton Court preparatory school, Wootton, Kent (1930–1935) and The King's School, Canterbury (1935–1942).

He married Helen Cowan Forster, a physiotherapist, on 29 March 1947.

They had four children.

After preclinical studies at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, he completed his training at Radcliffe Infirmary, graduating from Oxford University Medical School in 1948 with Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery (B.M., B.Ch) degrees.

After graduation, he became a Royal Air Force medical officer for two years, and then returned to Oxford University in 1950 for a MA degree.

In 1950, as a research assistant in Obstetrics, he started to pursue research into preeclamptic toxaemia and started to publish medical papers in 1953.

In 1952, he was named a Nichols Research Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.

From 1952 through 1956, he served at various hospitals in England as the House Surgeon of either Obstetrics or Gynecology and, in 1956, became a lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynecology at London University.

Clemetson immigrated to Saskatoon, Canada (1958–1961), becoming an assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Saskatoon.

During this period, he began to be interested in Vitamin C while on an expedition to Rankin Inlet, Nunavut on Hudson Bay.

Clemetson was impressed by the good capillary strength of the local Inuit and surmised this to be due to raw fish in their diet.

Then, in 1961, he moved to California and assumed a position as an assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, and a lecturer in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1964, Clemetson conducted and published the first studies concerning ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) metabolism and depletion in pre-eclampsia.

In 1967, he assumed a teaching position (1967–1972) as an assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology with the State University of New York, Brooklyn.

He also became the Director of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department (1967–1981) at the Methodist Hospital of Brooklyn, New York.

In addition (1972–1981), he served as a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Downstate Medical Center of the State University of New York, Brooklyn, New York.

Clemetson moved to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1981, and became a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Tulane University School of Medicine, and the Director of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Huey P. Long Medical Center, Pineville, Louisiana.

He also became a consultant in Gynecology for the Department of Surgery, Veterans Administration Hospital, Pineville, Louisiana.

After retirement in 1991 he devoted his time to researching and publishing papers on Barlow's disease (scurvy in infants), hypothesizing this to be a cause of shaken baby syndrome.

Upon his retirement in 1991 as a Professor Emeritus, Tulane University School of Medicine, Clemetson devoted his remaining years to writing and publishing medical papers concerning shaken baby syndrome.

Near the end of his life, he narrowly escaped the New Orleans disaster from Hurricane Katrina, having been warned by his caregiver's meteorologist brother-in-law.

He escaped with the latter over the Lake Pontchartrain bridge the day before it was destroyed.

He lived in Houston, Texas for nearly a year while his family restored his house, but died of heart failure a few weeks after this was completed.

Clemetson had a long and distinguished academic career as a medical doctor, scientist and researcher.

During his forty-year professional career, he implemented numerous scientific studies and was instrumental in furthering scientific knowledge.

The following achievements are highlights of his life's work that are contained in his extensive Curriculum Vitae.

Clemetson's most notable medico-legal achievement was as the father of the "Motherhood Bill", which requires that all medical insurance carriers in the State of New York include coverage for pregnancy and complications of pregnancy.

This so-called Donovan Bill rapidly spread to all 50 states.

After Clemetson's retirement from teaching in 1991, his work focused on developing the hypothesis that the hemorrhages seen in infants with shaken baby syndrome are caused not by inflicted trauma, but by capillary damage due to Barlow's disease (subclinical scurvy) – a condition called by proponents Clemetson/Kalokerinos syndrome.

The mechanism he argued to be high histamine levels associated with low serum Vitamin C, the latter deficiency arising before birth due to factors such as the pregnant mother's malnutrition, and in the infant by recurrent infections and recent multiple vaccinations.

His four main papers on this topic, published in the controversial and non-peer reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses, are: "The key role of histamine in the development of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease", "Barlow's disease", "Capillary fragility as a cause of subdural hemorrhage in infants" and "Elevated blood histamine caused by vaccinations and Vitamin C deficiency may mimic the shaken baby syndrome".