Archie Cochrane

Archibald Leman Cochrane (12 January 1909 – 18 June 1988) was a Scottish physician noted for his book, Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services, which advocated the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to improve clinical trials and medical interventions.

His advocacy of RCTs eventually led to the creation of the Cochrane Library database of systematic reviews, the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford and Cochrane (previously known as the Cochrane Collaboration), an international organization of review groups that are based at research institutions worldwide.

He is known as one of the fathers of modern clinical epidemiology and is considered to be the originator of the idea of evidence-based medicine.

The Archie Cochrane Archive is held at the Archie Cochrane Library at University Hospital Llandough, Penarth.

Cochrane was born in Kirklands, Galashiels, Scotland, into the wealthiest mill owning family in Galashiels.

He was acquainted with death from an early age.

His father was killed whilst serving with the King's Own Scottish Borderers during World War I.

His family nurse and his young brother Walter died from tuberculosis.

Cochrane was academically gifted from an early age.

He initially won a scholarship to Uppingham School.

Then he acquired a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he achieved a Double First in Natural Sciences Tripos.

Later, in 1930, he completed two MB studies in physiology and anatomy.

But crucially, in a precursor of his landmark contribution to medicine: "His sojourn in Europe in the early 1930s also instilled in him a hatred of fascism and a sceptical attitude to all theories (including psychoanalysis) which had not been validated in experiments."

Consequently he emigrated to Germany where, starting in 1931, he received psychoanalysis which was undertaken by Theodor Reik, initially in Berlin, then in Vienna and eventually in the Hague with the increasing threat to Reik from the Nazis.

While receiving psychoanalysis, Cochrane undertook medical research in Vienna and at the University of Leiden.

He eventually became dissatisfied with psychoanalysis.

However he became fluent in German, which became extremely useful to him when he later served as a doctor in a prison of war camp.

During this period, Cochrane acquired a hatred of fascism and became convinced of the importance of anti-fascism.

Cochrane volunteered his services to the committee and subsequently worked in the First British Hospital and in the 35th Medical Division Unit.

Cochrane joined the British Army in World War II.

He was captured during the Battle of Crete.

Subsequently he worked as a Medical Officer at Salonika (Greece) and Hildburghausen, Elsterhorst, and Wittenberg an der Elbe (Germany) prisoner of war camps.

His experience in the camp led him to believe that much of medicine did not have sufficient evidence to justify its use.

He said, "I knew that there was no real evidence that anything we had to offer had any effect on tuberculosis, and I was afraid that I shortened the lives of some of my friends by unnecessary intervention."

As a result, he spent his career urging the medical community to adopt the scientific method.

After the war, Cochrane studied for a Diploma in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, after which he spent a year at the Henry Phipps Institute in Philadelphia on a Rockefeller Fellowship.

In 1936 the Spanish Medical Aid Society was formed in London in response to a request for help from republicans who were fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

He qualified in 1938 at University College Hospital, London.

Like his sister, Cochrane inherited porphyria, which caused health problems throughout his life.

Medical help in the UK was unavailable.

In 1948 he joined the Medical Research Council's Pneumoconiosis Unit in the Welsh National School of Medicine (now Cardiff University School of Medicine) at Llandough Hospital, Penarth.

While there he began his famous series of studies on the health of the population of Rhondda Fach — which pioneered the use of RCTs.

Cardiff University has released an online video of the Rhondda Fach studies.

The video shows some archival footage of the community study.

Cochrane describes what he was looking for in the surveys.

In 1956, Cochrane underwent a radical mastectomy to remove what was thought to be cancerous tissue in his right pectoralis minor and axilla.

Cochrane was appointed David Davies Professor of Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases at the Welsh National School of Medicine, now Cardiff University School of Medicine in 1960.

Nine years later he became Director of the new Medical Research Council's Epidemiology Research Unit in Cardiff.

His groundbreaking paper on validation of medical screening procedures, published jointly with fellow epidemiologist Walter W. Holland in 1971, became a classic in the field.

His 1971 Rock Carling Fellowship monograph Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services, first published in 1972 by the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, now known as the Nuffield Trust, was very influential.