Sir Michael Peckham obituary

Oncologist who pioneered modern treatments for testicular cancer - the jockey Bob Champion was one of his patients

Michael Peckham, who has died aged 86, did much to advance the acceptance of evidence-based medicine. This approach - using well-controlled clinical trial data for improving the treatment of patients - has never received greater attention than now, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 1986 he moved from trailblazing clinical work as a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden hospital, London, to become director of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, then a loose association of seven institutes based in the capital. His restless mind envisaged an opportunity for much closer collaborative work between those high-level centres, aiming at advances that would otherwise have been impossible.

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