Letters page: Sam Gallop CBE

"His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh was the hands-on and encouraging President of the Guinea Pig Club charity, which was founded in 1940 by Battle of Britain pilots who sustained severe burns while flying in World War II.

Their burns were often the result of extreme temperatures produced when high winds in crashing planes fanned highoctane fuel flames. These air crew, and their 800-some successors throughout WWII, were selected for treatment by Sir Archibald McIndoe and his innovative team at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead.

Sir Archibald rebuilt them physically and gave them the confidence to rebuild their lives. Out of necessity, he had to develop new surgical techniques and novel approaches which, in turn, revolutionised plastic surgery. These men, on whom these tools and techniques were tried, tested and improved, called themselves ‘guinea pigs’.

They cheerfully continued to return to the hospital for remedial operations and checkups for many years to follow. (The original McIndoe operating table can now be seen at the East Grinstead Museum, which is a valuable research centre.)

Looking ahead, and before they closed the charity’s hangar doors, the Guinea Pigs set aside residual funds to create the McIndoe Guinea Pigs Memorial Trust. (They also made significant donations to the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund.)

With this heritage, the McIndoe Guinea Pigs Memorial Trust funds medical research in Britain into reconstructive surgery following personal injury. For several years it has supported work based at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, where the Guinea Pigs were originally treated.

The Trust is now funding a Royal College of Surgeons research project for the very first time. The project will investigate the immune response to transplanted skin in burn injury which can have a huge impact on scar outcomes and quality of life. The work will be carried out by Daisy Ryan, a surgeon who is setting out on a research career.

She will be working at the Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and with the Transplantation Research & Immunology Group at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

Daisy’s grandfather was a Pathfinder pilot in WWII who flew on operations after sustaining burns on a training flight. Her father, meanwhile, is a serving Royal Air Force pilot. The Memorial Trust is very much looking forward to a long-term partnership with the Royal College of Surgeons."

Sam Gallop CBE