Professor Carl Wood
Professor Wood (r) with fellow IVF researchers Associate Professor John Leeton and Dr Alex Lopata
By Professor David Healy
Professor Carl Wood, AC, CBE, FRCS, FRANZCOG, was the Foundation Professor and Chairman of the Monash University Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. He held this position until 1994.
Although best known for his breakthroughs in the field of IVF, Carl contributed broadly to reproductive health and medicine.
Obstetric research was the first phase of Carl’s career. He assessed the effectiveness of contractions of the uterus during labour and assessed the heart rate of the foetus during labour. This helped develop methods, such as the foetal heart rate monitor or cardiotocograph, which are still in use in all delivery rooms 30 years later. Other methods, such at the scalp pH assessment, developed by Carl and colleagues, saved thousands of babies in Australia.
The second phase of Carl’s research career was in psychosexual obstetrics and gynaecology. This epoch coincided with the abortion rights movement in Victoria and accompanied important international publications on normal human sexual response. Carl was highly personable: this area of research suited him to a T. He would have been pleased to learn that abortion law was introduced into Victoria in 2008.
Test tube babies from in vitro fertilisation (IVF) was the third phase and highlight of Carl's research career. He was assisted by Professor John Leeton and Professor Bill Walters on clinical matters, and Professor Alan Trounson on the embryology side. There was also a “Monash Medical Mafia” of internationally respected colleagues such as Professors Brian Hudson, Henry Burger and David de Kretser (later, Governor of Victoria).
Carl and colleagues took Australia, and most parts of the world, into an era of in vitro fertilisation, frozen embryos, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, donation of eggs, donation of embryos, pre-conception adoption, cloning of human embryos and embryonic stem cell research.
In 1988, Carl was awarded the Axel Munthe Award as international recognition of his contribution to reproductive science. In Australia, he was locally honoured by his Companion of the Order of Australia award in 1995.
The fourth phase of Carl's research career was in laparoscopic keyhole surgery. The development of these procedures from diagnostic keyhole surgery to operative keyhole surgery introduced a range of major new surgical operations for women. These permitted same-day hospital care or hospital discharge after overnight stay, preferable compared with the days and sometimes weeks of hospitalisation with conventional surgery.
From his generation of specialist obstetricians and gynaecologists - that the famous medical epidemiologist Archie Cochrane said had the lowest IQ of any group of doctors - Carl was always going to be a stand out. He was athletic in build, was well co-ordinated and was happy to use that hand-eye co-ordination to attempt to develop new surgical operations. He was also a keen tennis player. His personal style and grace and good humour when he was at the top of his form were seductive qualities. He was the idol of the media when IVF took off.
Carl was certainly the best research starter of ideas that most of us will ever see in Obstetrics & Gynaecology. Nevertheless, his research was never considered worthy enough, or of sufficiently high merit, to ever be awarded an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Project Grant. This says much about our NHMRC. IVF research was funded by the USA Ford Foundation in the 1970s which permitted the research that led to the breakthroughs for human IVF in the early 1980s.
Similarly, Carl received no continuing support from public hospitals – indeed the fledgling IVF programme was evicted from its public hospital about 30 years ago. It was around this time that the first raft of applications about IVF, and its various permutations and combinations, led to the creation of Australia’s first Human Medical Research and Ethics Committee. This may yet be Carl’s greatest contribution to Australian medicine and university life.
Professor David Healy is the Head of Monash University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the current President of the International Federation of Fertility Societies.