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1 Wageningen University
Division of Human Nutrition
Bomenweg 2
6703 HD Wageningen
Netherlands
Unlike mathematicians, nutrition researchers often do their best work in middle age. This was true of Clive West, who died on 27 August 2004 in Bennekom, Netherlands. Clive was a world expert on micronutrient malnutrition in developing countries and received international recognition for his research and teaching in this field.
West was born in Griffith, New South Wales, Australia, and studied biochemistry at the University of Sydney. In 1966 he received a PhD from the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, for work on the metabolism of free fatty acids in sheep. The same university awarded him a DSc in 1991.
After 3 y of working on animal nutritional biochemistry at the Unilever Research Laboratory in Bedford (United Kingdom), he was appointed Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra in 1968. Here he carried out animal experiments on cholesterol metabolism and also took an interest in fatty acids and cancer. An article on lipoprotein separation that he coauthored with Redgrave and Roberts became a classic. In 1976 Clive moved to Africa, where he became Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. Here he saw the effect of micronutrient deficiencies in children and conducted research on blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency.
In 1979 he moved to the Department of Human Nutrition at Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands. His enterprising and enthusiastic personality contributed greatly to building up a fledgling department. Clive studied diet and cholesterol in rabbits but also extended these studies to epidemiology, where he made an important contribution. Short-term feeding trials had shown that low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets depressed serum HDL-cholesterol concentrations and elevated triacylglycerol concentrations, but it was uncertain whether these effects were permanent. Careful studies by West and coworkers of diet and serum lipoproteins in populations across the world showed that the effects of carbohydrates on serum lipids were indeed permanent. It would take another 15 y for these observations to make their way into nutrition policy, but they have undoubtedly contributed to the recent rethinking of optimal carbohydrate intakes.
West maintained his interest in diet and cancer, but funding for a study on diet and atrophic gastritis as a model for gastric cancer proved hard to get. He would later say that this setback was a blessing in disguise, because it led him to return to studying the micronutrient problems that he had first seen in Africa. The group in Wageningen, where Clive worked, was experienced at conducting controlled dietary trials. West adapted this experience to the conduct of large-scale intervention trials on micronutrient deficiencies (particularly of vitamin A, zinc, and iodine), first in Indonesia and then in other tropical countries. That research would "change our understanding about the factors that influence nutrient bioavailability, as well as dietary approaches to improving vitamin A and other micronutrients in the diets of pregnant and lactating mothers and their children," as quoted from the Kellogg International Nutrition Award that honored him in 2004. One year earlier he had received the Eijkman medal for his research and teaching in tropical nutrition. His best known work is that in which he showed that ß-carotene from plants is a poor source of vitamin A. This finding was not readily accepted because, for many years, the consumption of green leafy vegetables had been considered the mainstay for preventing xerophthalmia.
Perhaps the most concrete evidence of the effect of West's work was when the Institute of Medicine recommended halving the vitamin A value of ß-carotene, although Clive thought that halving the value did not go far enough. His other field trials—carried out under sometimes near-impossible circumstances in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Malawi—showed that vitamin A deficiency is an important factor in the etiology of nutritional anemia and that zinc deficiency is probably one of the most important factors in the etiology of stunting. The size and quality of these trials was remarkable. As he wrote, "There is no reason for the quality of research in developing countries to be lower than that in developed countries. The apparent lack of infrastructure, facilities and trained personnel is no excuse for poor experimental design and lack of quality in data collection." He also recognized the crucial role of food-composition data in nutrition research, chaired management committees of European Union projects on food composition, and directed or advised training courses on food composition in the Netherlands, South Africa, Chile, Jamaica, and Thailand.
When he returned from a field trip, he would often relay anecdotes about fences that he had climbed, luggage that had to be retrieved, and breakdowns that required improvisation. Clive was prepared to fight for what he believed in, did not knuckle under easily, and had energy that seemed boundless. In addition to his many activities in Wageningen and developing countries, he was a visiting professor at Emory University in Atlanta and Professor of Human Nutrition at the Nijmegen University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Although he knew that he had a serious illness, Clive never let it stop him from doing what he thought was necessary. By now it had become obvious to the world that here was someone who knew about vitamins and minerals, who had a vision of the way forward, and who had the energy and the know-how needed to create new knowledge. He was involved in a major project for developing and testing genetically modified plant foods to combat micronutrient deficiencies, on which he worked with increasing urgency. Regrettably, he would not be allowed to see it through to the end. Nevertheless, at his farewell party 6 wk before his death, he gave a spirited and witty talk and was visibly moved by the announcement of the Professor Clive West Micronutrient Fund (Internet: http://www.westmicronutrient.nl).
Clive West's untimely death robbed the nutrition field of a scientist with true insight about and a rare vision of ways to prevent micronutrient malnutrition and robbed his many friends, colleagues, and students of a man who always brought a smile to their faces. He was brash, passionate, always fair, and much beloved. I will miss him.