Gordon Edyvean Heard

In the UK, one in 25 men between the ages of 65 and 75 have an abdominal aortic aneurysm, with rupture causing 6000 deaths each year. A year later, another important event occurred in his life, one that was likely to have strengthened his resolve: the early death of his father, who was taken ill with pancreatic cancer on a field trip in 1944 and died soon afterwards. After qualifying he volunteered for the Home Guard and subsequently, as a young doctor, served between 1950 and 1952 as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps on the surgical wards of the Royal Victoria Military Hospital in Netley, Southampton, at the time when soldiers were being returned injured from the Korean war. [...]he invited George Thomas the then speaker of the House of Commons to speak at the annual dinner of the society.