A veterinary President. Interview by Robin Fox

On 21 July, Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior took office as President of the Royal Society of Medicine. He qualified mrcvs from Edinburgh in 1948 and held lectureships in Bristol and Cambridge before appointment as Professor of Parasitology in the University of Pennsylvania in 1964. There he stayed for fourteen years, returning to Cambridge in 1978 as Professor of Animal Pathology (now Emeritus). His work as a parasitologist has taken him to the USSR, Nigeria, India, Australia, South America, China and numerous countries of Europe. Earlier presidencies have included the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the World Association for the Advancement of Parasitology, the Cambridge Society for Comparative Medicine, and the Comparative Medicine Section of the RSM (1993-95); he is Patron of the Fund for Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments. He has been a consultant to international bodies including WHO, the UN Development Programme, FAO, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Created a life peer in 1990 (now on the Opposition benches), he chaired a Select Committee on antibiotic resistance whose report appeared earlier this year. He is interviewed here by Robin Fox.