KHERA o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-13 published
Dr.
Kundan
S.
KHERA
Research scientist, toxicologist, husband, father, golfer and
writer. Born May 12, 1922, in East Punjab, India. Died April
1, 2005, in Ottawa, of heart attack, aged 80.
Clyde SANGER - page A20
When Kundan
KHERA completed his memoirs at the age of 80, some
Friends objected to the title, A Life of struggles. They mentioned
his scientific honours. You should call them, they said, Success
After a Life of struggles. But, out of devotion to the truth
rather than any bitterness, he stuck to his choice.
There were times when, but for his sense of discipline, he came
close to despair. In June, 1958, he returned to the Punjab from
France with his doctorate from the Sorbonne and with high hopes
of an immediate professor's post and plans to develop a vaccine
for foot-and-mouth disease. Instead, he was told to wait for
word of an appointment.
Daily for two months he walked his father's six cows through
deep mud to the well in Kot Khera, the village where he was born
and where 12 family members -including his own six children -
were then surviving on his father's meagre pension.
Eventually, he took work as a poorly paid instructor in pathology
at the Punjab Veterinary College. His career was stalled by a
hostile director, who rejected his journal article on lumbar
paralysis in sheep (akin to mad-cow disease), and he had to bargain
his way to professor level by promising to refuse a senior post
offered him in Nigeria.
Kun followed a family tradition of struggle and, as others saw
it, insubordination. His father Kesar
SINGH fought for the British
in Mesopotamia and survived the five-month Turkish siege of Kut,
and later imprisonment. But, after qualifying as a veterinary
officer, he was passed over for promotion because he opposed
the taking of bribes.
By 1962, Kun had tired of the bureaucracy haunting his career
in India. A year's fellowship in Texas led to work in Ottawa
as a pathologist in the Food and Drug Directorate. His 28 years
in Health Canada were so productive that in 1988 the Society
of Toxicology gave him the Arnold J. Lehmann Award for scientific
excellence, and
an American book listed him among its "2,000
Outstanding Scientists of the 20th Century."
His major work was in reproductive toxicity. Arriving at Health
Canada just after the thalidomide disaster, his research challenged
the widely held view that a mother simply channelled a toxic
chemical through the placenta to the embryo or fetus. His work,
originally on mice, showed that a vast majority of chemicals,
if taken in large doses, first caused toxic effects in the mother
or placenta, and could account for many fetal malformations.
He struggled for 10 years to get his "outlandish" theory of maternal
toxicity accepted, at length triumphing at a 1986 conference
of the European Teratology Society. The drug industry took swift
note, and regulatory agencies revised their methods of assessing
human safety.
Kun had been betrothed to Rajinder at 11 and married at 15. Although
they often lived at a distance, he was a caring husband and father
to their four daughters and two sons, sent much of his salary
back to them in India and rejoiced when his children emigrated
to Ohio. They divorced in 1971, and soon after Kun met and married
Claire PAULIN.
Their years together, on the farm they owned near
Prescott, Ontario, or on the golf courses in Ottawa, were clearly
the happiest and most tranquil of his life. Every photograph
shows him smiling.
Movingly, Claire's daughter Roxanne told at Kun's funeral how
her stepfather had inspired her to study and to persevere. His
sons, Jag and Autar, both industrial engineers, were also testament
to his example. Success after a life of struggles, indeed.
Clyde SANGER is a family friend.
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