Spotlight on Gerald and Kate McCamm

Kate McCann speaks of her husband in her book madeleine..

"Gerry was good-looking, confident and outgoing. He also had a reputation as a bit of a lad. But as I got to know him I discovered a natural warmth and honesty, especially when he talked about his family, that revealed an endearing sweetness and vulnerability beneath the potentially intimidating façade.

Professor Gerry McCann

NIHR Research Professor (Experimental Medicine) and Professor of Cardiac Imaging

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School/Department: Cardiovascular Sciences, Department of

Profile

Professor Gerry McCann is a heart specialist with a subspecialist interest in MRI scanning; he conducts experimental research in people to better understand heart disease and clinical trials to assess the optimal investigation strategies and treatments for patients with, or at risk of developing, heart disease.

Professor McCann is the Cardiovascular theme lead for NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre, the immediate past-chair of the British Society of Cardiovascular MRI research group, lead of the PhOSP-COVID cardiovascular working group and East Midlands Cardiovascular Clinical Research network.

Research

Professor McCann’s research is focused on clinical imaging and conducting randomized controlled trials. His work has been quoted in multiple International guidelines and the CvLPRIt trial helped change the guidelines on patients presenting with STEMI and multivessel disease. The recently published CEMARC-2 and MR-INFORM trials will influence future guidance on the assessment of patients with chest pain of suspected cardiac origin.

Publications

Professor McCann has published over 190 peer-reviewed articles, 120 of which have been in the last 5 years and he is senior or first author on over half of these publications. Current H-Index is 38 (i10 99/Google Scholar, April 2021) and has over 5,000 citations.

Professor McCann's publications
Tope ten papers in last 5 years

Gulsin GS, Swarbrick DJ, Athithan L, …..McCann GP. Effects of Low-Energy Diet or Exercise on Cardiovascular Function in Working-Age Adults With Type 2 Diabetes: A Prospective, Randomized, Open-Label, Blinded End Point Trial. Diabetes care. 2020;43:1300-1310.
Everett RJ, Treibel TA, …, McCann GP, Greenwood JP, Moon JC and Dweck MR. Extracellular Myocardial Volume in Patients With Aortic Stenosis. JACC. 2020;75:304-316 DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2019.11.032
Nagel E, Greenwood JP, McCann GP, et al Magnetic Resonance Perfusion or Fractional Flow Reserve in Coronary Disease. NEJM 2019; 380(25): 2418-28.
Kanagala P, Cheng ASH, Singh A, Khan JN, Gulsin GS, Patel P, Gupta P, Arnold JR, Squire IB, Ng LL and McCann GP. Relationship Between Focal and Diffuse Fibrosis Assessed by CMR and Clinical Outcomes in Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction. JACC Cardiovascular imaging. 2019;12:2291-2301.
Musa, T.A., …. McCann GP, Moon J, Greenwood JP, Myocardial Scar and Mortality in Severe Aortic Stenosis:. Circulation, 2018; 138:1935-47
Singh A, Greenwood JP, Berry C, …… and McCann GP. Comparison of exercise testing and CMR measured myocardial perfusion reserve for predicting outcome in asymptomatic aortic stenosis: the PRognostic Importance of MIcrovascular Dysfunction in Aortic Stenosis (PRIMID AS) Study. European heart journal. 2017;38:1222-1229.
Greenwood JP, Ripley DP, Berry C, McCann GP et al. Effect of Care Guided by Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, Myocardial Perfusion Scintigraphy, or NICE Guidelines on Subsequent Unnecessary Angiography Rates: The CE-MARC 2 Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA 2016; 316(10): 1051-60.
Nazir SA, McCann GP, Greenwood JP, … Gershlick AH. Strategies to attenuate micro-vascular obstruction during P-PCI: the randomized reperfusion facilitated by local adjunctive therapy in ST-elevation myocardial infarction trial. European heart journal. 2016;37:1910-9.
McCann GP, Khan JN, Greenwood JP,… Gershlick AH. Complete Versus Lesion-Only Primary PCI: The Randomized Cardiovascular MR CvLPRIT Substudy. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2015;66:2713-24.
Gershlick AH, Khan JN, Kelly DJ, …. McCann GP. Randomized trial of complete versus lesion-only revascularization in patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention for STEMI and multivessel disease: the CvLPRIT trial. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2015;65:963-72.

Supervision

Prof McCann has an excellent record in developing junior researchers. He has been the principal supervisor for six doctorates.

Two of his trainees have scored personal NIHR Intermediate Fellowships and have been appointed as Associate Professors. His post-doctoral fellows and lecturers have been successful in attracting external funding from the NIHR, Wellcome Trust, BHF, the Academy of Medical Sciences and garnering industry support for their research projects. Three of his PhD students have been appointed as NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturers (ACL) and another NIHR ACL has recently secured a five-year senior lecturer position at the University of Leeds

Teaching

Professor McCann’s main teaching contribution is through the supervision of undergraduate and postgraduate students. He has an excellent track record in all domains and a major focus is the development of individuals within the Cardiovascular Imaging Research group.

In addition Gerry delivers occasional lectures to undergraduate medical students, post-graduate trainees and hands-on clinical training in CMR. He lectures widely on CMR, aortic stenosis and diabetic heart disease and is a regular speaker at national and international conferences.

Awards


Personal awards

University of Leicester Research Excellence Award 2021- CV imaging group
NIHR Research Professorship 2018-2023
Frank May Prize Lecture and Medal 2018 (Most Outstanding Medical Research Leicester)
East Midlands CRN Finalist: Exemplary investigator contribution 2017.
Awards - for student supervision (2015, 2016). BJCA trainer of the year 2016 - runner up.
ACC Best Abstract from the UK 2015
NIHR Career Development Fellowship 2014-18
NIHR Postdctoral Fellowship 2011-14
Da Vinci Early Clinical Research Award, February 2010 (With Ng/ Nicolson)
ESC Clinical Training Fellowship (MRI), Amsterdam, 2004

Student awards

International

AHA Samuel Levine Early Career Investigator Award, G Gulsin (2019)
Society of Cardiovascular MR Early Career Award: Winner A Singh (2016)
Finalists C Steadman (2011), P Kanagala (2018)

National

British Society of Cardiovascular MRI- YIA Award Winner 2020- Dr G Gulsin
Presidents Cardiology Section of the Royal Society, finalists, Alastair Moss & Gaurav Gulsin, Oct 2020
Royal College of Physicians, Turner-Warwick Lecturer, Matt Graham-Brown, March 2020  British Society for Heart failure : Winner Gulsin 2019; Runner-up Kanagala 2018
British/Irish Hypertension Society:
Young Investigator Award Winner 2017: W Hunt
Dr Robert Grayson Award Vascular Disease: G Gulsin 2019; J Yeo 2021
British Heart Valve Society 2015 – Young Investigator Award Winner (A Singh)
BMA student research award 2017 (Runner-up S Ardenwalla);

College PhD prizes

(Nicolson 2013;Kanagala 2018),

Qualifications

University of Glasgow, MB ChB Medicine July 1992, 1985-1992
BSc (Hons 2:1) Physiology/Sports Science 1989
MRCP (UK), February 1995
Dip Sp Med Scottish Royal Colleges, April 1997
MD University of Glasgow, April 2002

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Would such a man as his wife describes risk his career and life without a fight?

He is clearly very confident, very self assured, very ambitious, very self aware, enough to protect himself and his wife against all odds.

Disregarding body language and speech analysis and any other quasi scientific mumbojumbo - look at the earlier video coverage of interviews and studio sofa appearances, he is clearly the alpha male there to protect his domain, the one in charge of his familial destiny - and she the little obedient woman to be kept in the background.

and this is mostly the after parts, but he was already underway to this in 2007.

what is unique to a case that got so much attention, as this one got and never lost, is how very little we really know of the people, even we know a little bit more now, than the investigation at the time in 2007.

past or future behaviour is never a given to tell what a person would do, or would not do in very specific circumstances, but there are always indications or leads to look at that could be of help. like where a person has barriers, or not, how someone sees social concepts. but also all kind of experiences, that could have elements, that gives a person advantages in use during a criminal event. 

there are a lot of working area's, where ranks are very prominent, but ranks are about capacities in a field, training, connections and hardly about who you really are. some have a quite natural kind of flow into higher ranks in hierarchy, others have to work for it as a goal. and normally in hierarchy it means the higher up, the lesser there are positions. 

and if you look to this cv, do not be too impressed, because half of it just happened because a guy is in a job and reached a position. they do not let student trained by the cleaning lady, and it is not really a free choice, because the training of student is just part of the job.
professor is the only title you can not reach by study for it, in most countries it is not even a protected title at all. it's a honorary title given as a result of the work you do for your university. 

what this cv does not tell are things like social skills overall, and often not even on the job. you find quite a variety in that on universities. 

the guy is overage in his job skills, that is something of merit, his of course. he worked for it.

but what can it tell about the person. and can it give impressions that could relate to the case much earlier.

yes, there are, the guy is very capable to reach a goal in life. his career is a goal he has put a lot of efforts in, you do not know before hand if you will succeed, there is a lot of competition in that field. 
and he already was building the foundation for his career well before 2007. 
like the extra study opportunity he made use of by going abroad, and that bit tells a bit more about the family to, they had already been a young family, madeleine was already there, and they wanted more children, his partner was a young professional in the medical field too, and they have together decided to put her career on hold, so he could use the grant to do some extra studies. the family did go with him. 

it is very normal couples have different goals in life. they are different people, even if the choose to be a couple. and there are often joint decisions between couples to give one goal preference on another. 
and how we see it, is only the result of what they had weighted and decided. and the outlook is often not so much as it is what you see.

the wish to grow their family with another child, could have been as important in that moment in time, that it became a prominent goal next to the next step in a career for the other partner. as only a female can bare a child, that is something you can not share. and even travel distances are not that bad between the uk and the netherlands, by their decision to go as a family, it was almost impossible for kate to just be a medical in the netherlands. it was for a pretty short stay, one year grant if i remember correctly. the language would be to much of a barrier to step in as a gp.

gerry his life would pretty much just would have flowing through, universities are pretty universal and that means english is used a lot already, it is also the language preferent in the world of science and academia, at least in the netherlands. 
they made friends over there, madeleine dit go to preschool there. a school that asked both parents to take part in the care and activities with the children. there is even prove gerry did take at least once his share. 
where they exactly stayed is not know by address, or at least not needed to be known. 
it was not the most luxury housing, nothing in amsterdam is cheap and a lot of very low quality housing has mostly a very high price for just being able to stay in that city. they probably got a bit more, because they came as a family. if gerry would have come only on his own, he probably would be housed in a one room studio, because he was there only to sleep. usually not the most typical place, to also be anything nice when the family would like to join in during a weekend or a holiday. and academia hardly do the holidays, the university will be closed to most students, but the research will go on. 

it is not really known if kate had a full job anytime after madeleine was born, and as i understood the uk system has pretty long stay at home after birth. 
it could have been quite lonely for kate, friends and your child are not always enough time filling events on a daily basic level. certainly if she also had to go through the complete process of ivf. 
but they did it all and that second pregnancy was not an easy one, so to have to take on bedrest, with a toddler in a strange environmont, nothing in their housing was even theirs. the family did go out to assist a lot. kate could have gone back to the uk, it would have been even much easier.

so it is not only gerry who can go after his goals, kate shows that too.

there is a misunderstanding i see often about the ivf and that it was free in the netherlands, well i know it was at that time free for us, but that does not always equals to people from abroad, the netherlands had a lot of agreements with health programms and insurers from abroad, so if i am in the uk, i can make use of the nhs, but the nhs will just send the bill in full to the netherlands, my insurance company will pay the amount that normally is paid for that kind of care when it was done in the netherlands and i have to pay up for the rest.
and so it works for people of all other countries that has such an agreement, and in 2004 we still had 2 systems, a social security and a private security, or you could go without any. 

you have to know what kind of working relation gerry got at that time, and if he got a salary under the grade of the social security, if he just had to use as little as possible under that grant he got, he would probably not have been able to call it a salary at all. and was it paid as a dutch salary, with also paying taxes here, or not.
if they got a income that was over the grade of the social security, they would have to get private security and they had the habit to restrict not immediate needed care in the first year. 

so without knowing how gerry mccann got his salary or living allowances, and how much, we can never be that sure they gone for a freebie ivf. 
and ivf had already a set amount of treatments, and even with sneaking by a lot of the common way you have to apply for it, with help of the university networks, it is not even sure the ivf has indeed taken on in amsterdam. 

and even if they have gotten ivf as a freebie, i know quite a lot of people who used it, but they would just made uses of an opportunity too. but maybe the dutch see that much easier, if you qualify under the setting of the rules, it is not an special opportunity, but just a right, like all others have that qualify. 
and we are pretty easy when people have need of a kind of care, and they have what we call a wheelbarrow, you do use it. it is allowed to feel a bit jealous about it, but if you had a wheelbarrow to make use of you would use it too. and in 2004 it was quite busy with things like ivf, because the complete system changed to a all have to basic security in the years there after. and a lot of people just wanted to make use of what was available under their old system security.

it is simply not an action that can tell they did something negative. and we the dutch people are pretty hypocrites, we always have an opinion about everything and vent then easily and openly, we have hardly any boundary that restrict us, but that works out very different when an everything becomes a personal item. 
so we know most is just utopia and not exactly a moment you have to make your own hands dirty. 
and yes, we do like to grumble too, when other find a better door, or has a faster wheelbarrow to get to something you need or want. 

so for me, that possible event has far to little of the information i need to base a conclusion on, and i can not name it as a flaw of character at all. 


but they not just landed on earth in 2004, their lives had already a lot of history before that, and it is really remarkable how little became known of it. but even if we had the full history, it still can only give some indications or leads, and with a very large margin. we only can look from the outside, we do not have a true insight in the thinking processes of the mind of others. 

and i do not make each bit into a long read, so that is for a next message.

so, who is gerry?

i always like to look in people their history a bit for that, and the things i could find and could for me assist in points to tell who the guy is. 

first things first, he is the youngest male offspring in an first generation irish immigrant family. both parents are full irish, i never understood how the guy merges in a typical scot at all, a celtic could be, but only being born somewhere does not truly make you scottish by nature and blood.

he has an older brother and two older sisters. 

he was born and raised in glasgow, from what came known, they had to rent out part of their housings to strangers. on the social staircases between having nothing and well off, they must have been still pretty near the lower parts of the staircase. but not rock bottom. 

this together could have of course formed the guy early on. and it needs always a lot of margin.

first immigrant parents often have a stronger wish to give their children opportunities they can not have reached themselves, education is usually very much supported, they already know only hard working is not enough to get up the stairs of society and get a life that is a bit easier, that has opportunities that result in more income and a better chance to not only struggle in only the needs of life, but also some fun and excitement. have nothing and be happy is only so far.

the brother got in sales, a sister became a teacher, the other one a nurse, and the youngest got his feet into university and became even a medical doctor. the efforts of the parents can only be seen as realized beyond their expectations. all respectable jobs and even the cherry on the cake. 

the youngest puppy in a family has often a much easier upbringing, parents already learned the drill, the law of the homes got already more stretched in meaning. and there are 3 others if puppy want to point a finger as a way out. i am flawed a bit, i am the oldest in the generation and at home, and even some years in our street. but my younger siblings had it a lot easier. rules i had to respect, had been lost in time when they got the age they would have felt restrictions from it. the youngest looks to be the forever puppy. and they have the awful habit of learning quickly how parents and other adults are best manipulated. being a child is always more egoistic as being an adult. and the younger ones have just more years to observe what does work and what does not. 
and my own history is not restricted to just living in one family, it even has very little in common with the so called traditional family at all. that different place of the youngest and certainly when there are more years in between is always been very different in my experience. the position of being the oldest is one that never really can change, the younger ones have the chance to escape the position. 

so i could take from that, that being the youngest gerry also could take far more freedom of will in his growing up.

glasgow was in the second half of the eighties, when i was there myself,  still a very grey area, with still a lot of true poverty. most did a lot with some colourful flowers in a very small strip at the front of a small house, but the net curtains did show their age, and yes i am curious by nature, when you could look in, there was very little in most houses. lots of apartment buildings for social housings. clothing on balconies, not very new, and mostly of the kind of people who get dirty in their work. 

it was still of a bit better standard , as we had seen earlier in ireland, because there we have seen scenes i never expected to see in the eighties in real life. so even if glasgow was to be seen as a bit better, it was still very poor. spending time growing up in such conditions, results usually in making your own time wasting doings. children always will play with what is there. 

but if gerry grew up in that part i have seen, he must have had opportunity to become so called streetwise, adult always have ways to say, not in my backyard. even when youth does do nothing bad at all. so all you can do is seen as bad, and it is easy to just accept to make more use of bad things. even we, who grew up in far better circumstances found it nicer to be a nuisance to grumpy adults. we also had our kind of gangs, we had no weapons besides some pocket knifes, but we had paper, pvc pipes and pea's or snowberries, and elder berries to do some havoc. most of the time we did very little harm, but looking back, we did seek adventures, little wars and we were not afraid of a good bit of knocking some heads. 

so yes we got very good in hiding, running away, climbing on objects to stay out of sight, or mostly out of arms reach of someone who was stronger or just adult. finding nooks and crannies to keep things. i even think it made pretty good, but even more easy little liars out of us. 
our local police officer was not a nice man, even when i met him much later in an official meeting, i could not 
fully keep a smile of my face, he was still his much older grumpy self, but by then, i was the one with the higher rank. the idea i could have just say, and now you are going to do what i tell you to do, and nothing else, felt great, great enough i did not used it. he always say that, but i think i never heard the full sentence out, i was long gone. 

we never started a wat with the children of our moor poorer area's of our town, they always been much better, in all sneaky stuff. 

well it served me a heritage i made very much use of in my later life, i still can set up my virtual eyes of that time if there is a situation, just to see possibilities. 
so yes i can see a gerry mccann who also could have gotten much of the same kind of experiences. and it is the kind of experience you cannot unlearn. 

so for me it becomes a very possible yes, that gerry could have been a person that has the experience in life to play out some good old trickery, not any longer just for the fun, but when such an action becomes very important. 

also there are a lot of snippets and after 2007 very prominent moments to tell the guy is active in sports, all with a component that has a competition element. most even an individual competition. 

verdi's question about, if gerry is a guy that guy that would fight for things he feels important, is a difficult one to answer with only a yes or no.

do i think gerry mccann is a guy that can use his own legacy of life experiences to fight to win, to keep something that is important to him, i think certainly he can have had that experiences to actually even do it. 

it is different to just start a fight, it is the why he would choose the fight, and if he can have the capabilities to win such a chosen fight. and yes he had a lot to loose, he was already up, writing his name into medical history, on his own merit. he did.

and my impression of him in all his communications done in public and in official statements have a strange controverse, he shows arrogance and playing the humble card at the same time. often in the same sentences. and most people that get their arrogance from professional status would not leave that behind in other official or other important moments, like the interviews are for them. all these interviews are their sales points. it is mostly advertisement, to try us think, they are an honest pair of human beings. we know that because at each end we realize it is never about their own daughter madeleine. never to her, nothing from her, only them.

and seeing that up and down over and over between true arrogance and childish reactions, that is not how people handle that usually. i know a lot of people who start out with an arrogant approach, and forget to keep it up after usually sentence 3. by gerry it is to often to not see it as deliberate. normally people do it as soon as they feel comfortable and lower their gards, but gerry uses it over and over, sentence after sentence, it starts as the professional he really is, and ends with the child, i did not do that. it is not my fault it happened.

falling back to his accent happens when he is more in his comfort, or when he gets mad or emotional and that is most times just the same together, that is very normal too. 

but that going from sheer arrogance to humble child and over and over is just manipulation. it does not help he treats it on as a competition.

and there is no need for competition, because 99% of their public already had vote their sympathy card to their daughter madeleine. the mccanns and the others who had a task as parents already blew that to pieces, they can never repair that, and trying to repair it, by telling over and over it was not a real mistake, even try to talk it into normal cultural behaviour, does not make it go away. and do not give an answer to what happened out there and the results it had to the life of their own daughter, who was the only victim of it all.
the other children had just a lucky escape, not their parents, they had been even stupid as the mccanns. 

and if it happened differently, why was there no moment in the forgone well over 16 years since, to get the true story out? they can make the opportunity. they do not have to wait at all for one.