Sir Cyril Clarke and Rhesus babies


Sir Cyril Clarke, was actually a surgeon who was interested in butterflies as a hobby.  He was great friends with Philip Sheppard, an important post-war evolutionary geneticist.  Sir Cyril invented the technique still used to treat "blue babies", a hereditary immune disease suffered by Rhesus-positive blood-group babies born to Rhesus-negative mothers. He always claimed that butterfly genetics, particularly the discovery of supergenes (in mimicry and in the Rhesus complex) led to his ideas on Rhesus disease treatment. So maybe butterfly genetics is not so useless after all!


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