The passing last Fall of Cyril Clarke brought back memories of pleasant and productive interchanges between Liverpool and the Johns Hopkins Hospital over a 20 year period or more beginning in 1957. Cyril was a central figure in those transatlantic collaborations in training and clinical research.

Medical genetics was institutionalised at Johns Hopkins on 1 July 1957, when the multifaceted chronic disease clinic created by Dr J Earle Moore became the base for a medical genetics programme, the Division of Medical Genetics. The Moore Clinic very quickly became synonymous with medical genetics at Johns Hopkins. Although the Medical Genetics Division was a section of the Department of Medicine, its purview encompassed all ages and all specialties, with clinical care, research, and teaching, as in other …