On March 7, 1946, Sue Clarke was born in a cottage hospital in Louth, across the border in Lincolnshire, where her father worked as a civil servant. She has no idea what time she was born, or what labour was like for her mother. No-one ever told her. She weighed exactly 7lbs. "I know that much," she says, "but very little else."
Her mum took her home from the hospital to live with her folks, in a nice little house in a Lincolnshire village. Three weeks after Sue was born, her grandfather died.
It is the only part of her life story she knows relatively little about. The rest has been studied and scrutinised for 65 years, a part of the longest-running human research programme in the world.
Sue – now Sue Whiting, of Oadby – continues to play her part in it. At the age of 65, she is one of the Douglas Children.
There were 16,695 babies born in England, Scotland and Wales in the first week of March, 1946.
Growing concerns about poverty, poor health and the falling birth rate led the newly-elected Labour Government to launch a huge survey of maternity services across the UK.
The survey, led by London-based physician James Douglas, managed to reach 13,687 of those new mothers. Their children became the Douglas Children. Sue's mum was one of them.
Early findings were worrying. They discovered that children from working-class homes were twice as likely to die before their first birthday than those from middle-class backgrounds.
The study – the National Survey of Health and Development, run by the Medical Research Council – also found that low birth weight was far more prevalent in poorer families and was linked to an array of ailments.
The survey rang alarm bells across Whitehall. The Government needed to act.
Sweeping changes were introduced. A huge team of nationwide health visitors was appointed to reduce infant deaths and improve children's health.
Hospital midwives were given the freedom to administer anaesthetics during birth, to reduce both infant mortality and the high number of women who died in childbirth.
Both of these vital changes continue to this day.
What was supposed to be a one-off study – a snapshot of maternity services – was deemed to be so important that it was continued.
Douglas and his team picked about 5,000 of the 13,687 children and followed them through school, calling them out of their lessons every year to be tested, weighed and measured, scanned and quizzed.
Sue and 5,000 other kids – all born in that first week of March, 1946 – became the most studied people on the planet.
She enjoyed it. She knew she was part of something important, she just didn't know what.
"I just knew that I seemed to have twice as many medicals and tests as everyone else," she says. "I got time off from school, which was nice, and I felt like one of the chosen ones."
Aged 13, Sue moved to Western Park, Leicester. By now, the questions started to change; moving away from health and on to education and attainment.
Researchers found a correlation between social class and educational attainment, that middle class children tended to do better at school and were pushed harder by parents to achieve.
Sue didn't quite slot into that bracket. She stayed on for one term in the sixth form and then left, to begin a routine office job in Leicester. It's a decision that still rankles.
"If I'd have a been a boy, it would have been different," she says.
But her parents, middle class civil servants, didn't see the need for a girl – a future mother and home-maker – to be well-educated.
She took an office job in a yarn merchant's office, then moved to the Inland Revenue, where she met her husband John.
They married in 1967, moved from Leicester to Bradford to Newark and then back again and had four children, two boys and two girls.
As Sue aged, maturing from schoolgirl to married woman and then mother, the questions changed again; returning to the themes of health and lifestyle and how her early years had affected her later years.
What was supposed to be a survey of maternity services 65 years ago now enters its most important stage – to understand how a lifetime of opportunities might have hastened or slowed their decline.
Having all celebrated their 65th birthday – they had a grand party in Westminster last month – the study group find themselves more scientifically valuable than ever, says Dr Marcus Richards, programme leader for the survey.
Many of our life chances, he says, are rooted in our early experiences and the kind of emotional and educational support we received from our parents.
"We found that the health inequalities our survey group experienced as children helped to shape them as adults," says Dr Richards.
"Life today is far more prosperous for many of the intake – but we can link the early circumstances and health inequalities they experienced as children to their later lives."
They have unearthed some surprising results. Children with a lower than average birth weight, for example, had a far higher prevalence of high blood pressure. They also had a much greater risk of developing heart disease. Big baby girls, they found, were far more likely to get breast cancer.
As the women in the study reached their 50s, more trends emerged: girls who performed well in their 11-plus tended to reach menopause several years later than those who performed poorly. Female smokers entered menopause earlier than non-smokers.
Girls who were breast fed were generally more intelligent and also experienced a later menopause than non-breast fed counterparts.
"We want to use these findings so that future generations can choose which messages they need to pay attention to," says Dr Richards, "and where we can encourage younger people to take preventative action before problems arise."
The study is set to continue as the Douglas Children become pensioners. One in 10 has reported a heart problem. The number with diabetes had doubled in the last 10 years. About 13 per cent of the 5,000 sample has died.
For an aging nation, the next few years in the lifespan of the project is perhaps the most important stage of all. It will help predict the likely costs of health and social care as Britain's baby boomers grow old.
For Sue, the lifelong process has been fascinating. It's been a privilege to play a small part, she says, even if her data seems to fly in the face of some of the findings.
"I was from a middle class family, but my parents – although they did well - didn't really push me that hard at school," she says.
"The next few years – as we grow older and many of us die – will be very useful. I don't feel afraid of that. Death is the one thing we all face. I hope my final years will be of some use."
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