BACK STORY

As a medical student at what was then Odense University (now the University of Southern Denmark) my main interest was haematology and I did pursue this in the laboratory as a medical student. Spent the academic year 1986/87 at the University of St Andrews on the BSc Hons Experimental Pathology course and wrote a thesis on cytarabin and retinoic acid for promyelocytic leukaemia based on cell studies.

After qualifying as a medical doctor in Denmark in 1990, I got involved with osteoporosis research but kept my focus and interest in the bone marrow. My PhD work was on cytokines and bone loss in postmenopausal osteoporosis and I did part of the laboratory work at UMASS Medical Center in Worcester, MA, with Professor Sandy C Marks Jr.  After Danish registration as a specialist in General Internal Medicine (now abolished by the Danish health authorities and removed from the EEA system) and later in Endocrinology (still a specialisation), I developed an interest in fracture epidemiology and pharmacopepidemiology and this has more or less dominated my research activities in the past twenty years. I am involved in the key scientific societies and journals for bone research, having served on the Board of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research and the Board of the European Calcified Tissue Society where I became President in 2020. I have been Associate Editor of Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, which is the most impactful journal in the bone field.

I have flown Piper Warriors, Cessna 172s and the Evektor Sportstar as a student pilot and passed the EASA PPL theory but did not continue towards the PPL since life got increasingly busy and it was hard to block out the times for flying. There is also photography. Photography and flying involves many of the same compromises - trading height for speed or trading depth of field for shutter speed. Epidemiology is also about net results of several influences, not least in harm benefit considerations. Believe it or not, situational awareness is critical there too.