Dr. John Old is the director of the National Haemoglobinopathy
Reference Laboratory, which carries out molecular diagnosis of thalassaemias for
genotyping and prenatal diagnosis for UK patients. He has 30 years of research and
diagnostic experience in the thalassaemias and haemoglobinopathies, his main activities
being the characterisation of mutations and development of molecular methods for
screening and prenatal diagnosis. He has published many chapters on the methods
and protocols of thalassaemia diagnosis.