Winston joined
Hammersmith Hospital in the capacity of
registrar in 1970 as a
Wellcome Research Fellow. He became an associate professor at the
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1975. Between 1975 and 1977, he was a scientific advisor to the
World Health Organization's programme in human reproduction, after which he joined the
Royal Postgraduate Medical School (based at Hammersmith Hospital) as a consultant and
reader in 1977. After conducting research as a professor of
gynaecology at the
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in 1980, he returned to the UK to run the
IVF service set up at Hammersmith Hospital, which pioneered various improvements in this technology, becoming Dean of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology until its merger with
Imperial College in 1997. He was the director of NHS Research and Development at the Hammersmith Hospitals Trust until 1994. As a professor of fertility studies at Hammersmith, Winston led the IVF team that pioneered pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to identify defects in human embryos and published early work on gene expression in human embryos. He developed tubal microsurgery and various techniques in reproductive surgery, including sterilisation reversal. He performed the world's first
fallopian tubal transplant in 1979, a technology that was later superseded by
in vitro fertilisation. Together with Alan Handyside in 1990, his research group pioneered the techniques of pre-implantation diagnosis, enabling screening of human embryos to prevent numerous genetic diseases. Winston was the president of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science from 2004 to 2005. Together with Carol Readhead of the
California Institute of Technology, he researched male germ cell stem cells and methods for their genetic modification at the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology, Imperial College London. He has published over 300 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Winston was appointed to a new chair at Imperial College—Professor of Science and Society—and is also emeritus professor of fertility studies there. He was chairman of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Trust and chairs the Women-for-Women Appeal. This charitable trust, which has raised over £80 million for research into reproductive diseases, was renamed the Genesis Research Trust in 1997. From 2001 to 2018, he was chancellor of
Sheffield Hallam University. Winston is a fellow of the
Academy of Medical Sciences, an
honorary fellow of the
Royal Academy of Engineering, is a trustee of the UK Stem Cell Foundation, and a patron of
the Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Opinions Fertility treatment Winston holds strong views about the commercialisation of
fertility treatment. He believes that ineffective treatments result in great anguish to couples and is alarmed that so many treatments for the symptom of infertility are carried out before proper investigation and diagnosis have been made. He is also sceptical about the effectiveness of current methods for screening human embryos to assess their viability.
Science as truth Winston has said, "I think there has to be a clear understanding that science is not the truth. It's a version of the truth." ==Media career==