This Friday, the March of Dimes will be presenting a lifetime achievement award in genetics to Dr. Kenneth Lyons Jones, one of the two doctors who first identified Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Dr. Jones has done research on FAS not only in the United States, but also in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union, so he deserves a round of applause from this blog, too.

Dr. Jones is chief of the Division of Dysmorphology/Teratology in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. (Dysmorphology and teratology are both scientific terms for the study of congenital birth defects.)

In 1973, Dr. Jones and Dr. David W. Smith coined the term Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in an article in the British medical journal Lancet. The two were engaged in research supported by the March of Dimes on the diagnosis and treatment of birth defects, and found that alcohol was what scientists call a teratogen--something that causes birth defects. They used the FAS label to define the cluster of birth defects seen only in the babies of women who used alcohol during pregnancy. The work done by Drs. Jones and Smith is chronicled in a new book by Rutgers University history professor Janet Golden, Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Dr. Jones has done a lot of research, teaching, clinical work on teratogens in the United State. Nearly 30 years ago, he established the California Teratogen Information Service to provide information to pregnant women and their doctors about how drugs, chemicals and environmental agents might cause birth defects.

But he has also has worked to train Russian pediatricians to accurately diagnose FAS. He published a research paper last November showing that, after just a two-day training session, the Russian doctors were able to correctly use physical features to identify FAS. In 2005, he worked with researchers and neonatologists in Ukraine on identifying FAS with ultrasound technology.

You can learn more about Dr. Jones's work in a short video program on the university's television Web site.