Rodrigo Fierro

Rodrigo Fierro Benítez, born in 1930 in Ambato, is an Ecuadorian doctor, writer and politician. He served as Minister of Public Health of Ecuador under the government of Jaime Roldós Aguilera from 1979 to 1981, and in 1993 he received the Bolton S. Corson Medal. His medical research centered on the iodine deficiency disorders of the Andes: with John B. Stanbury, Andries Querido, Leslie DeGroot and colleagues he co-authored the paper Endemic Cretinism in the Andean Region of Ecuador in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, and with Stanbury and others he wrote The clinical pattern of cretinism as seen in highland Ecuador in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In 1993 he also published a book on Andean biopathology under the title Capítulos de la biopatología andina, subtitled los desórdenes por deficiencia de yodo, with the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar.