Lee Wei Ling: A prominent neurologist who didn't shy away from speaking out

SINGAPORE: Dr Lee Wei Ling, who died on Wednesday (Oct 9), was a prominent neurologist who was unafraid to voice her opinions on various issues.

Her columns, which for a time appeared regularly in The Sunday Times, contained many of her candid reflections – on her patients, family and Singapore society at large. She also posted frequently on social media.

Dr Lee was born on Jan 7, 1955 - the second child of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and lawyer Kwa Geok Choo.

Despite her family’s prominence, Dr Lee often described her upbringing as “frugal”.

“I was born into a middle class family with sensible parents that did not want their children brought up as rich and privileged,” she wrote in a 2020 Facebook post.

“My father was Prime Minister of Singapore and we could have stayed in a huge bungalow in the Istana grounds. But he did not want us growing up with the wrong idea of our importance and entitlement. He did not like the idea that if we threw a ball, a butler would run to get it. So we lived in our old pre-war home at Oxley Road.”

38 Oxley Road was the family home of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who died in 2015. Dr Lee continued living there after her brothers, Mr Lee Hsien Loong and Mr Lee Hsien Yang, moved out.  

In 2020, Dr Lee revealed that she had progressive supranuclear palsy. She described the brain disease as a "Parkinson’s-like illness that slows physical movements, impairs fast eye movements and balance", eventually resulting in death.

Her death at the age of 69 was announced by her brother, Mr Lee Hsien Yang, in a Facebook post shortly before 6am on Wednesday.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Dr Lee attended Nanyang Primary School, Nanyang Girls High and Raffles Institution.

She became a President’s Scholar in 1973 and read medicine at the then-University of Singapore (now known as the National University of Singapore), graduating at the top of her class.

Apart from her academic success, Dr Lee had a keen interest in physical fitness and exercise, particularly long-distance running and swimming. She also attained a black belt in karate in 1970, at the age of 15, making her one of the youngest in Singapore to do so. 

In a 2015 column for The Straits Times, Dr Lee described herself as having an “obsessive compulsive” addiction to exercising.

“Exercise has been my anti-depressant as well as my tranquilliser,” she wrote.

She was also a dog-lover and once admitted preferring canines over having children of her own.

Dogs “make better friends than humans because they never put up a false front”, she wrote in a 2019 Facebook post.

MEDICAL CAREER

Dr Lee was a paediatric neurologist, specialising in epilepsy, and was director of the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI).

“I chose to specialise in paediatrics because I had initially wanted to do veterinary medicine but was dissuaded by my parents,” she wrote on Facebook in 2020.

In 2003, Dr Lee became embroiled in a medical ethics scandal at the NNI, which saw her resign from a project researching Parkinson’s disease and other conditions. According to a TODAY report in 2003, Dr Lee quit after she got upset with the ethical aspects of how the research was being conducted.

Then-NNI director Simon Shorvon was sacked after being found guilty of recruiting patients and altering their medications without their consent or the knowledge of their neurologists.

Dr Lee succeeded Professor Shorvon at the helm of NNI in 2004, a position which she held until 2014.

Penning a tribute on Facebook, Dr Lee’s brother, Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, wrote: “She brought to medicine the same intensity and commitment she did to everything, and developed close bonds with her patients, many of whom she treated over many years.”

“She was also the doctor in the family, whom we would always consult when a medical problem arose, big or small,” Mr Lee wrote.

“When I had lymphoma, she took a close interest in my treatment and progress. One day at our weekly family lunch at Oxley Road, one of her nephews came with a tummy ache. She did a quick examination, suspected appendicitis, and sent him to be properly examined. She turned out to be right.”

OXLEY ROAD SAGA

Dr Lee was known for her willingness to speak out on issues involving her own family. She was involved in a public dispute with her brothers over the fate of their family home at Oxley Road.

Dr Lee and Mr Lee Hsien Yang alleged they felt threatened in trying to fulfil their late father’s wish to demolish the house. They also accused Mr Lee Hsien Loong of abusing his influence in government to drive his personal agenda.

Mr Lee Hsien Loong denied their allegations. He had recused himself from all government matters relating to the house since April 2015, to avoid any conflict of interest.

DIAGNOSIS AND DECLINE

Dr Lee, who often expressed a stoic attitude towards life in her writings, adopted a similar tone when she announced her condition in 2020.

“My immediate reaction to the news was “忍”(ren), or endure in Chinese, of which the traditional character has a knife above a heart. I have been practicing “忍” since I was in Chinese school, recognising that life has many unpleasant, unavoidable situations,” she wrote in a Facebook post.

She also shared about how her condition affected her movements, which “are slow and hesitant” and how she had difficulty “getting up from my futon”.

Her final Facebook post was on Sep 3, 2020, where she recounted her experience getting lost in Fort Canning Park and fracturing her right femur.

Prior to her diagnosis, Dr Lee mulled over ageing and her own declining physical strength and endurance in a 2015 column in The Straits Times.

She wrote: “I have stared old age in the face and, finally, accepted the inevitability of physical decline, which will continue until I die ... But I will only accept the decline as inevitable when it is obvious that, however hard I try, I cannot retain my younger physical and mental state.

“I am exceptionally determined (or stubborn), and I don't give up easily. So, I see a long battle ahead.”