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David Frederick Horrobin (6 October 1939 - 1 April 2003) was a medical researcher, entrepreneur, author and editor. He was a contributor to the field of essential fatty acids and an advocate of the benefits of fish oils and Evening Primrose Oil [1]. His research helped to elucidate the physiology and biochemistry of the omega-3 and omega-6 EFAs [2]
Biography
Horrobin was a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, and during this time was influenced by the nutritionist Hugh Macdonald Sinclair. He taught for several years at Magdalen College, Oxford prior to his appointment as Professor and chairman of medical physiology at Nairobi University in 1969. Appointed as a reader in medical physiology at University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1972 and in 1975 became Professor of medicine at the Université de Montréal.
In 1977 he left Montreal to establish Efamol Research Inc. in Canada and, two years later, Efamol Ltd. (jointly with Agricultural Holdings) in the UK to commercially exploit his research ideas, the two companies being merged to form Efamol Holdings Ltd in 1985. Their success in the sale of evening primrose oil as a nutritional supplement allowed Horrobin to establish the Efamol Research Institute in Nova Scotia in 1981 with the aim of developing pharmaceutical products based on EFAs, primarily gamma-Linolenic acid. Efamol Ltd was renamed as Scotia Pharmaceuticals Ltd in 1987, the Efamol name thereafter being reserved solely for the sale of nutritional products. Under the name Scotia Holdings plc. (SOH), it was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1993.[3] Scotia spent heavily on research, being ranked 79th among all UK companies in that year, and it reached a peak market capitalisation of about Ł600m in 1996.[4]
Horrobin left Scotia in 1997 and he set up Laxdale Ltd, established to examine the use of omega-3 essential fatty acids in treating schizophrenia and neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's disease. [5] The company was sold after his death to the Amarin Corporation and is now known as Amarin Neuroscience Ltd.[6]
Horrobin founded the journals 'Medical Hypotheses' and 'Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids' presently a leading journal in the phospholipid world.[7] He was medical adviser to (and later president of) the Schizophrenia Society of Great Britain from 1970 until his death[8] and served on the board of the International Schizophrenia Foundation from 1998-2003.[9]
Horrobin published more than 800 papers [2], was the named inventor on 114 patents, was an ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) highly cited scientist[10], and wrote or edited over twenty books. In 2002 his book, The Madness of Adam and Eve, outlining a theory of the coevolution of schizophrenia and modern humans, was runner-up in the Aventis Prize (now the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books)[11] for the best science book, behind Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell. The ideas presented in this book formed a primary inspiration for Sebastian Faulks' novel Human Traces, published 2005, and Dr. Horrobin is acknowledged in the text.
Horrobin was a longtime critic of the anonymous peer review system[12][13], and the waste of resources resulting from animal models which poorly represented human disease states. [14] He was, in the main, however, a defender of medical science, in one example penning a critique, 'Medical Hubris'[15], of Ivan Illich's famous attack on the medical establishment, 'Medical Nemesis'.
His support for Evening Primrose Oil (EPO) as a virtual panacea verged occasionally on the extreme, and led him to make claims which, with the benefit of hindsight, to some have appeared unbalanced[citation needed]. However, some modern research appears to be softening this impression[16][17].
In 2001 he was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma of which he died in 2003. A number of obituaries were published, both in medical journals[18][19] and in the press[20][8]. A negative obituary in the British Medical Journal[21], provoked considerable controversy[22] and an unprecedented and mostly critical response from readers.[23] After a ruling by the British Press Complaints Commission, the British Medical Journal published an apology to Horrobin's family.[24]
In June 2004 the scientific publisher Elsevier, having acquired Medical Hypotheses created an annual David Horrobin Prize, in his honour[25], to reward outstanding contributions to medical theory. He was posthumously awarded the Stephen S. Chang Award by the American Oil Chemists Society in 2003[26], inducted into the Canadian Health Food Association Hall of Fame [27], and his name was added to the Orthomolecular medicine Hall of Fame in 2005.[9]
Selected bibliography
- Horrobin, David F. (1964). The Communication Systems of the Body. New York: Basic Books, 214. ISBN 0465012876.
- Horrobin, David F. (1970). Principles of biological control. Aylesbury: Medical and Technical Pub. Co., Ltd, 70. ISBN 0852000022.
- Horrobin, David F. (1971). Essential Biochemistry, Endocrinology and Nutrition. New York: Medical and Technical Publishing Co. Ltd, 118.
- Horrobin, David F. (1972). A Guide to Kenya and Northern Tanzania. Scribner. ISBN 068412629X.
- Horrobin, David F. (1977). Medical Hubris: A reply to Ivan Illich. Montreal: Lunesdale House, 146. ISBN 0888310862.
- Horrobin, David F. (1990). Omega-6 essential fatty acids: pathophysiology and roles in clinical medicine. New York: Wiley-Liss. ISBN 0471566934.
- Horrobin, David F. (1992). Treatment of diabetic neuropathy: a new approach. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone. ISBN 044304774X.
- Horrobin, David F. (2001). The madness of Adam & Eve: how schizophrenia shaped humanity. London: Bantam. ISBN 0593046498.
References
External links
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