David Horrobin

David Frederick Horrobin (6 October 1939 – 1 April 2003) was a British-Canadian entrepreneur, medical researcher, author and editor. He is best known as the founder of the biotechnology company Scotia Holdings and as a promoter of evening primrose oil as a medical treatment, Horrobin was founder and editor of the journals Medical Hypotheses and Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, the latter journal (initially titled Prostaglandins and Medicine) co-founded with his then graduate student Morris Karmazyn.

Horrobin believed that many diseases involve a lack of fatty acid precursors and might be alleviated by supplementing with the appropriate fatty acid. Horrobin's efforts focused on evening primrose oil, which contains gamma-linolenic acid. In the 1980s, Horrobin sold primrose oil in the United States without legally demonstrating its safety and efficacy, Amidst charges of mismanagement and research fraud, Horrobin was ousted as CEO by a unanimous vote of the board and left the company in 1998. In 2001, Scotia, one of the first publicly traded biotechnology companies in the United Kingdom, After Horrobin's departure from Scotia, he founded Laxdale Ltd., a company that investigated omega-3 fatty acids as possible treatments for schizophrenia and neurodegenerative diseases.

Horrobin died of pneumonia as a complication of mantle cell lymphoma in 2003. Obituaries noted his contributions to the biotechnology industry, intellectual acumen, original thinking and adventurousness, while some criticised his promotion of primrose oil and other questionable claims. Notably controversial obituaries in The Independent Horrobin left academia and in 1977 established a company called Efamol to sell evening primrose oil (EPO) as a proposed treatment for various ailments. For example, Horrobin considered EPO to be a treatment for eczema "after trying it on the son of a librarian from his college". As a major shareholder of Scotia, Horrobin rose to number 212 in 1996 on the list of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom. The FDA advised Efamol not to ship EPO to the United States without obtaining approval. Horrobin agreed, but began making shipments. Horrobin conspired with General Nutrition, Inc. to process Efamol into capsules in California; it would then be sold to General Nutrition and relabeled for resale under a different brand name. According to an FDA investigation, Horrobin suggested marketing strategies to circumvent the laws, including coaching retail representatives on making oral claims to customers, "planting articles on their research in the media, deploying researchers to make claims on their behalf, using radio phone-ins" and other tactics. Horrobin wrote to General Nutrition, "Obviously you could not advertise Efamol for these purposes but equally obviously there are ways of getting the information across". Research published after Horrobin's death indicates that fatty acids are no more effective than a placebo against eczema; Scotia's medicines licences for evening primrose oil drugs was withdrawn. In early 1995, Horrobin said that he hoped to receive approval in the "next 18 months to sell one or both" of two of these drugs. In 1997, Horrobin stated, "Scotia will be cash-positive by 2000".

However, the initial successes of Scotia on the stock markets and Horrobin's reassurances were undermined by what investors perceived as long-standing and systemic problems at the company, and they saw their fears confirmed with the rejection in March 1997 of regulatory approval for Scotia's drug Tarabetic. Also known as Efamol, the product contained evening primrose oil and was intended to treat diabetic peripheral neuropathy. her highest qualification was a BA in English and women's studies. When it was found that borage contained a higher percentage of gamma-linolenic acid than did the evening primrose, rival companies had begun to take market share of the supplement. In 1996, The Independent described Scotia's supplement business as "struggling". Horrobin responded to the borage competition by accusing his rivals of "duping women, selling pigs in pokes and marketing 'unstable and potentially toxic products'."

Findings of fraud associated with Scotia trials also weighed on Horrobin's company. Goran Jamal, a doctor who had participated in developing Efamol, was found guilty of research fraud by the General Medical Council in 2003. The Council ruled that Jamal had committed "serious professional misconduct for falsifying his results", manipulating the supposed randomisation of the clinical trial conducted over a decade earlier. Scotia was faulted by industry observers for what was called a "highly unusual" compensation scheme, as it had offered the doctor a portion of profits from future sales,

Horrobin's ousting from Scotia Horrobin was ousted as chief executive of Scotia by a unanimous vote of the board and was replaced on 1 January 1998 by Robert Dow, whom Horrobin had hired several months earlier to help with the company's business plan and investor relations. Horrobin remained until May 1998 as a non-executive director. When he tried to stage a "boardroom coup" to return himself to the executive position, the other directors refused to support him, and Horrobin resigned. As the company's value fell from about £600 m to £16 m, Scotia went into administration in 2001.

Laxdale Ltd Following his departure from Scotia, Horrobin set up a new company, Laxdale Ltd, to examine the use of omega-3 essential fatty acids in treating schizophrenia and neurodegenerative diseases. The company was sold after his death to the Amarin Corporation and is now known as Amarin Neuroscience Ltd.

Research, publications and editorships

Horrobin was a prolific writer of academic and popular works. He was also the founder/co-founder and editor of two journals, and, with his brother Peter, the co-founder of MTP Press. Peter Horrobin later founded a religious cult, Ellel Ministries.

Scientific publications

Horrobin was an author on over 800 publications, including about 500 scientific papers, many of which appeared in journals he edited. Horrobin also wrote on other scientific issues. He considered research with animal models of human disease to be a waste of resources, and believed that large-scale clinical trials were unnecessary and unethical. However, in at least one case, he defended modern medicine by writing a critique of Ivan Illich's famous attack on the medical establishment, Medical Nemesis.

Journal editor

Horrobin was a longtime critic of the anonymous peer review system, which, he believed, stifled creativity and innovation in science. Horrobin founded and edited the non-peer reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses to provide an outlet for unorthodox ideas and research that would not be evaluated by other scientists before publication. Horrobin envisioned the journal as a resort for thinkers who were "very good at generating ideas, but are complete klutzes in the field" and committed to publishing ideas based only on whether he or other reviewers considered them "interesting and reasonable".

Horrobin also co-founded the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids. Horrobin suggested that the "genes for schizophrenia are responsible for most of the religious sense, most of the technical and artistic creativity and most of the leadership qualities of modern human beings". The Madness of Adam and Eve was one of six books shortlisted for the 2002 Aventis Prize (now the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books; the prize was won that year by Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell). Reviews of the book were mixed, writing of a "useful contribution" that was also "highly partisan and selective"; Horrobin was somewhat critical of his theory, describing it as a "just-so story perhaps fed by my own personal delusions". The book was compared unfavorably to similar works by Kay Redfield Jamison, who examines a possible link between bipolar disorder and artistic creativity.

Death and obituary controversy

In 2001, Horrobin was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma. He died of pneumonia as a complication of this cancer in 2003. Horrobin was survived by his wife, Sherri Clarkson, and two children from a previous marriage. and Horrobin's Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, and in the popular press. Most obituaries referred to Horrobin as a highly intelligent, creative and persuasive individual. According to The Telegraph, Horrobin was "a founding father of the biotechnology industry and regarded by some as one of Britain's finest original thinkers in medicine", but the same obituary also noted that Horrobin's implication of fatty acid metabolism in schizophrenia was not accepted by other scientists; that his approach was "unorthodox" and unpopular; and that his major business venture failed. The obituary described Horrobin as "effortlessly prolific" and "one of the most persuasive people on earth", but also criticised him as excessively promoting evening primrose oil despite a lack of scientific evidence, noting that some critics questioned his ethics. It suggested that Horrobin "may prove to be the greatest snake oil salesman of his age", stating that his evening primrose oil would "go down in history as the remedy for which there is no disease" and reporting that several of Scotia's product licences were later withdrawn because the drugs were ineffective. The obituary generated the largest e-mail response to an obituary in the history of the BMJ. On behalf of Horrobin's family, Horrobin's son-in-law, Adam Kelliher, filed a complaint with the British Press Complaints Commission, alleging that the BMJ obituary was "inaccurate" and "intrusive at a time of grief" in violation of the Code of Practice. Kelliher was founder and at the time chief executive of Equazen, a company marketing fish and evening primrose oils including a formulation called eye q, said to improve scholastic ability in children. However, in his initial complaint to the BMJ Kelliher stated that he had no competing interests. In reaction, the BMJ published an apology to Horrobin's family expressing regret for any distress caused. The journal corrected what its editor considered several insignificant Kelliher did not accept the BMJ apology as genuine and maintained that inaccuracies and "unjustified slander" remained, but the Press Complaints Commission declined to take any action against the journal, stating that the BMJ had offered "sufficient remedial action". According to the commission, the journal was not obliged to omit negative information, including the journal's contention "that Dr Horrobin was 'in some ways a charlatan'". He was posthumously awarded the Stephen S. Chang Award by the American Oil Chemists' Society in 2003.

Selected bibliography

A more extensive bibliography is available on the Institute for Scientific Information website.