Founder of Scotia Pharmaceuticals and the journal Medical Hypotheses, and passionate promoter of evening primrose oil
The General Medical Council recently found Dr Goran Jamal guilty of research fraud (BMJ 2003;326:730). Twelve years ago he had falsified clinical trials of the drug Tarabetic, also known as Efamol, for a now-defunct company called Scotia. He had been promised a 0.5% royalty on sales, which was described as “highly unusual.” This may throw a light on Scotia's way of working, for in its 10 year existence it obtained medicinal licences for only three products: Efamast for benign breast pain, Efalith for seborrhoeic dermatitis, and Epogam for atopic eczema. The licences were later withdrawn because the stuff didn't work. The products contained evening primrose oil, which may go down in history as the remedy for which there is no disease, and David Horrobin, Scotia's former chief executive, may prove to be the greatest snake oil salesman of his age.
Horrobin went to Balliol College, Oxford, on two scholarships to read medicine and did his clinical studies at St Mary's Hospital in London, teaching and researching there at the same time.
In 1969 he was appointed professor and chairman of medical physiology at Nairobi University, Kenya, and at the same time founded, with his brother Peter, a medical and technical publishing house, MTP Press, in Aylesbury. The company moved to Lancaster because it was a depressed area and set-up funding was available for new businesses.
A new publishing company needs books and newly written books need a publisher, and Horrobin contributed several quickly written but perfectly competent titles: Science is God (1969), Principles of Biological Control (1970), A Guide to Kenya and Northern Tanzania (1971), and The International Handbook of Medical Science (1972), followed later by Practical Physiology (1979). I worked for MTP as an editor and can vouch for Horrobin's charm, intelligence, and straightforwardness.
In 1972 he was appointed reader in medical physiology at Newcastle, and in 1975 became professor of medicine at Montreal University.
While at Oxford he became close to the nutritionist Hugh Sinclair, who felt that dietary essential fatty acids had a major role to play in health and disease. When prostaglandins became the focus of widespread research interest, Horrobin realised that they were synthesised from an essential fatty acid, gamma linoleic acid (GLA). The wild flower evening primrose had seeds with high levels of GLA and an attractive name and appearance. Fleabane or hairy bittercress would scarcely have had the same appeal. 
In 1979 he left academic life in Montreal to set up the Efamol Research Institute in Nova Scotia, another depressed area where start-up funds were available for new businesses. The institute's purpose was to explore the medicinal uses of evening primrose oil and market it, but Horrobin soon learnt that selling it over the counter was barely profitable as there was competition from other manufacturers. In 1987 the institute was turned into Scotia Pharmaceuticals, based in Canada, Scotland, and Surrey. Horrobin persuaded Sir James Black, the Nobel prize winning master of drug design, to address the company's press launch.
Horrobin made himself controversial at Scotia by installing his wife Sherri, who had no scientific background, as research manager. In 1997, shortly before Scotia collapsed, he was ousted in a boardroom coup, and set up a “boutique” company called Laxdale Ltd in another depressed area, the Isle of Lewis. Here he was lining up essential fatty acids for use in schizophrenia and neurodegenerative diseases, and clinical trials were under way. In 2001 he developed a mantle cell lymphoma, from which he died.
In February this year he published a personal paper in the Lancet, “Are large clinical trials in rapidly lethal diseases usually unethical?”(Lancet 2003;361:695-7). Typically, much of the argument and many of the “facts” were debatable or wrong. He often wrote about ethics, but his—or his company's—research ethics were considered dubious.
In 1987 in a BMJ article (BMJ 1987;295:1600-1) I dismissed evening primrose oil as a “panacea.” Horrobin, who didn't remember me from years earlier, sought me out and persuaded me of the error of my ways over dinner. He was one of the most persuasive people on earth, and had thousands of friends and followers. He also had enemies, who describe him as a “rotter,” unethical, and given to escaping his responsibilities. He was effortlessly prolific, handsome and charming, and well read. He was a genius at getting grants, raising money, and generating publicity. He wrote or edited over a dozen books, including The Complete Catalogue of British Cars. His most recent book, The Madness of Adam and Eve: Did Schizophrenia Shape Humanity? (Bantam Press, 2001), written after he set up Laxdale to market essential fatty acids, argued the case for these fatty acids in schizophrenia. He founded and edited two journals, Medical Hypotheses and Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids. He published 800 papers, many, it must be said, in his own journals. Few of them had enormous impact.
He married an Iraqi princess, Nefisa, while at Oxford, who took the superb photographs in his East Africa guide book. They divorced and he married Sherri Clarkson. He leaves Sherri and two children.
David Frederick Horrobin, former chief executive, Scotia Holdings plc, and editor Medical Hypotheses (b Bolton 1939; q Oxford 1968; DPhil), died 1 April 2003.