David Horrobin
BMJ 2003; 326 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.326.7394.885 (Published 19 April 2003) Cite this as: BMJ 2003;326:885
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Caroline,
For me that reply will simply not do.
I stand by my previous response. This obituary, that you still seem
to be justifying, has all the appearance of being written with malice,
packed with innuendo and being a clear attempt at a character
assassination. At some stage either you or the editor of the Independent
have been aware that the BMJ obituary was far too opinionated and absolute
for the Independent. Even though the insinuations and innuendo are still
there, it is much watered down. It is this absolute quality - we are to
believe without a shadow of a doubt that this man was malign although
superficially charming - that is disconcerting. The obituary could easily
have been written to put all your doubts about him in such a way that they
were seen as your opinion (which may prove wrong) and leaves the reader to
begin to question the character of this man. But your article was pure
propaganda. Would you like us to chant (five hundred times after you),
“this man was a rotter”?
If you have no appreciation that the way you have written this
obituary was likely to be offensive then you can have little insight.
Here, I will paraphrase you and say that to reach your maturity and have
little insight is “the true nature of tragedy”. Or you have insight but
it was simply malicious.
Even in your retort you peddle your innuendo. “I rest my case” – what
case? You haven’t defined it; you have simply implied there is something
unsavoury or inadequate here. Define and justify it please before you
repeat more of this innuendo. “Casts doubt on the quality of the original
data”. Do you not mean validity? This is more innuendo. “The company then
threatened to sue if the data were made public”. I note, in the
Independent that you get closer to implying that when David Horrobin took
you out for this meal to convince you of the error of your ways that this
threat of being sued was delivered then. That establishes a conflict of
interest not declared at any time to the BMJ. “There wasn’t room to
include details” but there was room (one fifth of the article) dedicated
to setting the scene by associating (with innuendo) David Horrobin with a
scandal perpetrated by another person.
You are a journalist; you should be very aware that subtle timings
and choices of words can leave ambiguous meanings. Each individual
innuendo might be excused as a slip of the pen but when we see such a
consistent pattern rising out of the noise, many people will, and have,
attribute(d) malice to the piece.
So what is the agenda? Open up please. To quote Robert Zurier “C'mon
Ms Richmond,'fess up. What is your case? Just what is your motivation for
- if not slander - overtly unbalanced,inaccurate,tabloid journalism?”
Lastly, these folk seem to think that you have other conflicts of
interest not declared to the BMJ.
http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Caroline_Richm ond_Deja_vu.htm
I ain’t listening to your words until I know your agenda.
Competing interests:
As before - he got me into print and I like a lot of what he wrote
Competing interests: No competing interests
Ms Richmond:
You rest your case? On those diseases you mention? You mean
Schizophrenia and the other awful conditions listed are not important?
C'mon Ms Richmond,'fess up. What is your case? Just what is your
motivation for - if not slander - overtly unbalanced,inaccurate,tabloid
journalism?
Do you know anything about how inspiring and helpful David was to so
many colleagues and young investigators? Do you know how their lives were
enriched by David's quiet kindness,enormous intellect,energy,and vision?
What do you know,Ms Richmond, and what does the BMJ editor know that
qualifies you to be the author of Dr Horrobin's Obituary?
Bob Zurier
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Ms Richmond writes: "I wrote the obituary without malice..."
My goodness! What kind of obituary would she write if she had
malice?
Competing interests:
Previously Seed Production Director at Scotia Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Upon hearing of the untimely death of Dr. David F. Horrobin via email
from Amanda Green I was saddened and then reading the Obituary by Caroline
Richmond (1) I was horrified.
I personally never met Dr. Horrobin, but feel I got to know him
through the journal Medical Hypotheses. Early in my career I published my
second journal article in Medical Hypotheses (2), my first was in Lancet,
and to my surprise I received hundreds of reprint requests. This
impressed me. Subsequently, I have gone on to publish over 100 articles,
including a few more in Medical Hypotheses.
I felt that Dr. Horrobin gave me, along with many others, an insight
to the scientific and medical world through Medical Hypotheses. This was
and remains a wonderful journal, especially for those that look into the
future and have dreams of innovation, as did Dr. Horrobin. Why someone
would write any negative aspects about one’s life as in the Obituary by Ms
Richmond is beyond my imagination. None of us in life are perfect, and if
we were, what a boring life it would be. The words by Ms. Richmond were
unkind to the memory of Dr. Horrobin and his friends and family. It is a
sad day to read such an Obituary, especially in the BMJ.
Two quotations are worth remembering from authors’ that I do not
recall – “Two out ten people will like you, two will hate you and the
other six just don’t care” and “The only importance is that your family
and friends love you and who really cares about the rest”. I’ll let you
guess where I believe Ms. Richmond fits within both of these.
References
1. Richmond C. Obituary – David Horrobin. British Medical Journal
2003; 326: 885.
2. Lange JH, Talbott EO, Baffone KM, Weyel DA, Soboslay EG, Koros
AMC, and Sykora JL. Anti-cancer activities of selenium. Medical
Hypotheses. 1997; 23: 443-447
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
I also have read with distaste Ms Richmond’s vituperative obituary to
David Horrobin.
Together with Geoff Machin (see his response of May 2nd), I was
privileged to have shared a formative part of my education with David in
the 1950’s, at King’s College School in Wimbledon. Extremely clever
people are often rather strange in other characteristics, but David
epitomised the superb all-rounder. Indeed, rather frustratingly for the
rest of us lesser mortals, he even excelled at sport as well as academic
subjects, as well as being a thoroughly modest and charming person. So
it caused little surprise when we saw his career take off in his student
days at Oxford, and he was destined to remain an unattainable rôle model
for us all. Subsequently we lost touch, but through his son Steven I was
fortunately able to renew our acquaintance a few years ago, to find that
he was unchanged by his extraordinarily successful career. The
pharmaceutical industry is a hard place, but the warm comments and
reminiscences of your correspondents are the best testament that his
primary motivation in taking up a medical career was simply to do what he
could to improve health. Their comments must assuredly be comforting to
David’s family, for whose feelings Ms Richmond seems to have had no
regard. I can only assume that Richard Smith must have been suffering a
brainstorm in deciding that it was fit to be published, and, like your
other correspondents here, trust that apologies from both of them will be
forthcoming, in print in the BMJ.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Dear Dr Smith,
As doctors we are continually be advised, not least by the BMJ, that
we should be adult enough to apologise when we get things wrong.
Even the most callow teenager would have been able to recognise the
offence and hurt caused by Richmond’s obituary. Yet in her reply she is
unable to come even close to an apology.
I don’t know where the BMJ is heading but, in making the long journey
from Brain to Cosmopolitan (1), you seem to have lost your way.
Yours sincerely,
John Hopkins
(1) R Smith The BMJ Moving on BMJ 2002;324:5 January 2002
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Caroline, no-one minds that you criticised David Horrobin's
ideas. And certainly no-one really cares exactly how many
papers he wrote (although since you gave the figure of 800
in your original obituary, it is a bit odd to see you
dispute it in your reply).
In fact, ultimately no-one minds if you think his ideas were
bonkers. You think he was wrong-headed, that's fine. It was
perfectly okay to put all this into the obituary (you could
have been far more forceful, and probably wouldnt have heard
a cheep out of the readers) You are perfectly entitled to
your own views about all of this. That is not what has
caused the offence.
What everyone cares about is the fact that a reasonable
person reading your obituary would conclude that David
Horrobin was a fraudulent and dishonest man. This is simply
not true. It is a calumny which has already been picked up
and amplified in other newspapers. So your obituary has
destroyed the reputation of a dead man, within days of his
death, for ever. This is why there is outrage in the
responses. Perhaps you could focus your mind on this, and
reply to it? You must also have noticed that the tone of
your piece has caused widespread offence. You may have
written it without malice, in which case this was
unintentional. But the offence is no less real. Perhaps you
might also
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
AUTHOR’S REPLY:
I take issue with the assertion that David published over 800 papers.
Many of them were conference talks, and some were single-paragraph rapid
responses in the BMJ and therefore it is an exaggeration to call these
‘papers’. Others were “unpublished results” or in obscure periodicals
including The Messenger, J Nutr Sci Vitaminol Tokyo, Living Naturally, and
Fats for the Future.
Of the papers, the majority are about the role or metabolism of
evening primrose oil, fish oil or essential fatty acids in a range of over
forty conditions ranging from Aids, acne, ageing, aggression and
impulsivity, aspirin-induced haemorrhage, alcohol dependence syndrome,
atopic eczema and atherosclerosis, to schizophrenia, seborrhoeic
dermatitis, Sicca syndrome, Sjogren’s syndrome, tardive dyskinesia and
viral infections. I rest my case.
Scotia, the company he founded and which made him one of the richest
men in England, managed to convince the medicines licensing authorities of
the efficacy of evening primrose oil in only two indications, atopic
eczema and benign breast pain of the premenstrual syndrome. Both of these
licences were later withdrawn, which casts doubt on the quality of the
original data. After I had submitted my copy with the BMJ I learned that a systematic review of Efamol in
atopic eczema showed that it reduced doctor-assessed itch but not patient-
assessed itch. The company then threatened to sue if the data were made
public.
His review articles and hypotheses were often superbly written and a
pleasure to read. He was also a brilliant speaker.
David was a man of contradictions. I wrote the obituary without
malice, and I didn’t know what I was going to write until I had spoken to
people who knew him or knew his work. He had a brilliant career at Oxford,
but there wasn’t room to include details. He was a man who could have been
great but whose faults made it impossible, and this is the true nature of
tragedy.
CAROLINE RICHMOND
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
In the current edition of the BMJ Ms Richmond has written a non-
offensive "traditional" obituary (the type that was labelled by Richard
Smith as "usually a great disappointment because they describe only the
positive side of the dead person… they are unbelievable, incomplete, and
dull"). Furthermore, the editor has chosen "Fatty acids and blood pressure
- supplementing infant milk may reduce cardiovascular risk" as the
headline on the front cover - just two weeks after dismissing David
Horrobin as "the greatest snake oil salesman of his age".
What does this mean? Although, with regard to Richmond's obituary for
David Horrobin, neither apologies nor corrections have yet been issued, it
almost appears as if Richard Smith has now attempted to correct his
earlier error of editorial judgement. It could not have escaped his
attention that Forsyth (1) et al found that dietary LCPUFA supplementation
has potential health benefits (as has been shown by other influential
studies (2)). This is exactly the area of research to which David Horrobin
devoted his career from the outset. He worked on the physiology and
potential therapeutic role of LCPUFAs (and not just EPO). He published
several dozen articles on the cardiovascular effects of various dietary
fatty acids, involving both theoretical (3) and experimental work.
Furthermore, one of the references quoted in Forsyth's article was
published in Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids (4) -
edited by David Horrobin. All of which hardly tallies with Ms Richmond's
assertion that his work made little impact.
I do not understand why the BMJ feels the need to rely on journalists
to write obituaries. This is the journal of the British Medical
Association, which includes more than 100000 members. An obituary in the
BMJ signals the final respect of the British medical community. This is
best done by peers, who can place someone's work into context. Other
prestigious bodies, like the Royal Historical Society, follow this
tradition. Ultimately, an offensive and inaccurate obituary reflects badly
not just on the editor, but on the membership, particularly given that the
journal is circulated worldwide.
References
1. Forsyth JS, Willatts P, Agostoni C, Bissenden J, Casaer P, Boehm
G. Long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation in infant formula
and blood pressure in later childhood: follow up of a randomised
controlled trial. BMJ 2003; 326:953.
2. Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della Sopravvivenza nell'Infarto
miocardico. Dietary supplementation with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids
and vitamin E after myocardial infarction: results of the GISSI-
Prevenzione trial. Lancet 1999; 354:447-55.
3. Horrobin DF. Low prevalences of coronary heart disease (CHD),
psoriasis, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis in Eskimos: are they caused by
high dietary intake of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), a genetic variation of
essential fatty acid (EFA) metabolism or a combination of both? Medical
Hypotheses 1987; 22:421-8.
4. Engler MM, Engler MB, Kroetz DL, Boswell KDB, Neeley E, Krassner SM.
The effects of a diet rich in docosahexaenoic acid on organ and vascular
fatty acid composition in spontaneously hypertensive rats. Prostaglandins,
Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids 1999; 61:289-95.
Competing interests:
BMA member
Competing interests: No competing interests
Does anyone else agree?
Richard (Smith),
I would like to state my great dislike for referring to people by
their surname alone.
I grew up in a school in which the headmaster maintained his
hierarchical authority by referring to his current and ex pupils as, for
example “Cunliffe”. I remember one occasion on which an old pupil
remembered himself to this head as “Mr So and So”. The response of this
headmaster was little short of a tantrum and I remember, in retrospect,
being troubled by both his fury and understanding any justification for
it. I guess this would have passed without further notice had not one of
my bosses, Larry Liversege (MRI in Manchester) asked me my name. With
wlling submission to this institutionalised heirachy, I replied
“Cunliffe”. Larry neither liked hierarchy nor pomp. He immediately rebuked
me by saying that only Lords were entitled to be called by their “Surname”
alone. All other people had a title and/or a first name.
Intended or not, the use of a surname in isolation carries the
potential baggage of arrogance, an implied hierarchy or a distancing from
the individual. I believe the BMJ could and should exorcise this pompous
habit from the obituary pages.
Competing interests:
As previous response
Competing interests: No competing interests