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, Quote: "Dr Horrobin was best known for creating Scotia Holdings, a once sprawling biotechnology company which has the unfortunate distinction of being the UK’s only quoted biotechnology company to have collapsed into administration." 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, leading to government confiscations and felony indictments of his associates. Horrobin was later accused of withholding research data and suppressing the reports of scientists who questioned his claims. During Horrobin's tenure as chief executive, Scotia Pharmaceuticals obtained licences for several drugs based on evening primrose oil, but these licenses were withdrawn for lack of efficacy.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, also became the first to collapse."Should we give the biotechies money to burn?" Rosie Murray-West, The Telegraph, 11 September 2004. 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"Primrose Oil and Eczema: How Research Was Promoted and Suppressed" Stephen Barrett, Quackwatch, 31 January 2004."'A rotter, a snake oil salesman, a chancer' – how scientist's obituary sparked a storm. A vitriolic attack in the British Medical Journal has devastated eminent academic David Horrobin's family, reports Robin McKie" Robin McKie, The Observer, in The Guardian, 25 May 2003. obituaries in The Independent and the British Medical Journal angered Horrobin's friends and family by also portraying negative aspects of Horrobin's life, with the BMJ obituary stating that Horrobin "may prove to be the greatest snake oil salesman of his age".
Education and academic career
Born in Bolton, England, Horrobin attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn, and King's College School in Wimbledon, London. He studied medicine on a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, obtaining degrees in both medicine and surgery, and then earned a doctorate in neurophysiology and neuroendocrinology. On completing his pre-clinical work, Horrobin became a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1963. At Magdalen, he was strongly influenced by the nutritionist Hugh Macdonald Sinclair and his hypotheses on essential fatty acids and degenerative disease.
Following participation in the Flying Doctor Service in east Africa, Horrobin was appointed as professor and chairman of medical physiology at Nairobi University in Kenya. In 1972, he moved to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he was appointed as a reader in medical physiology. In 1975, he became professor of medicine at the University of Montreal.
Drug companies and dietary supplements
Founding of Efamol and Scotia
While working as an academic investigator, in Africa and later, Horrobin developed a theory implicating altered fatty acid metabolism in schizophrenia. The idea did not generate interest, and Horrobin failed to obtain funding. It was noted that Horrobin presented only circumstantial evidence and was unable to propose a mechanism underlying the hypothesised link. To raise money for his research, 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". Horrobin planned to use the profits from Efamol to fund research and development of drugs containing EPO fatty acids. Efamol, renamed Scotia Pharmaceuticals in 1987, was active in Nova Scotia, Surrey and Scotland. In 1993, under Horrobin's leadership, Scotia was one of the first biotechnology companies to be floated on the London Stock Exchange. Scotia spent heavily on research, being ranked 79th among all UK companies in 1993, and reached a peak market capitalisation of about £600m in 1996. As a major shareholder of Scotia, Horrobin rose to number 212 in 1996 on the list of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom.
Controversy and administration
Legal and regulatory problems Horrobin, within several years of founding Efamol, was selling EPO in more than 25 countries. He marketed the supplement as a treatment for "PMS, alcoholism, pregnancy-induced hypertension, atopic eczema, elevated cholesterol levels, hypertension, scleroderma, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, mastalgia (breast pain) and other problems", but according to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Horrobin did not satisfactorily demonstrate the efficacy and safety of his supplement."General Nutrition, officials indicted", Lexington Herald-Leader (KY), 15 November 1984, p. C9"General Nutrition will withhold 13 products", AP, Morning Call, Allentown PA, 7 December 1984, p. A.04 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."How to avoid the bitter pill of regulation" Ben Goldacre, Bad Science Column, The Guardian, 23 September 2003. 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". As a result, the FDA began to seize shipments of EPO and handed down felony indictments to General Nutrition, several executives and store managers for "conspiring to defraud the FDA and violating provisions of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act". General Nutrition and its president entered guilty pleas and paid fines, but Horrobin was not prosecuted.
Efamol continued to ship EPO into the United States and to market its products. In a 1989 article on "health food frauds", the New York Times reported on the FDA's seizure of "more than $1 million worth" of illegal EPO. The FDA again accused Efamol of marketing the oil "with unsubstantiated claims of treating a wide variety of illnesses". Efamol's lawyers responded that the product was not dangerous and that it had not made unsubstantiated claims. The American Dietetic Association, representing over 50,000 nutritionists, questioned the value of Horrobin's product since "one-tenth of a teaspoon of ordinary corn oil has as much of the fatty acids as a capsule of Evening Primrose Oil, at a fraction of the cost". In 1989, the FDA commissioned a report by investigator Stephen Barrett, a medical doctor and consumer protection advocate. Barrett advised the FDA that Horrobin's marketing of Efamol was done in "a transparent attempt to evade the food and drug laws". In a report on the incident published by the consumer information organisation Quackwatch, Barrett also questions Horrobin's research ethics: "Would someone that contemptuous of the law have any qualms about faking data?"
Allegations of selective reporting and research suppression In 2006, a column in The Guardian suggested that Horrobin had also actively suppressed research findings contradicting his claims about EPO. Horrobin wrote a meta-analysis of EPO research on eczema in 1989, concluding that EPO was effective. Horrobin excluded the negative results of the largest published study to date but included purported results of seven of his own unpublished studies that remained unpublished as of 2006. When several scientists asked to see the unpublished data, Horrobin's legal team convinced the journal to refuse the request. In 1997, Horrobin's team successfully halted the publication of another meta-analysis commissioned by the Department of Health. 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.
Investor concerns about an "ailing company" As the supplement sales generated revenue, Horrobin's company began work on numerous drugs, most of them containing evening primrose oil. In 1993, the company was floated and enjoyed several years of increasing capitalisation as Horrobin reassured investors who worried about the company's lack of success, operating losses and enigmatic nature. Horrobin stated that any of four products in Scotia's drugs pipeline could bring the company billions of pounds in revenue."Scotia's Unusual Approach May Yet Silence Critics : A Small Drug Firm Thinks Big" Erik Ipsen, The New York Times, 27 May 1995. 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 late 1996, Horrobin predicted that he would receive approval for one of the drugs "in under two years"."Scotia's hopes for magic bullet" Tom Stevenson, The Investment Column, The Independent, 11 September 1996. In 1997, Horrobin stated, "Scotia will be cash-positive by 2000"."The Investment Column: Scotia scrabbles for a success" Magnus Grimond, The Independent, 25 September 1997.
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. Scotia immediately lost one quarter of its value. Licences for several evening primrose oil-containing drugs were later withdrawn. A Scotia product, Epogam, was reportedly the first drug to have its licence withdrawn as a result of "evidence that it didn't work".