Joe Collier (clinical pharmacologist)
Joseph Gavin Collier FRCP (born 1942) is a British retired clinical pharmacologist and emeritus professor of medicines policy at St George's Hospital and Medical School in London, whose early research included establishing the effect of aspirin on human prostaglandins and looking at the role of nitric oxide and angiotensin converting enzyme in controlling blood vessel tone and blood pressure.
Later, in his national policy work, he helped change the way drugs are priced and bought by the NHS, and ensured that members of governmental advisory committees published their conflicts of interest.
[2][3] After attending Cambridge, Collier gained admission to St George's Medical School in London to study medicine in 1964 and graduated in 1968.
[10] He interspersed his junior medical training with two days a week at a laboratory situated in the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields, run by John Vane.
"[14] In 1971, he co-authored a paper with Rod Flower showing that therapeutic doses of aspirin reduced prostaglandin E and F in human semen.
[21] In 1996, Vallance presented his and Collier's findings at the Goulstonian Lecture of the Royal College of Physicians, where he gave details of the connection between nitric oxide and blood pressure.
[23][24] It was creating a lower score for women and those with non-European (Asian, African and Arabic) names so reducing their chance of being called for interview.
Like Collier and Burke, the report also raised the question of what might be happening in other London medical schools; St. George's already had a higher than average intake of students with non-European names.
[25][24][29] He discussed his experience in an article in the British Medical Journal in 1999 when he recalled that he "was ostracised, became invisible, told I [he] had brought the organisation into disrepute”.
[29][30] Changes in admissions procedures to institutes of higher education have since been made throughout the UK and Collier has since been acknowledged for contributing towards greater equality in recruitment practices.
[38] Known to frequently question evidence and arguments accepted by others, under his editorship in 1998, the DTB opposed the Department of Health's view and supported the provision of sildenafil on the NHS.
