My father, Desmond Laurence, who has died aged 96, was a pharmacologist whose career was dedicated to informing the public and doctors about the drugs they were taking or prescribing.
His textbook Clinical Pharmacology, first published in 1960 and reissued in seven further editions (from 1992 in collaboration with Peter Bennett), was translated into five languages and used by medical and dental students and practitioners all over the world. It was known for its yellow cover, accessible style and wide range of quotations. The 12th edition appeared earlier this year.
Desmond believed strongly that both the medical profession and the public needed to know more about drugs to be able to use them effectively. He also published a popular book, The Medicine You Take (1978), with his friend Sir James Black.
Desmond was born in Vancouver, Canada, where his peripatetic parents, Colin Laurence and Lady Sybil Stopford, had arrived in search of a living. Returning eventually to England, his parents were divorced in 1930. Desmond was educated at the Royal Masonic school in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and in 1940 he went to St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School.
After his national service (1947-48) he became a registrar at St Thomas’ and then in 1950 a lecturer in therapeutics. In 1954 he was appointed a senior lecturer then reader in pharmacology and therapeutics at University College London and University College Hospital medical school. In 1964 he was made professor of pharmacology and therapeutics. He retired in 1984.
He served on many committees in the university, the Department of Health and the World Health Organization and enjoyed pricking pomposity and acting as an irritant to what he regarded as establishment views.
In 1966 he began a campaign to secure the regulation of clinical research by ethics committees and prepared the first edition of the Royal College of Physicians’ guidelines for research ethics committees. His interest in this continued into old age when he conducted a campaign to secure no-fault compensation for healthy volunteers injured in clinical trials.
He was an energetic man with wide interests and enjoyed being controversial. In retirement he took up collecting oriental ceramics, giving their study the same serious attention that he had given his professional concerns.
He married Alice Roseby in 1946. She died in 2011. He is survived by their three children, Sue, Mike and me, and by six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
