Dr. Garrow was born on April 19, 1929, in Dundee, Scotland. He studied at the Highgate School in London where his family moved. John obtained his Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 1952. After graduation he continued his training in Jamaica where he became interested in problems of malnutrition and worked with Professor John Waterlow, a man he admired immensely. Dr. Garrow's first scientific post was as a member of the Medical Research Council External Staff at the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, where he published his first scientific paper in 1954 in the West Indian Medical Journal, followed by a number of articles measuring body composition in infants and children with malnutrition which lead to him receiving his MD in 1957. His single-authored article in Journal of Clinical Investigation in 1959 on the effect of protein depletion on protein synthesis and his method of removing the bias from measuring blood pressure, a device that “muddled” the zero value from one reading to the next, published in Lancet in 1963, were clear demonstrations of his scholarship and inventiveness. Dr. Garrow returned to the United Kingdom in 1957 to do his military service at the RAF Institute for Aviation Medicine in Farnborough. While there, he studied the effects of acceleration on antidiuretic hormone which resulted in a PhD from the University of St. Andrews in 1961. Because of his inventive skills, he was recruited by Professor Waterlow to participate in an expedition to the Andes Mountains to study altitude sickness, where he was successful in separating blood in the frozen environment. In 1969, Dr. Garrow was recruited to become head of the Nutrition Research Unit at the MRC Clinical Research Centre, Harrow, England. It was here that Dr. Garrow developed his international reputation in the study of energy balance. He designed and built both an indirect and a direct calorimeter which were used for many important studies. He was also a key adviser to the development of the metabolic chambers constructed at the NIH facilities in Phoenix, AZ, to allow measurement of energy expenditure in the Pima Indians who have the highest rate of diabetes in the U.S. He demonstrated the effectiveness of a simple “milk” diet for weight loss. He used “jaw wiring” to limit intake of food, and then used a nylon cord fastened round the waist to provide external feedback about fullness, since he was a strong believer in “external” regulation of food intake. His first and very well-written monograph titled Energy Balance and Obesity in Man was published in 1974 and provides a critical evaluation of the data available at that time. An equally important monograph Treat Obesity Seriously: A Clinical Manual was published in 1981 and presages the concept of obesity as a disease. During this time interval, Dr. Garrow conducted another experiment with himself as the subject. He stuffed himself to become obese and studied the consequence on weight loss using biopsies of his own muscles. This tradition of self-study is part of the medical tradition and one that Dr. Garrow used on several occasions. In 1987, Dr. Garrow was elected as the inaugural Rank Professor of Human Nutrition at the St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School in London and Consulting Physician at the hospital. During this 10-year interval, Dr. Garrow used his considerable “Socratic” teaching skills to help medical students learn the essentials of nutrition. He was a passionate advocate for “evidence-based” medicine and campaigned against fraudulent health claims. His final scholarly activity was as Editor of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition from 1988 to 1999. This was an ideal position for Dr. Garrow since he could use his critical and objective mind to improve the quality of the publications that appeared in this journal. He has been active with HealthWatch (formerly the Campaign Against Health Fraud), where he was the chairman for three terms, from 1991 to 1993, 1997 to 1999, and 2003 to 2005. Dr. Garrow and his lifelong companion Katherine (née Thicknesse) Garrow met in Jamaica when she was there doing medical work as a young pediatrician. Katherine predeceased John in 2008, but he is survived by four children—Jennifer, Margaret, Diana, and Alan.
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Oct 10, 2024
Muhammad Raza 
Open Access