Gordon Thomas McInnes

Clinical pharmacologist specialising in hypertension. He was born in Alexandria, UK, on Oct 4, 1945 and died after a heart attack in St Andrews, UK, on May 30, 2023 aged 77 years. Gordon McInnes, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Glasgow's Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, Glasgow, UK, started his career in medicine at the beginning of the 1970s. “In the mid-1970s drugs for high blood pressure were beginning to emerge”, says his colleague Professor Adrian Brady, consultant cardiologist at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. “Gordon was a young thrusting clinician at the time…he saw how this area [hypertension] was beginning to advance.” As a consequence, he made it the focus of his career. As Brady puts it: “Gordon became part of a group of people around the world who were leading big clinical trials that set the stage for how we now treat high blood pressure.” In Scotland, says Thomas MacDonald, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology at the University of Dundee, “He became a major force in academic clinical pharmacology, hypertension and [the study of] cardiovascular risk.” McInnes graduated from the University of Glasgow School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing in 1971 when clinical pharmacology was still a fairly new specialism. McInnes was drawn to it, acquiring his postgraduate training at London's Hammersmith Hospital, UK, before returning to Glasgow where the then Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Glasgow, Graham Wilson, had backed the formation of a new department of clinical pharmacology. Wilson was keen to bridge what he saw as the unhelpful gulf between clinicians and the pharmaceutical industry. To advance their mutual understanding he set up a fellowship under which a clinician in his department would spend time working in the industry. McInnes was among the doctors chosen for the scheme, and worked for the G D Searle company, which was then developing and testing aldosterone antagonists. “This period was extremely useful because it allowed Gordon to experience trials and drug evaluation in a company involved in carrying them out”, says Peter Semple, a retired senior lecturer in the Department of Medicine at Glasgow's Western Infirmary. The experience shaped McInnes's approach to research, and perhaps accounts for the enthusiasm with which he was later to involve himself in a succession of trials. His participation—whether as organiser, member of the steering committee, or simply as a clinician—was from his base at the University of Glasgow which he rejoined in 1980 and from which he retired as Professor in 2011. Most of these clinical trials were in the management of hypertension or atrial fibrillation. “ASCOT [the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial] was one of the big ones,” says Brady. “It was a comparison of new drugs versus older drugs for treating high blood pressure. It showed that the new drugs were indeed a bit better than the older ones—better tolerated and with better outcomes over a long follow-up. Gordon was one of its original authors.” Also notable was the Valsartan Antihypertensive Long-Term Use Evaluation (VALUE) trial to test the hypothesis that in high-risk hypertension an angiotensin receptor blocker would be more effective than a calcium-channel blocker. “Gordon's particular strength was an ability to put ideas across”, says MacDonald. “He could make sense of complex data so that any of us could understand it.” This communication skill, MacDonald adds, meant that McInnes was sought after as a lecturer. People would often go to meetings because he was among the speakers. McInnes's other clinical work included a period in charge of the Glasgow Blood Pressure Clinic, once one of the largest and longest running in the world. “He inherited it, and maximised its output of data on the treatment of hypertension, the determinants of outcome, and much else”, says Alan Jardine, Emeritus Professor of Renal Medicine at the University of Glasgow. Tall and outgoing “Big Gordon”, as he was known to his colleagues, was popular on the wards and beyond them. He loved golf, although his enthusiasm sometimes exceeded his skill. Not coming from a privileged background or upbringing, McInnes understood the health effects of the conditions of life for many of his patients and Scotland's excessive burden of cardiovascular disease. MacDonald accepts that these factors motivated the work of his colleague, but adds a more zestful one. When teaching or lecturing, “Gordon enjoyed entertaining his audience…if you can't keep them awake, he would say, they're not going to learn”. McInnes leaves a wife, Dorothy, their children Mairi, Morven, and Ewan, and a brother, Kenneth.