16-03-2025
Charles Medawar obituary
My friend Charles Medawar, who has died suddenly aged 82, campaigned on consumer safety and corporate accountability. He started his career in the 1960s working with Michael Young at the Consumers' Association, where his research included the first testing of tar and nicotine in cigarettes (not that it stopped him from smoking at the time). After he became unhappy with the unquestioning promotion of consumerism and consumption, he went to the US, where he spent a formative time working with the activist Ralph Nader.
Back in the UK, having secured financial backing from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Charles set up Social Audit and the charity Public Interest Research Centre in 1972. Their groundbreaking work on transparency and corporate social responsibility was decades ahead of its time and went on to spawn the campaigns that secured the UK's freedom of information and whistleblowing laws.
From the late 80s, Charles focused on researching the way the pharmaceutical industry and regulators approached drug safety. This culminated in his books Power and Dependence (1992), on tranquillisers, and Medicines Out of Control (2004), on anti-depressants, which exposed how the risks of these addictive drugs were being downplayed and overlooked. Committed to openness, he made his work freely available on the internet, where it attracted around a million visits a year.
While he was not medically trained or qualified, Charles' expertise on pharma was called on by the World Health Organization and the UK parliament's health select committee. When group actions for drug injuries were first launched in the UK, it was no surprise that he was sought out by the claimants. In the Opren litigation (1985-88), there was a rare ruling from the court of appeal that approved his status as an expert. He played a notable role in establishing the case for haemophiliacs who had contracted HIV after being treated with infected blood products.
Charles was born in Oxford. His parents were Sir Peter Medawar, who won a Nobel prize for his pioneering work on transplantation, and Jean Taylor, a leading light in the Family Planning Association. He attended Westminster school and briefly Oxford University, before transferring to Indiana University, where he graduated in Russian. Despite, or perhaps because of, his establishment background, he was undaunted by power and authority and spent his life challenging the complacency and lack of accountability it can foster.
In 1974 he met Caroline Vogel, who became his wife, and they lived in Primrose Hill, north London, in former stables that he had designed and converted himself. Charles was a lovely man, whose integrity, mercurial charm and irreverence endeared him to all who knew him.
He is survived by Caroline, his three stepchildren, Anna, Toby and Dan, eight grandchildren and his siblings, Caroline, Louise and Alexander.
