Born: June 6th 1930, London
Died: November 10th 2023, London.
Cause of death: metastatic thyroid cancer
A pioneer in clinical chemical pathology and non-diabetic hypoglycaemia who became founder and dean of a new postgraduate medical school and a world-famed expert witness in alleged insulin murder cases.
Born in his father’s North London pub and evacuated to a Devon farm during the war, Vincent Marks nevertheless won a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford, and after clinical studies at St Thomas’s Hospital graduated in 1954. His interest in biochemistry led him to clinical pathology. He obtained the Edinburgh MRCP in 1957, at a time when this examination offered specialist options, and an MRC fellowship that took him to a research post in King’s College then a senior lecturer post in the Institute of Neurology in 1961. In 1962 he obtained the first post of consultant in clinical pathology in Epsom and director to the regional laboratory. Shortly thereafter he was elected FRCPE and a founder Fellow of the Royal College of Pathology.
Behind this bland account of a rapid rise in a then new medical specialty lies a remarkable story. While at the Institute of Neurology he became interested in hypoglycaemia caused by tumours and pioneered the use of sensitive immunoassays that had recently become available to researchers. In developing techniques for their clinical use he came across cases in which very low levels of blood sugar aroused suspicion of wrongdoing. His academic life led to several hundred publications and books on hypoglycaemia, a chair in clinical pathology at the University of Surrey and later appointment as foundation dean of its new Postgraduate Medical School. But alongside this he acquired a formidable reputation from his forensic work, about which he wrote a popular book, Insulin Murders. The most notable of these are probably his evidence that led to the reversal of the wrongful conviction of Claus von Bülow, for attempting to kill his wife, and that which led to the conviction 25 years ago of nurse Beverly Allitt for multiple infant murders.
Fuller accounts of his remarkable life have been published in The Times and British Medical Journal, to which the reader is directed. He continued writing into his 90s and leaves his wife of 66 years Averil, a distinguished sculptor, two lawyer children, six grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
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Anthony Seaton