Joseph Gavin Collier (born 1942) is a British retired clinical pharmacologist and emeritus professor of medicines policy at St George's Hospital and Medical School in London, whose early research included establishing the effect of aspirin on human prostaglandins and looking at the role of nitric oxide and angiotensin converting enzyme in controlling blood vessel tone and blood pressure. Later, in his national policy work, he helped change the way drugs are priced and bought by the NHS, and ensured that members of governmental advisory committees published their conflicts of interest. In 1986 he became a whistleblower when he revealed to the Commission for Racial Equality that software used for medical-school admissions selection at St George's was intentionally discriminating against women and ethnic minorities, by creating a lower score for women and those with non-European names so reducing their chance of being called for interview. Initially shunned within the institution, he was publicly thanked several years later for bringing the procedure to its attention. His work led to reviews of admissions policy to institutes of higher education throughout the UK. He was editor of the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin from 1992 to 2004, president of the International Society of Drug Bulletins from 2002 to 2005 and was a former member of the UK Medicines Commission from 1998. Early life and education Joseph Gavin Collier was born to pharmacologist H. O. J. Collier and actress Patience Collier. They also had two daughters, who later became the textile designers Sarah Campbell and Susan Collier. After attending Cambridge, Collier gained admission to St George's Medical School in London to study medicine in 1964 and graduated in 1968. He gained a MD in 1975. Career Collier's career at St George's continued until his retirement in 2007. He was the school's first clinical pharmacologist and in 1998 was appointed professor of medicines policy. Amongst the lecturers he supervised were David Webb, Sir Patrick Vallance, and Emma Baker. Research He interspersed his junior medical training with two days a week at a laboratory situated in the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields, run by John Vane. In 1969, Collier confirmed, with Dornhorst, Lands' findings of β1-receptors in the heart and β2-receptors in the airways, in humans, and "suggested that the respiratory stimulation produced in man by β-receptor stimulants is a β1-action and is not linked with bronchodilatation." In 1971, he co-authored a paper with Rod