Graham Jackson was a senior consultant cardiologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals, London and a pioneer in the management of sexual dysfunction in male cardiac patients. He was born in Oldham, the son of Harry Flint Jackson and Hilda Jackson née Cocker. He excelled academically, gained a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School and went on to study medicine at King’s College Hospital, London, graduating in 1970 with first class honours and the Almond prize.
He held house posts at King’s and was a senior house officer at the Brook Hospital from 1971 to 1972. From 1973, he was a registrar at King’s and the Brook Hospital and then a senior registrar at King’s from 1977. In 1978, he went to Stanford University in California as a Peel Trust fellow.
A year later he was appointed as a consultant cardiologist at King’s, at Guy’s in 1989 and subsequently at St Thomas’ when the two trusts merged. He also worked privately at the London Bridge Hospital and BMI Shirley Oaks Hospital in Croydon. He retired in 2007.
He was a skilled interventionist cardiologist and was instrumental in the development of a number of international trials looking at the cardiovascular effects of statins. In 2001, he established the first clinic in the UK specifically for male patients with sexual dysfunction and cardiovascular disease.
He was editor of the Difficult cardiology book series (London, Martin Dunitz) and wrote several books on cardiology and sexual health, including Practical management of ischaemic heart disease (Martin Dunitz, 1988), Angina (M Dunitz, 1991) and Sex, the heart and erectile dysfunction (London, Martin Dunitz, 2004), and also wrote a book for patients, Heart health (answers at your fingertips), a fourth edition of which was published in 2009 (Class Health). He wrote or co-wrote more than 400 papers on cardiology and general medicine, and was editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Clinical Practice for 22 years.
From 2010 to 2011 he was president of the World Congress of Men’s Health and was on the board of the International Society of Men’s Health. He was a member of the International Society for Sexual Medicine’s standards committee and chairman of the Sexual Advice Association. He was honoured with lifetime achievement awards by the European Society for Sexual Medicine and the British Society for Sexual Medicine.
As a young man he gained his Duke of Edinburgh gold award and was a Queen’s Scout. He represented his school, King’s College and King’s College Hospital at tennis, and was interested in journalism and photography.
In 1969 he married Margaret Bernadette, a mental health nurse. They had a son and a daughter.
RCP editor
[Sexual Advice Association In Memoriam Dr Graham Jackson https://sexualadviceassociation.co.uk/memoriam-dr-graham-jackson/ – accessed 29 January 2020; International Journal of Clinical Practice 2016; 70: 638-9 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ijcp.12864 – accessed 29 January 2020]