‘The dollar stops with her’: June Raine to call out Covid vaccines in the UK | Vaccines and immunization

IIn the summer of 2019, Dr. June Raine looked like she was about to finally put her feet up. At the age of 67 she was Director of Medicines Supervision and Risk Management at the Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency, a role that is more or less important and as impenetrable for lay people as it seems.

After an exemplary but shadowy 35-year career in public health, she could have been forgiven for relishing the prospect of retirement and more time to devote to her passions of traveling and going to the opera. Apparently, that wasn’t an option in 2020.

Instead of slowing down, Raine stepped forward at the helm of the MHRA, the UK’s medical regulator, as she embarked on arguably the most vital task in her history: assessing vaccines that should end the coronavirus crisis and ensure the rush. putting them into action is not at the expense of patient safety.

If, as Boris Johnson said, the vaccine is the “cavalry”, June Raine is in charge of the stable.

“Normally the process of making a vaccine and putting it through clinical trials is five to 10 years,” said Sir Gordon Duff, a former president of the MHRA. “With the coronavirus, it had to be done without compromising safety or standards in less than a year. It is the MHRA that will tell us if a vaccine is safe. And in the end the dollar stops with her. “

Raine could be catapulted into the limelight in the same way that Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance were before her. And those who have worked with her are confident that she is ready for the task.

“If she was in a movie, you could play her as a friendly family doctor or diplomat,” said Stephen Evans, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a former colleague. “She is attentive, courteous, thoughtful. But his entire life has been devoted to public health, and he has a strong resolve to defend this cause. I’ve seen her at meetings and she asks the hard questions. If there are any security concerns, it will be an iron fist in a velvet glove. “

The MHRA has been criticized for being, as one expert told The Guardian, “a black box, an organization that hasn’t always followed the highest standards of transparent and reproducible science – they do the basics well, but if you don’t. things can openly jeopardize the public’s trust. “

And with the government now asking the regulator to initiate the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine approval process despite questions about the reliability of claims that it can protect up to 90% of people from Covid, the pressure on Raine to provide visible reassurance on the reliability of the process will be significant.

“Public safety will always come first,” he said at a news conference this month. “There is absolutely no chance we will compromise on safety or efficacy standards.”

Raine has experienced pressures and hardships in the past and devastating losses. She met her husband, Tony Raine, in Oxford University’s Pharmacology Department in the early 1970s after having two children. In 1995 he died of colon cancer at the age of 46.

Like Raine, he was known for his exceptional talent, determination and courtesy, according to obituaries which describe him as “one of the outstanding intellects of his generation”. A professional magazine said theirs was “the best of marriages”.

Three years later, Dr. Susan Wood, one of the leading lights of the MHRA’s predecessor agency and rumored to be a mentor to Raine, also died at the age of 46.

“It will always stay in my mind when the then CEO came to a meeting and whispered in her ear that Sue Wood was gone,” Evans said. “He had to leave the room. There were only a few people from the agency at the funeral, but she was one of them. And I think maybe that story, that empathy, made her a deeply human person when she works for patients. “

Raine threw herself into work, former colleagues say. In 2006, she became director of the MHRA’s Vigilance and Risk Management of Medicines division, which monitors medical products in use and restricts or takes them off the market as needed.

Under his leadership, the division strengthened paracetamol dosage recommendations for children like Calpol and introduced new warnings on addictive opioid drugs. Duff also recalls the decision to remove a pain reliever, co-proxamol, from sale after it was linked to suicides, a decision that turned out to have saved hundreds of lives.

Raine was a trusted figure for families with children who were harmed by the epilepsy drug sodium valproate when she presided over public hearings on its use that ultimately led to the reduction of its use during pregnancy, she said. Susan Cole, from the Valproate Stakeholder Network. “She handled the best people in royal colleges and the NHS, made sure they listened to us. And she made sure they heard it. “

Raine’s career hasn’t been without obstacles. A colleague believes she has dealt with the misogyny of her superiors and in meetings with ministers, “a sexist view that her kindness indicates a lack of strength. It was popular. “

However, it prevailed. For Cole, anyone who makes such assumptions does so at their own risk. “With us he resisted people. It was measured, understanding; she was a civil servant, mostly. There aren’t many of them left. “