Inside Starmer's Plan to Fast-Track Unproven Therapies With An Already "Enabling" Medicines Regulator

It was thus dubbed the 'Regulatory Innovation Office'...

The UK government has launched the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) to help new medical technologies enter the market more quickly.

The stated goal of the RIO is to reduce regulatory barriers, stimulate economic growth, and position the UK as a global hub for innovation.

“If there is an innovation which can benefit the health of the nation, can contribute to economic growth, why do we just let it get mired down,” science minister Peter Kyle said last month.

For businesses and innovators, it means potentially quicker approvals for new products and services, facilitating advancements in sectors such as healthcare, biotechnology, and “environmental sustainability”.

For British consumers, it means the dissemination of more potentially dangerous treatments from a political establishment that has shown it is more than willing to violate bodily autonomy rights via coercive Covid vaccine mandates.

The impact of which was most notably displayed in Western Australia’s vaccine data as the state lacked Covid infection as a confounder—making it the world’s ideal control group. In short, it was the least muddied data out there, as authorities persistently blamed adverse events on Covid infection.

For context, that data showed adverse events following Covid vaccination (AEFIs) were self-reported at almost 24x the rate (per 100,000 doses) of AEFIs for all other vaccines combined.

Historically, regulators have acted on such risks. In 1976, the CDC pulled a swine flu vaccine from the market because of a slight increase in Guillain-Barré Syndrome cases—one serious case per 100,000 doses.

These policies have left some questioning whether the acceleration of approval processes, particularly in sectors like synthetic biology and medical technology, could influence our already painfully flawed regulators.

The Financial Times reported Starmer “wants to revive some of the crisis-era urgency that led to vaccine development being steamrolled through processes that normally take years.”

”It is modelled on the UK’s Covid Vaccine Taskforce, the body led by venture capitalist Kate Bingham, whose early financial bets on a range of vaccines enabled the British government to procure millions of doses ahead of other nations”, they added.

In 2022, Dame June Raine, the Chief Executive of the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), claimed that the agency should act as an "enabler" rather than a "watchdog."

Under her leadership, critics found MHRA concealed data, dropped inspections, and failed to investigate Covid vaccine-related deaths.

For individuals seeking potentially life-saving experimental treatments, however, reduced red tape could indeed be a welcome development, allowing more choice over medical decisions.

People could overcome terminal diagnoses with new, experimental treatments. But this, of course, is only positive in context of a government that refuses to never again violate bodily autonomy rights.

RIO also aims to streamline regulation for “sustainable” synthetic foods, such as lab-grown meat, as its “benefits” are still subject to heavy scrutiny.

While lab-grown meat may reduce cholesterol, a study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests that molecules used in cell cultivation may harm metabolism and have links to cancer.

Another study authored by Edward Spang, PhD, showed that lab-grown meat might have a larger environmental footprint than conventional meat due to its intensive production requirements.

As Spang cautioned, “Cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea.” He explained that reducing the environmental impact of lab-grown meat will require substantial technical advancements—a factor that RIO’s rushed processes may not consider.

With RIO positioned as a central authority, the consolidation of regulatory power may open the door to bias and conflicts of interest.

Without a chair, the current leader of the new body, Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, is case in point.

In May 2024, Faculty AI paid Kyle £36,000 to “to provide technical expertise and policy research”. The company currently holds several contracts with the NHS, recently setting up a “national COVID-19 chest x-ray database”.

In November 2023, he received £50,000 from Simon Ruddick, the co-founder Albourne Partners, a Cypriot advisory investment firm that provides “alternative investment solutions” to various hedge funds across the world.

This naturally raise questions about whether personal interests could influence RIO’s decisions, potentially favouring products tied to their benefactors, either directly and indirectly.

Financial relationships have previously clouded regulatory integrity. In 2022, investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi found that 86% of MHRA’s funding came from pharmaceutical fees, totalling £159 million, with the agency approving 98.5% of all new medicines.

If MHRA, considered the nation’s premier regulatory body, has struggled to uphold rigorous standards, a new entity like RIO—staffed by captured representatives and civil servants—may lead to even more rushed approvals and reduced accountability. To this day, no one in MHRA has been reprimanded for the regulators failings.

Perhaps RIO should be more aptly named the Rushed Innovation Office. The damage this office could do if it follows MHRA’s lead is unimaginable. Safety and transparency could once again be relegated in place profit and power. When it comes to medication, the latter should always be relegated in place of the former.

I’ll be keeping an eye out…

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