Fast-paced and very compelling… The Vaccine Taskforce will always be remembered as British science at its very best. I fear it's impossible to reconcile the needs of government - paralysis inducing transparency, accountability and risk reduction - with private sector practice, which has similar needs but somehow much less paralysing. From a cottage miles away from Westminster, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus - and her daughter's exams. But I have to disagree with the title, because the book shows that it really wasn’t such a "long shot" with Kate at the helm. SV’s investments have led to the launch of twenty drugs for inflammatory and autoimmune disease, blindness and cancer.

Covid is still spreading, probably mutating and just waiting for the next advantageous circumstance to jump back into wider global populations. The Long Shot is published as readers appear to have tired of Covid-19 and the miraculous vaccines have become more of a seasonal chore. With the revelations concerning partygate and other scandals it does make one question what sort of the administration Johnson was running in No 10. She is Managing Partner at life sciences venture capital firm SV Health Investors where she co-leads SV’s biotech franchise which has a long history of developing transformational new medicines. Johnson is benignly hands-off til he has to become positively hands-on in reigning in spinning misinformation about the VTF coming out of Number 10.

Political manoeuvring, miscommunications and administrative meddling nearly jeopardised the project.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. From a small cottage, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus – and her daughter’s exams.

She is a board member of the Francis Crick Institute and was awarded a DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services as Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Kate Bingham’s new book, The Long Shot, is a gripping account of the UK Government Vaccine Task Force’s response to the pandemic by a remarkable, determined, thoughtful, and practical individual who was at the heart of the critical decisions that had to be made.

The book does start rather slowly with Bingham using the first four chapters to set the scene and explaining how the task force was put together and its members selected. Now, nearly every adult in Britain has had the jab, lockdowns have ended and we can finally live with Covid. This is an unmissable insider view into how the Vaccine Taskforce beat the odds and delivered the scientific miracle we all waited for. Kate Bingham’s new book, The Long Shot , is a gripping account of the UK Government Vaccine Task Force’s response to the pandemic by a remarkable, determined, thoughtful, and practical individual who was at the heart of the critical decisions that had to be made.The book warns this kind of success is not likely to be repeated without mass production facilities in Britain. Her clarity of thought and action in a such a dark and turbulent time is a seam running through the book, and I know for certain that her efforts saved many lives. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.