Ron Mann

Abstract

Professor Dr Ronald Mann, the founding editor of Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, died on 19 November 2013 from cardiorenal failure. Ron, as he was universally known, spent a professional lifetime in a quest to improve the scientific quality of drug safety data by the application of epidemiological principles, which he helped formulate. The quality and present standing of this journal in the field bear ample testimony to the success of his efforts. Following graduation in medicine, Ron trained as a physician. He spent 6 years in general practice, developing skills particularly in obstetrics, before joining the pharmaceutical industry, where he was to spend 19 years in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, the USA and Belgium. It was in this role that he first became aware of the inadequacies of then current practices in drug safety in industry and clinical medicine and so it was a logical move for him to join the Division of Medicines of the UK Department of Health as a Medical Assessor, where his remit was to improve the system of adverse reaction reporting. He was later to describe his frustration at his inability to handle what are now known as large databases relating to drug safety, but adequate technology was not yet available. Ron became the Head of Drug Safety and, in his efforts to apply the methods of epidemiology to drug safety in what is now known as pharmacoepidemiology, he found a willing ally in Dr Sue Wood, who was to succeed him at the Medicines Control Agency (MCA). At this time, controversy about the safety of oral contraceptive steroids was becoming a major issue, and much of their work was devoted to understanding the public health implications of their use. After a spell as Medical Secretary of the Royal Society of Medicine (where he was able to indulge his other passion, the history of therapeutics), Ron moved to the University of Southampton, succeeding Dr Bill Inman as Director of the Drug Safety Research Unit (DSRU), where the technique of prescription event monitoring (PEM) had been pioneered and which Ron developed greatly. Under his guidance, PEM took its place with spontaneous adverse reaction reporting as a powerful tool in what is now known as passive surveillance of drug safety. One of Ron's greatest strengths was as a communicator, and it was in this vein that he created this journal, which he entitled Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, embodying the two disciplines which he believed were inseparable. He was also a prolific writer; his two major books, Modern Drug Use (1984), of which he was the sole author, and Drug Safety (1992), the multi-author book, of which he was the founding editor, are both standard textbooks in the field. But as well as Ron's huge scientific achievements, it is also as a delightful colleague that we will remember him. His kindness and helpfulness to junior colleagues at the MCA and the DSRU are legion. Our friendship with Ron developed when we were both members of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, and to listen to his reminiscences of a long and varied career lightened many afternoons at Market Towers. As a medical student at Westminster Hospital Medical School, he was awarded the King's Scholarship, which had been established by the late King George VI. In this role, we understand that Ron's main duty was to accompany the King, annually, to a service in St George's Chapel and to find the appropriate place in the King's hymnal during the proceedings. While assisting, as a trainee physician, in a cisternal puncture in a patient with tuberculous meningitis, the glass syringe broke, showering Ron with tuberculous pus, from which he contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. After treatment with streptomycin and 2 years of bed rest at King Edward VII Hospital in Midhurst, West Sussex, he recovered, but he recalled to us that these 2 years in bed were the worst of his life. Ron Mann was one of the people who made a real difference. We salute his contributions to drug safety and to the public health, we thank him for the advice and guidance he gave us and we are grateful for being able to call him our friend.