A Shot To Save the World

 

As Mad Dog has gotten older, he finds he needs to return to books and articles to really appreciate them. The first time through, no matter how carefully he reads them, it just doesn't stick, but upon the return things come into focus.

Penn Ad in the New Yorker: Stealing the Glory

Re-reading Gregory Zuckerman's "A Shot to Save the World," about the scores of scientists who over a thirty year slog coalesced around the science that produced a remarkably effective vaccine against COVID 19 in just a year, Mad Dog is once again smitten by the story.

Some of this is simply delicious because of the story of one of the central figures who played a key role in providing the essential platform for the vaccine, mRNA, Katalin Kariko, and how she was ostracized at the University of Pennsylvania, ultimately given the choice of being fired or taking a demotion to a new university rank devised just for her as a "senior researcher" not even a faculty member, how when she finally managed to convince another faculty member of the potential value of mRNA, and once the two of them started a company to pursue it, Penn refused to invest in it, but ultimately made $1.2 billion from the patent it provided which was used to make the vaccine.

And then, in the ultimate in chutzpah, in an act which must win the grand prize for hypocrisy, when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for her work, Penn took out a full page ad in the New Yorker claiming credit for nurturing her great work.

Penn outdid Cinderella's wicked step mother, claiming it didn't just nurture the princess, but delivered her glass slipper and the prince to go with it.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Luckily, in the 21st century there is Google, and it takes precious little time on Google to see how nasty Penn was to Kariko--not an unusual story in medical research--but it's the claim that we knew all along how she was destined for greatness that sets off the rockets.

There will be, likely already are many other books about the way in which the COVID 19 mRNA vaccines were developed, but a good place to start is with Zuckerman's tale. He is a Wall Street Journal reporter, and his interests are unavoidably connected to the financial aspects of vaccine development, but he's clearly talked to enough scientists-- and the right scientists--who schooled him on how to ask the right questions, and once you get past the inevitable grab-you-by-the-lapel style, the determination to describe the personalities of the scientists for "human interest," the story is a page turner.

Banting & Best Discoverers of Insulin

So many people were involved, so many people taking risks, so many falling flat on their faces, so many people in positions of power who simply were too dim witted to pull the right levers, but enough smart, determined people simply dodged around the nincompoops, the deed got done.

Most vaccines take 10 years to bring successfully to market, the shortest big one before the COVID vaccine took 4 years, and they did COVID in one year.

Dr. Offit

When Paul Offit gave credit to President Trump for getting the vaccine done, he laughed. He said bringing that vaccine to fruition was the greatest scientific achievement of his lifetime and that was on Trump's watch. The reason he laughed is evident in Zuckerman's tale. The way science and the way this vaccine happens cannot ever be one man's credit--a decades long, tedious, ants on the march scenario is required. The guys at the top of political and academic institutions just hold the news conferences and take the credit.

Any fan of "The Wire" knows what I'm talking about: It's the "drugs on the table" charade. 

We see people working on HIV, like Henry Masur and later Tony Fauci, and we see people working on using genes to fight cancer, and we see people working on stem cell technologies and all these people weaving a thick mat upon which the next line of performers can jump and then the next.

It's an inspiring story, and an instructive one.

It also suggests that while government must occasionally play an essential role, government alone cannot do this kind of thing.  The Manhattan Project was a children's tea party compared to this one.

It reveals the centrality of universities, but it also shows how obtuse and arrogant faculties in academia can be and often are.

Child with Type 1 Diabetes

But mostly, it suggests that the Napoleon's, the Stalin's, the Ghengis Khan's of history are not much more than people who hit other people over the head with bigger and bigger clubs, while the folks like Jonas Salk and Katalin Kariko are the people who change life on earth for every little guy just trying to survive.