Advancing The World Through Biotech With Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath
“Scientists are single-focused, that’s what makes them such amazing scientists. They are focused on that problem that keeps them up at night and they’re passionate about finding that. But they often forget to look up and figure out how the broader social context is impacting them. And so I really see our role at BIO as serving as that voice, that platform for them, and that bridge to the broader cultural conversation about what science can do.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/tech-mahindra
“Science is the social justice issue of our age. It is so critically important because when I think about those communities I grew up with in Oakland, what they needed was access to clean water. They needed access to nutritious foods. They needed clean air, and they needed to know that not only did they have access to healthcare, but once they got in the door of the doctor’s office they would actually have solutions in the medicine cabinet that would help them. And you only get all of those things through applying biotechnology to all of those problems and working without relenting. So this is what’s so critically important. We’ve seen this year with Covid that the rate of speed of developing a new Covid vaccine or Covid therapeutics has a disproportionate negative impact on communities of color because they’re disproportionately impacted by the illness. So every week we save in developing a new Covid vaccine is going to, by proportion, save more Black and Brown lives than it will others, although it’s important for all. And so it’s not to say that it’s more important for one community than the other, but it’s to say that it’s not enough for us just to focus on access to healthcare, although that is critically important when we’re talking about social justice. It’s also important that we’re talking about not slowing down, not giving up on that innovation engine because that innovation engine is lifesaving.”
There’s no excuse for the state we’re in
https://www.pcmag.com/news/readers-choice-awards-2021-antivirus-software-and-security-suites
“Well, let’s be clear. There is no excuse for where we find ourselves today. My mother-in-law lives in Germany, and she had an appointment in the middle of December for when she was going to get her first Covid vaccine. This is unbelievable that we would put this much attention into developing the vaccines and developing the therapeutics, and yet here we sit in January with the same therapeutics that were able to rescue the President sitting in freezers unused and vaccines being disposed of at the end of the day, because all of the content of the vial cannot be used because we cannot organize our response. It is astounding, and it is heartbreaking to watch.
https://www.pinterest.com/drweil/health-wellness/
“There’s no excuse for this. This is not rocket science. We’ve done mass vaccination programs before. And the CDC—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention— [had] been saying for months what would be necessary for the States to be able to actually deliver the vaccine, get shots in arms, but they weren’t given the resources. They weren’t given the attention it deserved. So States are just now, this week, getting their hands on the resources they need. We’ve been speaking to governors across the country. And, you know, we heard from one governor who said, ‘Well, I have boxes of the vaccine delivered, on pallets, and I have some resources to fund setting up clinics to deliver them. But I don’t have any funding, for example, to set up and train people on the IT system needed to track all the doses of the vaccine.’
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