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nobel prize
Nobel Prize for mRNA Researchers Shows Power of Public Funding for Vaccines, Campaigners Say
"Public funding delivers incredible medical advances and that should be a priority for all countries, but pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted to share technology with the world."
Oct 02, 2023
Scientists Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for research that paved the way for the messenger RNA vaccines against Covid-19—critical work that, as campaigners quickly pointed out, benefited from substantial U.S. government funding.
Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni, policy co-lead for the People's Vaccine Alliance, said in a statement that "this award challenges the claim that it was solely big pharmaceutical companies who saved the world from Covid-19."
"Just like the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, Karikó and Weissman's groundbreaking work on mRNA vaccines received a huge amount of public funding," said Kamal-Yanni. "Pharmaceutical companies have refused to share mRNA technologies with developers and researchers in developing countries."
The Nobel Prize committee credited Karikó and Weissman with fundamentally changing "our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system."
"The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times," the committee said.
As The Washington Postsummarized, the pair "discovered how to chemically tweak messenger RNA, turning basic biology into a technology ready to change the world when the pandemic struck. Their discovery is incorporated into the coronavirus vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, which have now been given billions of times."
But the Post and other major outlets covering Karikó and Weissman's Nobel prize-winning contributions did not emphasize—or even mention—that some of the scientists' work was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Karikó and Weissman patented their findings in 2006 and later licensed the patents to Moderna and BioNTech, Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine partner.
According to an analysis by Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), Weissman "appears as the principal investigator on a total of 42 projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between 1998 and 2020, representing $18,323,060 in costs."
"Karikó was the principal investigator of four projects funded by the NIH between 2007 and 2011, totaling $1,234,462 in costs," KEI observed. "In other words, the United States government funded and has certain rights over at least some of the foundational Karikó and Weissman patents directed to mRNA discoveries."
"As governments discuss how to prepare for the next pandemic, they should learn from the story of mRNA."
Throughout the pandemic and into the present, vaccine makers such as Pfizer and Moderna have opposed global calls to share their vaccine recipes and technology with the world, fiercely clinging to their monopoly control over production and using that control to force governments into one-sided contracts favorable to the pharmaceutical industry—even though their vaccines were developed with massive public support.
A
study published in The BMJ earlier this year estimated that the U.S. government pumped nearly $32 billion into the development, production, and purchase of mRNA coronavirus vaccines.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, has declined to use its ownership of key patents or the leverage provided by public funding to force pharmaceutical companies to do everything they can to ensure the equitable distribution of lifesaving vaccine technology.
Kamal-Yanni of the People's Vaccine Alliance said Monday that "fortunately, Weissman is helping a WHO-backed mRNA program which aims to develop mRNA technology in lower-income countries, even while pharmaceutical companies refuse to share their know-how."
"As governments discuss how to prepare for the next pandemic, they should learn from the story of mRNA," said Kamal-Yanni. "Public funding delivers incredible medical advances and that should be a priority for all countries, but pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted to share technology with the world."
Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at Public Citizen, echoed that message, saying in a statement that "today's Nobel must ring as a call for equity and health justice, and a call to change a massively unjust pharmaceutical industry."
"Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech still largely control the available vaccines and in some countries have significantly increased their price, despite the billions in public funding on which the vaccines rely," said Maybarduk. "By supporting initiatives to share science and technology, and by funding vaccine infrastructure, governments can help blunt the effects of disease, and bring a coda of justice to a terribly unjust time."
This story has been updated to include a statement from Public Citizen.
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Demanding 'Global Peace Dividend,' Nobel Laureates Call for 2% Cut in World's Military Spending
"We propose that half of the resources freed up by this agreement are allocated to a global fund, under U.N. supervision, to address humanity’s grave common problems: pandemics, climate change, and extreme poverty."
Dec 15, 2021
In a move they say will save $1 trillion over five years "to fight planetary emergencies" like "pandemics, climate change, and extreme poverty," a group of over 50 Nobel laureates this week published an open letter calling on countries to generate a "global peace dividend" by reducing their military spending by 2%.
"Humankind faces risks that can only be averted through cooperation. Let us cooperate, instead of fighting among ourselves."
"World military spending has doubled since 2000. It is approaching $2 trillion U.S. dollars per year, and is increasing in all regions of the world," the letter--which is being coordinated by physicists Carlo Rovelli and Matteo Smerlak--states.
"Individual governments are under pressure to increase military spending because others do so," the signers continue. "The feedback mechanism sustains a spiraling arms race--a colossal waste of resources that could be used far more wisely."
The letter's signatories include mostly Nobel science and medicine laureates, as well as a handful of winners in the peace, economics, and literature categories. The heads of several national academies also signed, and Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner the Dalai Lama expressed his "appreciation and support" for the initiative.
\u201chttps://t.co/mqiV2q7W4h It is out!! 50 Nobels, including the Dalai Lama, support the "Simple Proposal to humankind": resources to address the planetary urgencies by a negotiated global decrease of military spending. Please sign in support!! #GlobalPeaceDividend @GlobalPeaceDivd\u201d— carlo rovelli (@carlo rovelli) 1639437309
"Past arms races have often had the same outcome: deadly and destructive conflicts," the signers note. "We have a simple proposal for humankind: The governments of all U.N. member-states should negotiate a joint reduction of their military expenditure by 2% every year for five years."
"We propose that half of the resources freed up by this agreement are allocated to a global fund, under U.N. supervision, to address humanity's grave common problems: pandemics, climate change, and extreme poverty."
"The other half remains at the disposal of individual governments," the signers explain. "All countries will therefore have significant new resources. Some of these can be used to redirect the strong research capacities of military industries towards urgently needed peaceful applications."
\u201cMore than 50 Nobel laureates have signed an appeal for a "Global Peace Dividend", proposing that states decide a 2% reduction of their military spending and to use these funds to fight against climate change, pandemics, and extreme poverty. Read, co-sign:\nhttps://t.co/xjYjCEVOyN\u201d— Wolfgang Lucht (@Wolfgang Lucht) 1639517135
"History shows that agreements to limit the proliferation of weapons are achievable: thanks to the SALT and START [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and Strategic Arms Reduction] treaties, the United States and the Soviet Union have reduced their nuclear arsenals by 90% since the 1980s," the letter states--its only reference to specific countries.
With a military budget of $778 billion, the United States spends more annually on its armed forces than the next 11 nations combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The U.S. is followed by China ($252 billion), India ($72.9 billion), Russia ($61.7 billion), and the United Kingdom ($59.2 billion)--all of which increased their military spending in 2020.
\u201cU.S. military: "Disposing toxic chemicals is too expensive, so we have to release it into Okinawa's water."\n\nU.S. military budget: $778 billion\u201d— Rob Kajiwara \uff5c\u6bd4\u5609\u5b5d\u660c\uff5c \u9b4f\u5b5d\u660c \ud83c\udf42 (@Rob Kajiwara \uff5c\u6bd4\u5609\u5b5d\u660c\uff5c \u9b4f\u5b5d\u660c \ud83c\udf42) 1631068114
"Such negotiations can succeed because they are rational: each actor benefits from its adversaries' armaments reduction, and so does humanity as a whole," the letter's signatories assert. "Humankind faces risks that can only be averted through cooperation. Let us cooperate, instead of fighting among ourselves."
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Empty Gestures or Substantive Change? On the Nobel Prize in Literature and Its Discontents
To be meaningful, post-colonial writers who adhere to what should have remained a radical form of anti-colonialism should become the heart and soul of the literary movement, not only in the Global South but throughout the world.
Oct 19, 2021
The fact that Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature is welcome news, especially as the Swedish Academy is historically known for lacking in diversity, as if intellectual creativity is largely confined to Western intellectual circles.
It is premature to suggest that the Academy has finally decided to break away from its ethnocentric past and genuinely embrace the incredible literature constantly originating from the Global South. One can be excused for appearing too cynical--after all, since its inception in 1901, over 80% of those who have received the award hail from Europe and North America. In the last decade, Chinese novelist, Mo Yan, was the only non-Western author to receive the award in 2012.
What is required is a systematic rewriting of history, from the point of view of the colonized, and the reclaiming of every part of the literary narrative, starting with the very research methodology.
This raises several grim possibilities:
First, the Academy does not believe that the Global South is making real intellectual, literary contributions to world culture and literature, and that only Western authors are capable of producing literature that is relatable and truly speaks to the human condition.
Second, the Academy and its judges have not done their due diligence in uncovering the literary brilliance that can be found in every nation throughout the Global South.
Third, the award is, essentially, political and is denied to authors and writers who attempt to correct fallacious colonial narratives, push for radical decolonization--in politics, culture, literature and language--and do not adhere to the watered-down version of post-colonialism as championed by Western academic institutions of today.
Gurnah, I am sure, is most deserving of the award. However, what truly matters is not that an author of African origin has finally won the award after the Academy's neglect of Africa for nearly fifteen years. The last African novelist was a white British-Zimbabwean author, Doris Lessing (born to British parents in Iran, in 2007. What matters is that we--Western academia and audience, especially--truly engage with the writings of these great intellectuals.
If such awards merely serve as a simple nod and symbolic acknowledgment of how Western colonialism in Africa--and throughout the Global South--has resulted in irreversible harm to shattered, impoverished and colonized societies, then the gesture is an empty one. To be meaningful, post-colonial writers who adhere to what should have remained a radical form of anti-colonialism should become the heart and soul of the literary movement, not only in the Global South but throughout the world.
It does matter that Kenya's celebrated author, novelist, poet and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o is yet to win the Nobel prize in literature. The man who has challenged the world's view on language and literature in his book 'Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature', is the very manifestation, not only of Africa's literary genius but of the true organic intellectual. Thiong'o was once imprisoned in post-colonial Kenya for writing a play in Gikuyu, his mother tongue, and not in English.
"Black intellectual tradition has given so much to the rest of the world, but this is often invisible," he wrote in his seminal book. The reason behind the invisibility of the 'Black intellectual tradition'--among others--is that they write in languages other than dominant European languages.
However, it is not just the language, but what the language itself relays. When authors write in their mother tongue, their target audience is their own people. They appeal to their grievances and priorities; they speak of their aspirations, and their words are rooted in the collective history of their own nations. Unfortunately, though unsurprisingly, this is of no relevance to a Stockholm-based Academy, which was established decades before the formal end of Western colonialism in Africa.
In his consequential book 'The Wretched of the Earth', Black intellectual Frantz Fanon was one of the early revolutionary voices to address the issue of intellectual decolonization.
"Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well," he wrote. This is not done for the sake of an award, an academic recognition or a literary honor. Instead, it is a prerequisite to truly liberating Africa--and the rest of the Global South--from its ongoing dependency on the validation of the West.
For true decolonization to take place, radical language on its own is hardly enough. What is required is a systematic rewriting of history, from the point of view of the colonized, and the reclaiming of every part of the literary narrative, starting with the very research methodology. According to Maori author, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, modern research is modeled around Western priorities.
"From the vantage point of the colonized, a position from which I write, and choose to privilege, the term 'research' is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. The word itself, 'research', is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary," Tuhiwai Smith wrote in her important book, 'Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples.'
History "is the story of the powerful and how they became powerful, and then how they use their power to keep them in positions in which they can continue to dominate others," she wrote.
Sometimes, conditional validations and limited concessions through awards and other similar nods of approval can themselves be an attempt at "dominating others."
Ultimately, it is not the awards that matter but what has been researched and written, and its impact on making the world a more equitable place.
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