← A Shot in the Arm Podcast
A Shot in the Arm Podcast
Fair Doses: Towards A Future of Vaccine Equity and Innovation with Dr. Seth Berkley
00:42:29
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- [00:01]
Ben Plumley
Welcome to A Shot in the Arm podcast. I'm your host, Ben Plumley, and this is a podcast about innovation and equity in global health. Because let's be honest about it, without equity, what is the point of innovation? And today's guest is someone who has a thoroughly unique view on the issues that we cover on this podcast. He was the founder and president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. He went on to be the Chief Executive officer of gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. He is now a senior advisor to Brown University's School of Public Health's Pandemic Center. And he's just published a new book, Fair Doses. An Insider's Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for vaccine equity. It's Dr. Seth Berkeley. Seth, welcome to A Shot in the Arm podcast.
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Dr. Seth Berkeley
Thank you for having me.
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Ben Plumley
Well, it is brilliant to have you on the show. It's been a long time coming and really excited to hear what is going on in your world. We're recording this on, I think, the day that our Health and Human Services Secretary decided the US Was pulling out of the International Non Communicable Diseases Declaration. But after such a stellar career, Seth, did you expect to be living in this current world of misinformation coming almost right from the top now?
- [01:31]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Well, you know, Ben, the real challenge, of course, is I think nobody expected the US to change this quickly and to be in such a state. And it isn't only misinformation and disinformation, but we'll come back to that. But it's also the cutting of science, the moving away from expertise, the idea that we do not consider this to be a priority. And the tragedy, of course, is if the agenda is to make America great again, cutting the great academic institutions that the whole world wants to come to, cutting research for things like cancer, there are no constituencies for this. And so this is really the challenge. But of course, vaccines, we have a long history of misinformation and disinformation. In fact, the first vaccine, the Smallpox vaccine, soon after it, it was explored, there were carvings of people with cow's horns coming out of their heads and all kinds of, you know, misinformation. And that's been continuous. The difference is, in those days, you could easily educate the population. You could get community leaders, whether they be religious leaders or local leaders to weigh in on this. Medical people, nurses, etc. Teachers. Today, it is being spread literally at the speed of light on the Internet. And then also, we've never seen this type of partisan divide. So it was tragic during COVID to see more Republicans die of COVID because they didn't take the vaccine than Democrats. This should not be divided bipartisanism.
- [03:13]
Ben Plumley
How do you think we got here? I asked that question because, as you know, I spent a good few years working with Heidi Larson and the Vaccine Confidence Project and then the Global Listening Project. And it seemed that we were, I don't know, moving into a perfect storm of a faster rate of replication of conspiracy theories, but also the use of these new technologies in digital and social media to spread them. That seemed to be a bit of the perfect storm. And we in the public health community really didn't know how to cope with it. What's your sense of how we got here?
- [03:56]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Well, I think all of that is absolutely right. Now, of course, what we also had was the pandemic in the middle of this. And, you know, people are reacting to things they didn't like in the pandemic and things like, you know, the issue of mandates. And I don't mean mandates for vaccines alone, but mandates for mask wearing or social distancing or staying at home. And so people are reacting to the whole collection of things. But of course, at the end, the hard part in a pandemic is on day one, you know, nothing. And so the experts have to use their expertise to give the best sense of what we know now. And then they got to change it and they have to change it all the time. And so if the, if the look is, oh, you changed it, you don't know what you're talking about. That's not really right. So, you know, six feet separation, where's the science for that? There was no science for that. But it is a sensible distancing, given what we know about droplet spread, aerosol spread, et cetera, that, you know, was worthy of having, giving some guidance. But of course, all of this has led to conspiracy theories. And then the other thing that's happened that has really changed is, you know, all of the Russian bots that were put in place to disinformation to try to destabilize democracy. But shockingly, you had Russian disinformation, you had North Korean, you had Chinese, but for the first time that I know of, you had the U.S. also putting, you know, information out to try to discredit Chinese vaccines. And of course, all of this come back, comes back to haunt us when it is we're trying to get people to have confidence in the recommendations that are in front of us.
- [05:39]
Ben Plumley
Now you, you said something interesting about the evolution of the science. And I Wonder if after the post war period, a time of great innovation, great success in medicine, do you think that the scientific community, I mean, it's the broader public health community as well, but particularly the science, that we just weren't really able to communicate the fact that science is about trial and error, it is about experimentation and learning as you go. And people were looking to leaders in the scientific community to provide the kind of absolute decree that they were sort of getting from conspiracy theorists in the websites of the world. Do you think there's something there that as we go forward, we need to think about as we prepare the next generation of clinical scientists for communicating what innovation is potentially offering the world?
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Dr. Seth Berkeley
So I mean, as, as you yourself are a C level communications expert, I think the answer of course is yes. But I think we have to keep in mind that we don't have the same sexiness that does a conspiracy theory which really drives our dopamine, you know, a brain in a certain direction and this idea of sticking with the facts and having a scientific method which by the way, inherently is skeptical. Our job is always to say, okay, this is the theory right now, let's try to challenge it and see if we can, you know, change it, make it better. That's what we do, that's how we learn. It's an iterative process. But then at the same time, you have a citizenry now that says, you know, listen, I went to Dr. Google, you know, and I know more than you do as a professional. And of course the truth is you don't. And you know, the challenge is in a moment in time when we are anti all expertise, it isn't only health expertise, it's climate expertise, it's legal expertise, it's a whole range of issues. We're in a difficult position. But for me, the communication challenge is important. In the introduction you didn't mention that I also founded Covax, which was an effort to get Covid vaccines out. And you know, one of the things we learned is we started out being, as usual in public health, completely transparent. And at the beginning we kind of said to people, here's what we're expecting, here's the doses we expect you'll get, here's when we'll expect you get them. But of course, in a pandemic, the supply chains aren't working, the manufacturing isn't working. And so we all of a sudden people took that as a guarantee that on this day we were going to receive this number of vaccines, which of course didn't happen. And then we Got into a position where, like, oh, maybe we shouldn't say those things. But then people are like, well, they're not talking, so, you know, there's a conspiracy going on. So it becomes very hard. And one of the lessons that I talk about in the book is you think you're communicating enough. You know, do three times as much as you think you need to in that circumstance, and try as much as you can to clarify that you can't be definitive. But, you know, here's what we know at the moment, and this is going to adjust. But those are hard messages when, as you say, the conspiracy theorists are so definitive in what they say.
- [09:20]
Ben Plumley
Coming back to fair doses, your book, you cover sort of the two key areas that I think are crucial for coming out of the COVID pandemic, and that is this question of equity and reaching people who needed it. And you rightly raised the Covax experience, which love to come back to, but also not hampering the innovation that is needed in order to generate the products that can then be used to build equity. And I just wonder now that you've had a bit of time to reflect where you think you got things right. And, well, I say you where we got things right and where perhaps we got things where we could have done things a little better.
- [10:10]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
So one of the interesting things is during the COVID pandemic, you know, probably, I would argue, and maybe you'd expect me to say this, but probably, probably the single greatest accomplishment of Donald Trump was Operation Warp Speed and basically opening the US treasury and saying, you know, we'll fund science here. And he, he put in place professional managers. He combined that with military supply chain people because of the importance of that. And, you know, I had said at the time, as a pundit, the fastest vaccine that had ever been made before that was four years. You know, that was the mumps vaccine. And I said, you know, maybe, maybe we can accelerate it to two years. And actually we did it in 327 days. This was remarkable. What was the technology? It was a new technology, Messenger RNA vaccines. What's happened since then? Now, in the second Trump administration, the Secretary of Health and Human Services talks about how dangerous they are. They've recently pulled contracts on them, they're stopping research on them now. Do we know everything about MRNA vaccines? We know an awful lot, and they've been in billions of people. But if you're concerned about something, what do you do as a scientist? You study it more. You try to do more research. You don't just Pull it. And the reason that's such a tragedy is the next time we have one of these, and it's evolutionarily certain we will, it may not have a mortality rate of one and a half to 2%. It could have a 20, 30, 40, 50% mortality rate. And, and every minute counts in that circumstance. And there is no faster technology than mRNA. So I would make, I would posit that we should be increasing research on MRNA now, not that that should be the. The vaccine we use for everything. There's existing vaccines that are safe and effective and easy to use, and we should continue to use those, but we should have these new tools, these new innovations. Is the term you used, ready to go for future outbreaks and pandemics. And, you know, we're tying both hands behind our back if we're not going to do that. And we're in fact, ceding that to the rest of the world because the rest of the world is following science, and the science suggests that these technologies are, you know, very useful for these purposes.
- [12:30]
Ben Plumley
And the MRNA platform itself, it's like the Ford transit of vaccine platforms and will inevitably be something that we're going to have to look at no matter what gets thrown at us going forward. But I am intrigued about your thoughts on just where we are in the global conversation about COVID and indeed future pandemics. I sat in on a Council on Foreign Relations webinar earlier this week, providing analysis on the speech that the President gave to the United Nations. Remarkably good, covering everything from the environment to the Middle east to European relationships to technology. But what struck me that was missing and is so surprising given that we've just come out of such a major geopolitical threat, was there was no conversation about global health. And I felt that we've lost our way, we've lost our place. And I don't know if that's something that you feel and what we might do to try and reclaim that territory. And by the way, that's why I think fair doses is such an important contribution to this conversation.
- [13:47]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Well, first of all, I fully agree with you. I have a piece, the lead piece in Time.com today is actually a piece on pulling away the funding and what an effect that has now. You know, one of the frustrations for me is, you know, when we were in the midst of the pandemic, we would say, you're only safe if everyone's safe, and everybody nodded. I don't think people believed it at the beginning, but when the Delta wave hit India and we saw those Horrible funeral pyres and the death going on. And then within a month, that strain was everywhere in the world. I think people began to understand that it is really about having a global perspective, not just a national perspective. I mean, you know, walls don't stop, viruses and vectors and you know, the movement of people, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I think we have to have a global effect. But after, after Covid, it has become a dirty word and it is not being discussed anywhere. And yet the virus is still with us, it is still killing people and we're still having new strains that are appearing. Luckily, so far those strains have been relatively mild and, and the vaccines have protected against severe disease and death. So we're in a better place. But there's nothing to say that we won't have a new strain that is going to be worse. So again, what we should we be doing at this moment is investing in science and technology, trying to create better MRNA vaccines, vaccines that for the future will protect against many strains or the strains that are likely to come in the future. I'm working with an AI company right now that is actually doing, doing that type of work, but also making sure that the world ultimately has vaccines that cover all the viruses. These are scientific challenges that are worthy of engagement and investment and should be done in a global perspective. But you know, what we're seeing is now a nationalism in research, a nationalism in view that is not conducive to that scientific model. And frankly, the US is going to lose its best scientists because they're going to go to other academic institutions. And just to say, yesterday, you know, in your home country, the UK just announced a new opening of a Moderna MRNA factory. You know, we're going to see companies also be picking up and moving to other places.
- [16:11]
Ben Plumley
Oh yes, absolutely. And you mentioned vaccine nationalism. And I suppose going back to my very first question, the opener, as I Did you expect to be living in this world? I certainly didn't expect after 20, 30 years of HIV, for us to be living in a vaccine nationalist world where, as you said, we thought we could keep these new viruses at bay from the borders. Looking at what you did with Covax, how did you attempt to deal with the vaccine nationalism? And particularly if you like, it came from a rearguard because it, it was coming from the very same countries that were supposedly investing in this sense of solidarity.
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Dr. Seth Berkeley
I mean, that's some of the most interesting stories in the book because how did we get involved with Kovac? So what happened was right at the Beginning when we knew that there was this new infection in China, but we didn't know was it spread from person to person. It was still a theory that it was from the Wuhan animal wet market and that, you know, with point from the market to people. But we began to hear rumors and Richard Hatchett, the CEO of the Coalition for Epidemics, Preparedness and Innovation and myself sat down in Davos and we said, look, you know, do we think this is the big one? Is it a dress rehearsal for the big one? Doesn't really matter. What we need to do is begin to prepare. And he actually gave the first grant and Moderna I just mentioned to make a clinical lot of their experimental vaccine. And I began to pull together the groups who would be involved. But why did we do that? We knew in previous pandemics that what would happen was wealthy countries would buy up all of the vaccines, meaning they'd be available for nobody. And we knew that that would happen. So the question was, how could we best try to get vaccines available for the rest of the world? Because the effective way the world to operate is to vaccinate all the high risk people in the world and then go to low risk people. That's how you best deal with a pandemic. Now if you ask me, do I believe that they're going to necessarily go to the high risk people in, in let's say in Africa or Asia before they do the US and Europe? You know, I'm not that naive. But the issue is you don't need to vaccinate all of the lowest risk in the US before you go to the other. So the issue was how do we do that? Now we started, we had no money, we had no people, and yet we had this ambition. And some of the lessons learned are why you need to have money immediately available, why you need to have surge capacity. But we were able ultimately to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccine to 146 countries. And it wasn't perfectly equitable. We ended up with a 57% primary vaccine coverage in the 92 poorest countries. That's about half of the population as compared to about 67% globally. So not perfectly equitable, but better than we've ever done before. But the nationalism one is the hardest because it is the job of a national leader to provide protection for their population. So we have to understand that. But it's getting those nationalist leaders to understand you can't just do your population. We have to be thinking about it as a global commons. And that's what we tried to do
- [19:37]
Ben Plumley
with COVID and talking about Global Commons. How do you feel about the move, the sort of the vaccine equity move to look at local or regional manufacture? It's become very much an advocacy cry if you like. But to my mind there is strong logic in ensuring that wants hopefully the might of the biotechnology field in the industrialized world has identified ways in which we can address and produce vaccines, that these could then be rolled out in a more sort of equitable regional way. And perhaps I'm being supremely naive in hoping that, but I'm certainly sensing so many countries that were grateful for Kovac's support but are saying never again are we going to be left behind. And you feel that very, very palpably.
- [20:33]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Well, it's a complicated question because if I go back to Gavi's history, we started with five suppliers in 2000, four of the five were in high income countries and by the time we ended up right before COVID we had 19 suppliers of the majority of which were in developing countries. So in a sense this is the natural history of things. Now that being said, vaccine manufacturing is really tough and getting the quality assurance, quality controls in place is very hard. It takes a long time, it's expensive. And an example China, a country that certainly has technological capability. It took decades for them to get the QA QC programs that they could get WHO qualifications. So we have to balance the this ultimate need which is to have global supply of vaccines and have it in all different regions with a reality that it requires a lot of work on building up the manpower of people in regulatory science, in bioengineering and other things. People think that building the factories is the hard part. That's not the hard part. You can do a TurnKey factory in six months. The really hard issue is going to be how do we get that manpower and in peacetime how do we continue to manufacture vaccines so that the skills that stay there, the, you know, the systems are ready and those are some of the complexities that need to be dealt with now. But of course, you know, I've spent my career trying to move technology forward and to move it and you worked with me years ago in IAVI as we began to move the testing of vaccines into developing countries, building world class laboratories and that becomes really important because those laboratories then become not just for HIV vaccines, but became the niduses of research in these countries going forward. So again, I'm very sorry to see all of these, many of them to be killed now and all of a sudden by the taking USAID to the woodshed and using a chainsaw on it rather than the scalpel. And you know, to see, see all of this science capability be destroyed, which is, is the base you have to build on to bring new technologies to regions that are going to be critical.
- [22:53]
Ben Plumley
So as you look forward in fair doses, you mentioned that, you know, we have lessons to learn not just for what happens next with COVID but, but for disease X or whatever we're calling it that is down the road. And I remember sitting in on a presentation that Prof. Johnna Mazatt of UC Davis gave, listing the infectious agents that kept her up awake at night. And I was hoping for maybe one or two, but to see that there were six or seven and that we actually knew where they were, that was quite a sobering moment. So how do you see the preparedness for the next invasion, as it were?
- [23:38]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
I mean, the answer is not good. And first of all, there's a long list, probably more than 6 or 7 of known agents. But then of course there's unknown agents. And you know, just to mention for the listeners, you know, we are way past due having a bio, a successful bioterrorism effort, why we now have synthetic biology. It's much easier to do it. The number of labs that have the capability, the reagents are available, and obviously the Internet and sharing of information, AI. So we are going to see that. So how do you prepare for that? You create really good surveillance systems. You make sure they're global because you don't know where these are going to appear. And you empower healthcare workers to be able to deliver services to wherever it is in the world. Now for me, vaccines are a great tool for that. We took vaccines and we talk about this in the book, from less than 5% of people in the world in the 1970s having access to just one vaccine, much less all of them, to having about 90 plus percent of the world's children having access to at least one vaccine in, in the routine system. So that last 10% is not being reached. That's about 50% of the mortality sits in that group. And so it's really important to be, to be doing that. And most of them are below the poverty line. But the point is you can build that system out to deliver routine vaccines, which helps in their health and helps with epidemics. But at the same time it builds that system that if something occurs in, in those communities, you have a health worker who can pass that up the chain. And also when you need interventions, they can get those out. And during COVID you know, we were. The routine vaccines dropped a little bit, and that was a tragedy. But those health workers delivered three times the number of vaccines that have been delivered before and delivered them to elderly populations, health care workers, people with chronic diseases. So it showed the resiliency of the system. That's what we have to build. And what are we doing instead, where we're slashing and cutting, we're cutting research funds, we're cutting laboratories, we're not investing in these things. And that is just a disaster waiting to happen.
- [26:00]
Ben Plumley
And I am really pleased that you raised the issue of bioterrorism. And it's something that, as you know, somebody tries to join the dots between various geopolitical trends. It's something that we've really not done a good job, neither the global security community nor the global health community, frankly, in preparing or at least getting the conversation started about what might happen there. And as you rightly say, synthetic agents could be developed. We know we have the technology broadly for some of that. Why do you think from the global health side, we've not been able to get seats at the security agenda?
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Dr. Seth Berkeley
Well, I mean, we have. And one of the things I talk about in the book is my attending the Munich security conference, for example, for a number of years. And so there has been some attention, but it's also a mindset difference. So one of the things that I talk about in the book is when we started, we didn't have any money. We started to cut deals with companies, and it turned out these were pretty easy to make vaccines because we had done research before on SARS and mers and the science kind of had been solved. And so most of the vaccines were successful. But imagine if a number of those vaccines failed and we invested billions of dollars of public sector money in development finance in complete failures. And my head would have been on a stake. But the reason I bring that up is if you look at defense preparedness is so important. They have redundant systems, they spend unbelievable amounts of money, some would argue wasting, but they do it because that redundancy is important. And in public health and in global health, we worry about every dollar, every potential wastage, and those mindsets need to change. So again, one of the discussions we talked about, I didn't succeed this, but during COVID people were very worried about wasted vaccines. And so countries wanted to donate the vaccines before they expired, so it didn't show up bad on them. And you know, one of the things I said is, listen, if you G7 leaders or you G20 leaders can come together and say, you know, we all have vaccines that are getting wasted. It would help the world to understand that this is part of the process. You want more vaccine and then perhaps to get rid of it, then you want less vaccine and not having enough. And I couldn't get anybody to do it. In the book I talk about Switzerland very transparently posted all of the amounts that they over purchased. But we knew every single country, based upon the orders that we knew about, had way over purchased many different, by the way, vaccines. And that's rational because again, the job of the leader is to protect their citizens. So you don't want to just order one vaccine because maybe it's not going to work. So you order three, four, five of them. Next thing you know you have massive excess. And later on we had to adjust Kovacs to take those vaccines and transfer them. Not because we thought that's a great way to supply vaccines, but we also wanted to make sure that, you know, the vaccines were put to good use. And so again, these are lessons learned for going forward.
- [29:16]
Ben Plumley
And I guess you also have the issue of shelf life of some of these vaccines. And how do you make sure that beneficial recipient countries, I should say, are able to access vaccines that are at least going to have a shelf life long enough for them to be able to use them and distribute them.
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Dr. Seth Berkeley
That was a terrible problem. And initially countries were, you know, they would hold onto the vaccines to the last minute to see if they needed it because they didn't want to have, you know, oh my God, we gave these vaccines away, we need them. And then they would, you know, panically try to give them. And there wasn't enough time to plan and do that work. And at one point we came together, the African CDC and the AU and ourselves and who and everybody came together and put out a statement saying, no, we're not going to take these vaccines anymore. You have to give the countries enough time to do the planning to get them there with enough time to distribute them, you know, as a critical priority. And we're able to shift from that. But you know, initially that's not the way people act in those types of emergency situations. And so again, you know, the challenge is we didn't do it perfectly, but we want to make sure as those lessons learned really should be brought into future discussions on how to move forward.
- [30:32]
Ben Plumley
During our discussion today, Seth, I am really struck by sort of a brewing anger I can see in you over the willful destruction of the American clinical research infrastructure. And that's something I Absolutely. Share as well. And it's not clear to me that this could be repaired within another administration, hopefully with a different worldview to clinical research. But the question I have for you on that is what happens if the US doesn't come back to the table? Where do you see the future of the kind of clinical research that does build equity for vaccines, for treatments, for other preventative technologies? Where do you see that coming from?
- [31:23]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Well, I mean, the tragedy has been the US has been, you know, probably the leader certainly in financing. And I think we have to think also about the domestic expenditure. So one of the things to talk about is what's happened to the academic situation in the US with the cuts of funding to those academic institutions and, you know, the cuts to the research institutions and, and the regulatory institutions, et cetera, et cetera, all of that is having an effect and that will affect the next generation of students. You know, my daughter is a up and coming medical student and when she looks at the question, should I do research or not, it's going to be affected by the current state of where the research is in the world. So I really do feel terrible about that because you know what, we all are going to have health challenges in the future. As we live longer lives, as we conquer infectious diseases, we're going to need that research to be able to deal with the chronic diseases as well. And that needs to happen. But what will happen over time, of course, is that other countries will take that leadership role and we'll see companies that, you know, move in other places. I think we're also going to see domestic resources becoming much more important for developing countries and they're going to have to invest more in there. But by definition it's going to move much slower in that circumstance, given the amount of money that countries have to invest in it and the ability to kind of drive science. So what we're doing is just as we're in this miracle moment of science and an alignment of engineering and, and chemistry and physics and biology coming together where we can talk about getting rid of these terrible diseases in front of us, we're just throwing a monkey wrench in it and for no apparent reason. And this to me is just such a challenge.
- [33:21]
Ben Plumley
Yeah. I have to say I have at the back of my mind, and I don't know if this is a good vision or a bad vision, depends. But a sense of Europe, India and China being increasing hubs of innovation. And we see some of the scientists, of course, moving to Europe and you mentioned the Moderna factory being established in the United Kingdom and you know, that with efforts to improve local manufacture and regional manufacture from Brazil and perhaps some of the innovators that are coming through in the continent of Africa. But it does leave the US strangely out of it. And that feels really deeply, deeply disturbing because it's nothing that you or I, in our lifetimes would ever have imagined could be the case.
- [34:15]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Well, I mean, the US is obviously not out of everything. I mean, there certainly has been a push for crypto, for push for now, AI as a, as a race, but you know, we're not thinking completely about it. So on the AI race, you know, we haven't kept up on our energy sources. Now there's a, you know, worry about shortages of electricity. Meanwhile, China has been building electricity like crazy and has been building green systems and leading in the green economy. And you know, an example of how this is playing out, we just heard about the $100,000 H1B visa, you know, new rules that were thrown in place. China has just put in place new visa rules encouraging engineers, scientists to come to China and work and to have financing. So it's not like others are going to stand by as the US goes through this kind of unusual, non scientifically driven rethink of its priorities. And, and I think that that really is a tragedy. But hopefully the AI will be used for good. And as I said, I'm seeing areas in science where it really is making a difference. And so hopefully the US will still have a role to play, but it isn't going to lead in all the areas if we continue to behave this way.
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Ben Plumley
And again, you're ticking all the plus points for me by bringing in the environment, bringing in crypto, bringing in AI and joining those dots. Seth, I've always said this about you, but I think you really do epitomize the sort of the renaissance thinking that we need to really bring back into our global health conversations and our presence, whether it's the Munich security conference or wherever. So you're at Brown, you're advising the pandemic center there. What's next for Seth? What's on your horizons?
- [36:15]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Just to be clear, working with Brown is one of the 11 things I'm doing right now. So it's a part time position and I'm actually living still in Europe. I'm working with companies around the world and what I really care about is technology for equity. And so the way to kind of describe this in an easy way is I'm trying to do the same thing I did at Gavi but now from the other side, how do we create better technologies for needleless vaccine delivery? How do we make create better antigens? How do we use AI to create new antimicrobial agents that can work very narrowly for antimicrobial resistance? How do we create better pandemic facilities and preparedness, you know, etc. Etc. So those are the types of things I'm working on. And again, you know, the science is exquisite, but of course, today, if you're working in the biotech sector, very hard to raise money for vaccines. Given the attitude and the uncertainty that exists in people looking for an exit in some reasonable time, eventually that will come back. But how that delays some of these new science approaches. And what's exciting. We talked already about what's happening with mRNA, but you know, we're going to go to personalized vaccines, we're going to have personalized treatments for cancer, for chronic diseases, for neurologic diseases. We're seeing science able to have an effect there with these new tools. And all of this is going to require, you know, a leaning in an acceleration of science to get the full possibilities that exist out there. And right now it's hard to see how that's going to play out given some of the complexities that are going on. But as I said, I don't think it's going to get stopped. I think it's just going to move to different places and maybe have a higher barrier, which is unfortunate, but hopefully we will get there.
- [38:14]
Ben Plumley
Well, I see, Seth, that we're getting to the top of the hour. I'm just wondering, what have we missed? What are the things that you would like a shot in the arms or audience of viewers and listeners really to. To take home as a message?
- [38:29]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Well, I think one of the important things is how do we inspire the next generation of leaders? I mean, you and I are up there in years and we need to continue to have people who pay attention to these issues. So one of the things I did in a book is I actually have a short chapter on kind of my own history. And one of the stories that's important, important in that is unlike being, let's say a cardiac surgeon, where you know exactly what courses you have to take, what center you have to go to, what research you have to publish, you know, global health is much more meandering and you have to find advisors for people. But I do think these are really important issues at the end of the day. And we hear this from people. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything. And so even people who are hard driving in another area, you know, all of a sudden when they themselves get a health issue, all of a sudden realize that. And so I think this area of health, global health research is going to be critical going forward. It's never AI is never going to replace all of it. And so I hope we can continue to inspire the next generation to engage in this and also to make sure that the world continues to finance this. You know, every country should do their own part. And so it's going to be more national, but we have this transnational part of it that is going to be important. And, you know, that's what we've been working on for the last 40 years. And I think that work continues to be critical.
- [39:58]
Ben Plumley
Absolutely. Well, Seth, thank you so much for giving us some time. From Europe today, Seth Berkley, author of Fair Doses I presume you can get it from all decent bookstores around the world. Did you do an audiobook version of it?
- [40:16]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
There is an audiobook version. Unfortunately, I didn't do it. Somebody a very good reader did it, but afterwards I was told maybe I should have done it, but I didn't know at the time. So somebody else is reading the book.
- [40:30]
Ben Plumley
Hey, well, I don't know if this is a good thing or not for the sequel. Anyway, thanks again so much, Seth.
- [40:39]
Dr. Seth Berkeley
Thank you, Ben. And good to see you.
- [40:40]
Ben Plumley
Good to see you. Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks to Seth Berkeley for his insights in what I think was a really jam packed, powerful episode. Thanks also to our director and producer, Erica Sparrow of a shot in the ARM media. And finally, a big thanks to you. Don't forget you can subscribe and download your audio podcasts wherever you download. Download your podcasts and don't forget that you can find us on our YouTube channel where we're trying to build up subscribers. That's www.YouTube.com hotarmpodcast and we'll include that in the show notes. So just remains for me to wish you a great week and a safe week, everyone.