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October 29,2021
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To the Editor:
I enjoyed reading Alison Li’s article, Rethinking the “discovery” of insulin (1). Her point was that the life-saving injection of insulin into 13 year old Leonard Thompson, a type 1 diabetic, was not solely the outcome of Banting’s eureka moment. Rather, the experiments were based on the foundational work of international researchers, and ultimately brought to fruition by the persistence of an interdisciplinary team. The public needs to see more well-written articles such as this about how science works, in order to understand that apparent breakthroughs are usually based on small research steps that advance knowledge incrementally.
There is a parallel with the history of mRNA vaccines. (2). If one were to conduct a public survey, asking the question how long did the development of effective anti-COVID-19 mRNA vaccines take, I suspect that most would answer between two to five years. The correct answer is closer to 30 years, even 50, if all stepping- stone research were to be acknowledged.
One of the oft-cited objections to taking the mRNA vaccine is that it is “experimental” i.e. very new. Were the public to understand that mRNA vaccines against influenza were proven effective in an animal model in the 1990s, there may have been higher acceptance.
Science and technology play such an important role in our society. There may be fraudulent schemes, attempted cover-ups, and individual bad actors that cast a shadow...Competing Interests: None declared.References
- Alison Li. Rethinking the “discovery” of insulin. CMAJ 2021;193:E1636-E1637.
- Dolgin E. The tangled history of mRNA vaccines, Nature 14 Sept 2021