I am thrilled to see Dr. Katalin Karik\u00f3 and her research partner Dr. Drew Weissman win the Nobel Prize in medicine for their work on messenger RNA (mRNA).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just that their years of work provided the basis for the mRNA vaccines against Covid that have saved so many lives and protected even more people from serious illness. More important to me is that Dr. Karik\u00f3 stuck to her research despite being shoved aside \u2014 she\u2019s an adjunct professor \u2014 and never getting grants.<\/p>\n
She believed in the potential for mRNA and she was right even though no one paid any attention to her except Dr. Weissman. \u201cNo one\u201d includes prestigious journals like Nature<\/i> and Science<\/i>.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of implications in all this.<\/p>\n
First, I find Dr. Karik\u00f3 an excellent role model for scientists, inventors, writers, artists, activists, and the many others who have a vision of something that can be done. Hang in there. You might succeed in what you\u2019re doing and even might be recognized for it.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s admit that being recognized is a long shot, especially in one\u2019s lifetime. All too many of our great artists and even scientists died broke, with their work only being acknowledged much later.<\/p>\n
I suspect it is even more common that people do good work that never gets noticed, maybe never even gets used. It\u2019s not them, it\u2019s the system, and we are all the poorer for those losses.<\/p>\n
And of course, some people hang onto a vision that is, in fact, lunacy. In truth, though, I think far more people who have a vision worth pursuing give up because it\u2019s too damn hard.<\/p>\n
I tend to hope that everyone who sees something important, something vital, something perhaps only they see stays with it despite a lack of support. This is core to our humanity. <\/p>\n
But some of the other implications are disturbing.<\/p>\n
For one thing, I\u2019m pretty sure that Dr. Karik\u00f3\u2019s career was sidelined because of misogyny and perhaps because as an immigrant without much money she didn\u2019t have clout. I doubt it had much to do with merit. (I\u2019m currently reading Arline T. Geronimus\u2019s book Weathering<\/i>, and I can see how her thesis that unjust society puts extraordinary stress on marginalized people would apply to Dr. Karik\u00f3.)<\/p>\n
The other reason no one was funding the research is that the pharmaceutical industry and perhaps even the government and other research funders didn\u2019t see a big profit in mRNA.<\/p>\n
Of course, the people who made the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have reaped a lot of profit, much of it from government investment. But until the pandemic hit, no one thought it was important.<\/p>\n
Now I suspect there will be other vaccines, with perhaps great improvement in some, because the lines for profit are obvious.<\/p>\n
It seems to me that Dr. Karik\u00f3\u2019s experience shows some very deep flaws in how we as a society figure out how to fund research. There\u2019s certainly more money to be made in playing games with drug patents and coming up with new uses for old drugs, not to mention trying to convince regulators that very expensive drugs that do very little, if anything \u2014 say ones for Alzheimer\u2019s, since people are desperate for treatment for that \u2014 should be paid for by Medicare.<\/p>\n
In the US, there has long been a bias against funding \u201cpure\u201d research, that is research that doesn\u2019t have any obvious and immediate use. But near as I can tell, most things that turn out to be useful started out as \u201cI wonder what would happen\u201d research.<\/p>\n
As with most things, you don\u2019t always know where something will lead, so following something that just looks interesting may well provide a basis for something life-saving fifty years from now. Short-term thinking is almost always short-sighted.<\/p>\n
Dr. Karik\u00f3 has been vindicated, but don\u2019t forget that kind of vindication is very rare.<\/p>\n
That said, I\u2019d like to encourage everyone to do the work they think matters, regardless of whether it pays. I realize this is a world that revolves around money and that not having enough to live decently makes life very difficult.<\/p>\n
But if you believe in your work, find a way to do it. I won\u2019t say starve; I\u2019d probably say find a day job that doesn\u2019t drive you nuts and gives you time for your work. But don\u2019t give it up just because something else might make you rich or at least give you what passes for normal life.<\/p>\n
Having enough to get by on without stress is important, but rich isn\u2019t. And normal is highly overrated.<\/p>\n
Do what you love, but don\u2019t expect to be vindicated.<\/p>\n
But do join me in being glad to see that Dr. Karik\u00f3 was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am thrilled to see Dr. Katalin Karik\u00f3 and her research partner Dr. Drew Weissman win the Nobel Prize in medicine for their work on messenger RNA (mRNA). It\u2019s not just that their years of work provided the basis for the mRNA vaccines against Covid that have saved so many lives and protected even more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[775,604],"class_list":["post-2976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-katalin-kariko","tag-nobel-prize"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2977,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2976\/revisions\/2977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}