A Shot in the Arm
Vaccines are underfunded, understudied, and underappreciated as a vital tool in public health. Could COVID-19 be the start of a vaccine renaissance?
Maurice Hilleman woke suddenly. It was near 1 a.m. on March 23, 1963, when his 5-year-old daughter, Jeryl Lynn, tottered into the bedroom and announced that she was feeling unwell. Her throat was swollen, and she was hot with a fever. Hilleman, an esteemed microbiologist who, over the course of his career, would develop more than 40 vaccines that would save millions of lives made an educated guess that she was sick with mumps. As a father, he saw a sick daughter he wanted to help. As a scientist, he saw an opportunity he didn’t want to miss. He got out of bed, jumped in his car, and cruised off in the middle of the night to his laboratory in the Philadelphia offices of the pharmaceutical company Merck. A little while later, he returned home with a few cotton swabs and a vial of chicken broth. He woke Jeryl Lynn,