Thread by @mariliacout

1. My husband called my attention to some offensive, entitled, and childish comments about an alleged "failure" of the scientific community to come up with other vaccines, since the SARS-Cov-2 vaccine was achieved so fast.

historyofvaccines.org/content/articl…

2. The comparisons were with HIV and cancer. They left out malaria, several other lethal bacterial and virus-caused diseases. This entitled attitude, as well as hatred for science, used to be a feature of American culture, part of its "exceptionalism".

skepticalinquirer.org/2018/03/e-war-…

3. Unfortunately, the US has exported this damaging historical trend together with its evangelical fundamentalism and the right wing terrorist threat they represent. So maybe we should make the war on the war on science global.

4. Let's think about AIDS. I was a young molecular parasitologist, studying Trypanosoma cruzi, the causing agent of Chagas Disease, when AIDS was identified. Like everyone my age, I was scared. It was 1981.

nature.com/articles/d4285…

5. We followed every line published on AIDS and how Luc Montagnier's team identified the HIV virus. What most people don't know, but we did, is that several other labs were on the same track, as is the rule in important scientific quests.

6. Once the virus was isolated, it was *everyone's* hope in the scientific community that a surface protein binding to the human cell receptors would be identified. Forty years and billions of dollars later, we are still not there.

unaids.org/en/resources/p…

7. Meanwhile the epidemic took its natural route and new strains of the virus emerged, making the task harder. There is still hope.

jnj.com/latest-news/th…

8. Whether the scientific community can or cannot solve a vaccine problem depends only in part on how much money and institutional weight is invested in the quest. Most of the factors are molecular in nature and they defeat the best scientific efforts.

microbiologysociety.org/publication/pa…

9. The protozoan Plasmodium, the causing agent of malaria, was discovered in 1897. The full cycle of the protozoan was only finally elucidated in 1982 and we are still learning.

parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21563…

10. As far as I can remember, labs in the most well-funded health research centers were after the vaccine. The malaria vaccine was the Holy Grail of molecular parasitology. Yet, no vaccine.

nature.com/articles/d4285…

11. Malaria kills every year around 400,000 people and there are an estimated 229 million cases of malaria worldwide. It is not a minor disease.

who.int/news-room/fact…

12. I can go on and on, adding items that both educate and reveal the deep disrespect and disdain that anti-intellectualism spreads with its ugly tentacles. The reason vaccines against one pathogen can be developed faster than others depends both on the investment...

13. ... and on the molecular nature of the challenge, as has been hopefully shown in this thread.

As for cancer, the childish question is even more baffling. Cancer is a product of the organism's own cells' transformation by genetic mutation or chromosomal anomalies.

14. The term "cancer vaccine" refers to cancer immunotherapy and can hardly be compared to vaccine development against external pathogens.

nature.com/articles/35074…

15. If one is uneducated in a scientific matter, one needs to *ask* and learn how to learn, which starts by respecting those who give their lives to shed light into the darkness and generate knowledge.

16. It is not one's place to throw irresponsible allegations in the wind and move on to the next bitching context just because one is bored, frustrated and entitled.

In the war against obscurantism, there is a place for battles against this attitude.

17. If that hypothetical "one" is you, you are part of the problem, you are on the side of obscurantism and well, you are our enemy.

@threadreaderapp unroll