Thread by @IshaanKDesai

“If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

—Malcolm X, December 1964

fortune.com/worlds-greates…

I’m a big science fan (🧬!) and admire the stellar people whose effort has yielded—in record time—novel mRNA vaccines for #COVID19.

People like @NIH’s Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, who brought years of prior #coronavirus research to bear on this dire crisis.

time.com/collection/tim…

But these aren’t the folks spotlighted in @FortuneMagazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.

Moderna & Pfizer executives are uniquely revered, even as they (and the govts backing them) uphold a system of global #VaccineApartheid.

Where are their vaccines being used? ⬇️(as of 5/14)

In our violently unequal world, we should interrogate facile notions of “leadership” that obscure our duties to one another.

“The urgency of the hour calls for leaders not in love with money but in love with justice,” said Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956.

forbes.com/sites/forbesdi…

The breathtaking race to a vaccine surely required laudable stewardship & decision-making.

But if “greatness is determined by service”—to again invoke Dr. King—there’s much more these leaders must do to be deemed great.

Prioritizing profits over the poor isn’t great leadership.

Nor is denying others access to knowledge & technology—much of it generated with public financing—that’s meant to serve humanity.

@WHO has set up mechanisms to facilitate such “tech transfer” globally. @moderna_tx & @pfizer have thus far rejected them.

latimes.com/world-nation/s…

So has @POTUS, defying the counsel of his chief medical adviser, Dr. Tony Fauci.

When @PIH’s @AncitoEtienne asked if the U.S. should join one such mechanism, Dr. Fauci responded emphatically in the affirmative.

#PeoplesVaccine #NoCovidMonopolies

Paul Farmer wrote these words 25 years ago. That they’re just as apt today is an indictment of our society, a reflection of moral bankruptcy, a far cry from the “greatness” with which we credit ourselves.

The good news is that pharma executives still have the potential to be great (even historic) leaders, as do @JoeBiden & his @WHCOVIDResponse team.

They need only heed the inspired words of one of the brilliant scientists who helped develop their vaccine, @KizzyPhD. ⬇️