Jacob Trefethen
@JacobTref
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Program director @open_phil , science
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Joined June 2015
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Fun interview to record. We talked about monoclonal antibodies, Gavi, the FDA, long run impacts of research, Janet Malcolm, vigilante accountability projects, and strep A (delenda est). Hope you enjoy listening!
Wow, an episode with
@jacobtref
about global health R&D! On how to speed up and distribute livesaving technologies worldwide. Instant download.
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I started a blog about scientific research and science funding. You can subscribe on the site to receive future posts as emails.
Here’s the first one. Society is not focused on some of the most important technical problems:
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There are around 48 million kids eligible for preventive drugs during malaria seasons. In 2013, hardly any kids got the drugs. In 2023, almost 100% will:
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This trial took place in South Africa and Uganda. It would not have been possible to run in the U.S., because HIV incidence is lower, so the effect would not have been detected.
Global health R&D helps Americans!
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🚨Hiring global health R&D Program Officers!🚨
Open Phil is increasing our grantmaking to develop new vaccines, drugs, mosquito control tools, and diagnostics from $25M/y to >=$100M/y.
We're looking for people to lead that work. Please apply/share!
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Reflecting back on 2022, a standout year for malaria research:
1. initial results from the R21/Matrix-M vaccine phase 3 trial
2. first real world antibody results (88% efficacious)
3. first method for producing sporozoites in vitro
The next 5 years are going to be exciting!
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New post, taking a break from science blogging. The topic is something that has often puzzled me about philanthropy: why is there so little of it?
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This one took a while to write, but I couldn't resist. It's time.
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Estimates are fuzzy, but syphilis kills perhaps 100,000 babies a year. There is no vaccine, and astonishingly little research into syphilis globally. If only there were more Caroline Camerons!
#UVic
microbiologist Caroline Cameron receives $2M grant from
@open_phil
to develop a direct diagnostic test and vaccine for syphilis, one of the world’s first global diseases.
👉
@UVicScience
@UVicResearch
@SISCAPA
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Hard to overstate the importance of this new tool. In terms of potential lives saved, there are a few like it each decade. It will protect millions of kids.
Many people involved to get here, but today I am particularly proud to work with
@Kat_a_Collins
, who invented R21!
.
@WHO
endorses a new malaria vaccine set to roll out next year! 🦟💉 This breakthrough promises to make a huge impact in the fight against malaria.
#NBSUpdates
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My unsolicited (personal not professional) suggestions to the government. Policy changes that would help medical research have more impact:
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Some striking differences in the regulatory response to monkeypox and COVID. Despite the frustrating missteps, mpox is doing better around (a)
@BARDA
funding vaccines *before* an outbreak, (b) approval without having to wait for real world efficacy trials, & (c) first doses first
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Many intriguing questions lurking in this graph. A few I'm mulling over:
1. How come there's no HIV vaccine when it's received more investment than any of the others (perhaps bar COVID now)?
-> Scientific goals aren't effort in = results out; even with modern techniques, some...
My new favourite chart:
A timeline of how many vaccines weʼve discovered & when.
Note: 80 year gap between the 1st & 2nd vaccine. The vaccine against smallpox virus was developed before people knew what viruses were, *before germ theory had developed*
Then discovery took off.
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Some of life's best surprises come from venturing into topics you don't yet understand, but have a good feeling about.
And many important problems have regular conferences where researchers convene.
Try going to one! (Even if you have a job already.)
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At Open Phil we study previous philanthropic successes to inform our strategy today.
This is a standout "hit" in 21st C philanthropy:
@wellcometrust
funding the SEAQUAMAT & AQUAMAT trials that led to artesunate replacing quinine, saving a million lives.
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Preprint for first modeling of R21 is up
Table 2 suggests:
* 1/3 drop in deaths, 6000 lives saved per 1M vaccinated
* $50-$70 per year of life (v cost-effective) given UNICEF price of $3.90
* 2 cases averted per course(!) (kids get infected repeatedly)
1. Vaccines. There are now two!
The first, RTS,S, showed a 13% drop in all-cause(!) mortality. The second, R21, could cut malaria deaths by 1/3 in kids according to modeling from
@azraghani
's group
Rollout challenges ahead (3 doses + annual booster), but time is of the essence.
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Enormous: America will no longer grind and gas 100,000,000+ baby male chicks to death per year.
@TheHumaneLeague
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5 suggestions for the FDA, CDC, and ARPA-H. (Well, actually 8, but the final 3 are cheating.)
This post gets a little detailed, but the orienting prompt is: what policy changes would make medical research more impactful?
Hope you enjoy:
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Next post: there is much to learn from the last 28 years of Product Development Partnerships, on how to organise research and develop public goods.
For example - that PDPs exist! A dozen institutions few people have heard of, quietly marching to results:
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Next blog post: want to make drugs to benefit people in lower income countries, but don’t know how to finance the clinical trials?
Tell investors you’ll win a Priority Review Voucher if you succeed:
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Finally finished
@faherty530
’s electronic doorstopper on the NIH . Lots of interesting details.
In the spirit of putting your dreams out into the world, I’d love to read similar opinionated pieces on some other public institutions below:
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Finally got around to reading this wonderful piece by
@salonium
,
@rglenner
, and
@siddhharia
. So rich in detail.
I agree AMCs are a great policy tool that should be used for more vaccines. That said, there are many additional policy takeaways from this story! Some that struck me:
In case you missed it, here's your weekend reading
A longread by me,
@rglenner
&
@siddhharia
on
The century-long history of the malaria vaccine; why vaccines against tropical diseases struggle with funding; how Advance Market Commitments can solve this
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2018 GiveWell Top Charities:
- Anti-malarial drugs via
@FightingMalaria
- Deworm the World,
@EvidenceAction
- Vitamin A,
@HelenKellerIntl
- Bed nets,
@AgainstMalaria
- Deworming,
@sci_ntds
- Deworming,
@Sightsavers
- Deworming,
@TheENDFund
- Cash transfers,
@Give_Directly
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This dataset estimates 1994-2022 vintage global health R&D led to tools saving 8M lives so far, 32M more by 2040. Most of that $ was from gov and philanthropy.
That’s why we
@open_phil
have expanded our scientific grantmaking over the years; standout area on impact/$, more to do
Scientific breakthroughs don’t happen overnight—but they do save millions of lives.
Incredible new data from
@PCuresResearch
’s shows the impact of global health R&D and provides a view of what a healthier future could look like.
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New gene variant discovered that seems to protect against familial Alzheimer's. Much to follow up on, indeed a whole new avenue to explore...! All thanks to a generous Colombian family:
(We support
@DrJoeArboleda
@ytquiroz
& team's work via
@GoodVentures
)
Important lesson from nature.
A man genetically destined to manifest familial Alzheimer's disease had a rare gene variant that may/likely accounts for the protection
@NatureMedicine
by
@ytquiroz
and colleagues
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$577 million from the
@NIH
to 9 centers to make antivirals against future pandemic pathogens
Congrats to the awardees (including Open Phil grantee Jeffrey Glenn).
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Lots of malaria in my feed recently. Wonderful. Summary of what could come (most need $ so are behind):
1 vaccines
2 scaling up preventive drugs
3 mAbs
4 new insecticides for nets
5 sugar baits
6 gene drive
7 other bugs
8 new drugs
9 better preventives
10 drugs on nets...
(1/n)
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My main takeaway from this new modeling is that if you could make an 80% efficacious strep A vaccine, you'd probably sell 100ms of doses in rich countries to stop kids getting strep throat all the time:
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These updates are a big deal - more flexibility for country malaria programs to scale up interventions that work.
If you travel somewhere where malaria is common, you probably won't get it because you'll take preventive drugs. That should be true for kids who live there too.
Updated WHO recommendations 4 malaria chemoprevention & elimination
~~
Broader applications of malaria drugs for Seasonal Chemoprophylaxis, Perrenial Chemoprophylaxis, Intermitent Preventive Treatments in children & pregnant women; & mass drug application
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So cool to see a protein nanoparticle vaccine in the wild. Perhaps I'm biased since we've been proud supporters of the
@KingLabIPD
since 2017, but this seems like one of those days worth pausing to celebrate. Big deal for the platform, harbinger of more to come for other diseases
SKYCovione, a COVID-19 vaccine developed by
@KingLabIPD
&
@veeslerlab
, has just won full approval abroad!🇰🇷This protein-based vaccine outperforms Oxford/AstraZeneca's and does not require freezing. It is our first designed protein medicine.
Learn more:
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Excited to collaborate with
@SciTechgovuk
and
@UKRI_News
on metascience!
The UK launched a metascience unit. Will other countries follow suit?
Good piece in
@Nature
by
@DalmeetS
, with comments from
@stianwestlake
, me & more
@RoRInstitute
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Big. Big big day.
It is a true honour to be part of this momentous occasion, borne from persistence, patience and passion. Thanks to our long term collaboration with
@uniofoxford
,
@novavax
,
@gavi
,
@UNICEF
,
@WHO
and
@USAmbIndia
, we were able to flag off our first consignment of the R21 vaccines to
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Big institutions can be boring & opaque, so hard to hold accountable to the public interest unless they’re causing obvious problems.
I’d love to see people write/shoot more “vigilante accountability” pieces, that make detailed recommendations. More:
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Expansion of a program to help the Ministries of Health in Zambia and Cameroon transition to dual syphilis/HIV tests, supported by a $15M
@GiveWell
grant!
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$550M well spent, bravo
@gatesfoundation
@wellcometrust
. Interesting test for the
@GatesMRI
model.
The trial will last many years, given latent TB is common but pulmonary TB is rarer + develops slowly. Much to do meanwhile. More candidates, & innovations to allow faster trials!
New tools are urgently needed to drive down
#TB
cases and deaths. Today
@wellcometrust
&
@gatesfoundation
announced funding for a Phase 3 clinical trial of TB vaccine candidate M72.
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A graph for the day, following
@JNkengasong
's hearing.
Green = child mortality from HIV/AIDS. That drop is credit to the global health community, and largely thanks to
@PEPFAR
.
Purple = syphilis. Preventable, if PEPFAR supports use of the dual HIV/syphilis test in pregnancy!
Speaking of which, with
@JNkengasong
going through confirmation, this is the year for PEPFAR to go full steam ahead helping countries switch from HIV rapid tests in antenatal care visits to dual HIV/syphilis rapid tests.
Tests just got to <$1, and the penicillin is <$1 too!
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How did that happen? One crude summary:
1. In 2012, WHO recommended scaling up SMC
2. By 2022, countries with support from
@PMIgov
/
@GlobalFund
covered 1/2 of kids.
@FightingMalaria
covered 24M kids, 16M philanthropically
I.e. ~1/3 of SMC is due to
@GiveWell
's recommendation!
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Speaking of which, with
@JNkengasong
going through confirmation, this is the year for PEPFAR to go full steam ahead helping countries switch from HIV rapid tests in antenatal care visits to dual HIV/syphilis rapid tests.
Tests just got to <$1, and the penicillin is <$1 too!
Estimates are fuzzy, but syphilis kills perhaps 100,000 babies a year. There is no vaccine, and astonishingly little research into syphilis globally. If only there were more Caroline Camerons!
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Nice use of accelerated approval based on safety data + neutralising antibodies + efficacious in primates, when phase 3 efficacy in people isn’t practical but infection is dangerous. Then post-approval evidence needed to stay approved. Innovation from
@FDACBER
(HT
@AlexMDBowles
)
A chikungunya vaccine is nearing approval. Who will get it? | Science | AAAS
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Sometimes medical products are bottlenecked on scientific advances, e.g. VRC's F glycoprotein work in 2013 unleashing RSV vaccine development since.
What Osondu Ogbuoji,
@Kennedy_Kaci
& others show here is for poverty-related diseases the bottleneck is often $ to fund the trials
"All 3 options for a pooled-funding mechanism.. would generate a large return on investment, avert a substantial proportion of the global burden of morbidity and mortality for diseases of poverty and be cost-effective."
@kennedy_kaci
📣 New Research ➡️
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I'm 19 months into working with
@mattsclancy
and can confirm it's one of life's pleasures.
Apply for this role if you like thinking about the enterprise of science and innovation at the system level:
We’re hiring Program Associates to investigate grants for our Innovation Policy program!
The deadline to apply is 6/30 — see the listing for more info:
Please share widely; we'll offer you a reward if you refer someone we hire.
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New pipeline data for global health R&D from
@PCuresResearch
:
51 drugs approved since 1999. 0 mAbs, despite blockbusters in rich world.
15 vaccines: 4 rotavirus, 4 cholera, 3 S. pneumoniae, 2 typhoid, 1 N. meningitidis, 1 malaria (2nd was after cutoff)
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Big news, a friend just finished the episode and told me I get funnier by the end
I'm a simple man, I see Jacob Trefethen (
@jacobtref
) talking about global health R&D for 150 minutes and I click:
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Wild results, with potential applications in infectious disease too. Imagine editing TB or strep antigens into these friendly bacteria & rubbing on your skin - would you get some immunity? How long would it last? I wonder!
(We're proud supporters of
@mfgrp
& team at Open Phil.)
Today we report that an engineered skin bacterium, swabbed gently on the head of a mouse, can unleash a potent immune response against a distant tumor.
@yerinchen
led the charge w/ help from
@DjenetBousbaine
,
@VeinbachsA
,
@BelkaidLab
.
@ScienceMagazine
1/26
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Hopeful early results for non-opioid pain drugs. (Open Phil is a supporter of the Basbaum lab, one of the collaborators.)
So happy to finally share our work out now in
@ScienceMagazine
!! Thanks to everyone in the Gmeiner, Basbaum,
@BShoichet
, Du, and
@Michel_Bouvier
labs for such a great collaboration, as well as
@GofightingJun
@chem4biology
@EnamineLtd
@ahuangxp
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Timeline of the 67 years from isolating RSV to the first vaccine approvals, likely coming this year. Amazing to think of generations of scientists passing the baton. Presumably there are many who worked on RSV who didn't get to live to see this happen:
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Huge deal for almost 100 million people with chronic hepatitis B infections (of 250M-300M globally), who should become eligible for treatment once these guidelines launch.
Current antivirals are cheap and reduce your risk of getting liver cancer while you're on them.
Forthcoming WHO guidelines will lead to around 50% of HBsAg positive patients being eligible
#tlm23
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Informative (a malaria vaccine AMC made it into a US budget that never passed?!), but more striking as a reminder that some of the world's most driven people, who have done so much for others, feel the importance of ideas deep in their bones, & see what more could have been done.
Why dont we get vaccines for diseases of poor countries, why are we so bad at pandemic preparedness, and how can we promote more innovation for climate change?
New
@80000Hours
podcast on our work
@UChi_MSA
promote innovation that solves worlds problems.
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Understandably tricky public health comms, but seems like too much tiptoeing.
@kakape
's piece is one of few I've seen getting the word out
Monkeypox probably won't kill you, but if you're gay my read is it’s going to spread unless contained soon. That's affecting my pride plans!
I wrote a piece about why monkeypox might suddenly be spreading in countries that have never seen a large outbreak before and what role sexual networks might play.
Story is here (and a thread to come):
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@tkalil2050
@ashishkjha
@dave_ridley
@JBayNishi
@RethinkPriors
@CGDev
@JustinSandefur
anyways *really* this one's for
@salonium
, who last year suggested -- probably in a comment intended to be offhand -- that I start a blog to cover policy ideas that could help with drug and vaccine development. 🤲
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Favourite album drop of the year
Announcing GiveWell’s 2020 top charities! After over 20,000 hours of research, these are the best giving opportunities we've found to save and improve lives. We estimate $3,000-$5,000 can save a life.
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If you know someone who works on vaccines, or a microbiologist looking for a new challenge, here's a list of resources to get up to speed on strep A:
The pipeline is thin, but infections lead to perhaps 500,000 deaths/year in low-& middle-income countries
7 children have died in the last 3 months in the UK, due to Group A Strep.
Here are 11 key facts you need to know about Strep + Scarlet fever:
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Finished listening to the first two episodes.
@heidilwilliams_
and
@calebwatney
are great guides to the terrain, in the kickoff episode and in how they structured the series. Recommend!
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Click around a bit, see where it takes you...
(Most of these can be done remotely. Salaries are listed on the job descriptions.)
We’re hiring for a number of important roles across the org — come work with us!
Please forward to anybody who might be a good fit. We'll offer you a reward if you refer someone we hire.
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Nice coverage of one of the standout modern institutions of American science (founded 1997), the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH. Contributors to this progress on RSV, COVID vaccines, ongoing universal flu trials, etc.
A six-decade long quest to prevent RSV is finally closing in on success, due to structure-based vaccine design (mapping the nooks and crannies of tiny viral proteins in exquisite detail)
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🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪! Good news for people with TB, malaria, and HIV/AIDS - preventable diseases, not yet prevented.
The
#COVID19
pandemic has pushed diseases such as AIDS, malaria & tuberculosis into the background.
@SvenjaSchulze68
welcomes the German governing coalition's decision to pave the way for a 20% increase of the 🇩🇪contribution to
@GlobalFund
for its fight against these diseases.
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Proud to support, exciting discoveries from the
@icipe
team in Kenya
What a neat little microbe. Found in the wild, gets transmitted from mother mosquito to child and between mates, and seems to block transmission of the malaria parasite. More to explore.. imagine if it works...
We gratefully acknowledge new support by
@open_phil
to push forward on a
#malaria
transmission tool.
🔊🙏▶️
@CVRinfo
@Falling_walls
@JeremyHerren
@Samooner
@lambrechtslab
@GatimuMuchai
@JohnAgboola_
@farmerscornerng
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OK, there was no (d) in my first tweet, but: it is high time FDA accepts conditional reciprocity with other stringent health authorities *in outbreak scenarios* (and vice versa). Painful unforced error leaving 1m+ doses sitting in Denmark, easy fix.
/end
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1. Vaccines. There are now two!
The first, RTS,S, showed a 13% drop in all-cause(!) mortality. The second, R21, could cut malaria deaths by 1/3 in kids according to modeling from
@azraghani
's group
Rollout challenges ahead (3 doses + annual booster), but time is of the essence.
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Insider's telling of one of the big 21st century stories bringing science to application (RNAi). All it took was 19 years, $7 billion, and 1,000s of people. And the most useful applications of RNAi are probably yet to come!
Read my Reflections on
@Alnylam
(and the importance of being unreasonable), published with
@SpringerNature
in
@NatureBiotech
. Many lessons over last 20 yrs.
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Detailed piece on how to make the inchoate firm, coherent, full of energy, written by someone who did it in carbon removal
I particularly liked “Step 6”, the contractual guts of how offtake agreements allowed startups to get loans to expand without Frontier holding $ from buyers
1/ I wrote about how to start an advance market commitment, drawing largely on our experience starting Frontier:
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*~come work with me~* (and Lauren, and others)
hiring for
* this internship in cause prioritisation
* Director of Ops (20 person team)
* BizOps Lead (5 person team)
* 4 different roles in longtermism
* Program Officer in global health & wellbeing
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btw fair warning to readers, this is what the post does to your afternoon
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(a) BARDA was targeting smallpox not monkeypox, and we got a good vaccine for both. Money well spent. Let's do it for more diseases. Hope congress/appropriators are noting that part as a win.
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Come work with me! Lots to do, lots of fun, 5/5 would recommend.
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More details and fine print on those technologies in the next post, for the restless:
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So proud of my cofounder Ceci! ❤️ Not surprised by this news, indeed easy to call in 2017 for those who know her.
Ceci is one of the most creative people in consumer tech today (certainly the most creative I’ve met).
More exec shakeup at Snap: COO Jerry Hunter is retiring and not being replaced. The 3 top biz leaders will now report directly to CEO Evan Spiegel. Jack Brody, VP of product, is also out and being replaced by Ceci Mourkogiannis, who has been managing the design team
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The virus families aren’t the same, but it makes you wonder: how come we didn’t have approved *coronavirus* vaccines before COVID, that at least had a shot at weak protection against a related virus?
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Grim reflection on how congressional requirement for external peer review at
@NIH
is inappropriate for crises (clear change needed imo)
Curious though
@MTabarrok
any guess how much got done anyway in those 4mo w after-award changes, administrative supplements, backfilling later?
When COVID struck and time was of the essence, the NSF moved pandemic-related grants out the door about 4 months (!) faster than the NIH.
NSF has the flexibility to skip external peer review using "RAPID" and "EAGER" grants and it enabled them to move much faster in a crisis.
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Can't wait to go from reader to reader + colleague!
A bit of professional news: I am excited to announce that tomorrow I am starting a new position as a Research Fellow at
@open_phil
!
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Unless I'm forgetting something (new Sally Rooney novel?), this is the publication I was most looking forward to in 2021. And it's out in the first 2 weeks! Weekend can't come soon enough...
Congrats
@jwilceclab
@thefreemanlab
@BenKolosz
and the other authors.
Super excited to announce the launch of a new Primer on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) (1/9)
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Someone eating 2,000 calories a day is operating at 97 Watts (8,368 kJ / (24*60*60s)).
Less than a 100 W lightbulb! Makes me feel way better about my daily output.
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If you’re an independent writer/researcher/youtuber interested in writing a piece like this, but would need support to do it, please DM or email me sharing some previous work! Depending on context Open Phil may be able to help.
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Global health is high stakes, and people working in the sector have good intentions with limited resources.
I sometimes get frustrated that can lead to a lack of frankness and criticism necessary to improve decision-making when things go wrong. This
@snolen
piece is fresh air.
The first vaccine for
#malaria
received regulatory approval in 2015. It didn’t become part of
#vaccination
programs in Africa until 2024. If it had come faster, 143,000 children’s deaths could have been averted, by
@snolen
via
@nytimes
#GlobalHealth
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Bravo to BARDA (US), NIH (US), and BMBF (Germany), who each spent $800m-$1bn in 2020 on R&D to prevent pandemics according to this dataset.
That teal bar led to great COVID vaccines. Malaria and TB vaccine R&D both receive 40X less $/year. Public science priorities matter!
Curious about the latest trends in emerging infectious diseases innovation🧪? New
@PCuresResearch
#GFINDER
report covers key funding trends on managing
#pandemics
, including
#COVID19
. Take a closer look 🔬:
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One of the better ways to make $6 million
Excited to announce new partnership with
@FoundationFAR
@open_phil
to offer a $6M prize for tech that can end the killing of 6 billion day-old male chicks/year. Chance to finally eliminate this cruel and archaic practice! 🐣🐥🐤
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The job can be done remotely, and we aim for competitive pay & benefits (salary in the link, along with other details):
Please share this with global health practitioners, scientists, clinical trials specialists, and others who might be a fit!
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(b) Jynneos was approved in the US in 2019 based “only” on immunogenicity + primate data (). Probably 90%+ of people who get it aren’t aware of that and don’t care because it’s safe and better than nothing - I agree, I wish SF General wasn’t out of stock!
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Calling machine learning PhD students
Applications are open for the Open Phil AI Fellowship!
This program extends full support to a community of current & incoming PhD students, in any area of AI/ML, who are interested in making the long-term, large-scale impacts of AI a focus of their work.
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How come we don’t conditionally approve more vaccines ahead of or early in outbreaks, instead of 326 days into one? () Then monitor real world results.
Contrast is particularly depressing since for now mpox seems less deadly and slower spreading than COVID
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2. “only a small number of research sites across Africa are able to perform large-scale clinical trials even today”
a. Europeans should increase support for
@EDCTP
, a standout partnership between 40 Euro and African countries with infrastructure, training, € for clinical trials
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Need more microbiologists to take a look at T pallidum, more structural ppl, more immunologists... no vaccine near, so many mysteries to solve. Unknown genes, unknown structures, which OMPs are "essential"?, &c
Places to start:
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“Newborn syphilis cases, which can be fatal, have risen more than tenfold in the last decade and almost 32% in a single year, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Tuesday.”
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My new essay for Asimov Press is ostensibly about the unlikely origin story of the lab mouse. But it's actually about the role of chance in scientific discovery, and how random contingencies can lead to technological lock-in
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Nice writeup from
@dylanmatt
explaining the calculations in this report, and what drives the high return to global health R&D spending.
He discusses some of the economics behind tabulating benefits from health investments vs other societal investments:
This dataset estimates 1994-2022 vintage global health R&D led to tools saving 8M lives so far, 32M more by 2040. Most of that $ was from gov and philanthropy.
That’s why we
@open_phil
have expanded our scientific grantmaking over the years; standout area on impact/$, more to do
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Hopeful data of the day (that I’m two days late to). Group B strep leads to 100,000 infant deaths a year; no vaccine yet. Immunogenicity here looking good.. 🤞
A hexavalent capsular polysaccharide glycoconjugate vaccine (GBS6) was studied in pregnant women. Maternal anti-CPS antibodies were elicited, and humoral immunity was transferred to the neonate. Read the full trial results:
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@calebwatney
and if I were a Representative, Senator, or President trying to fix American science, I would get as much time with
@calebwatney
as I could!
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New recommendations from
@AnimalCharityEv
. Best donation opportunities to help animals:
@MercyForAnimals
,
@TheHumaneLeague
,
@GoodFoodInst
Breaking news! Announcing our 2016 charity recommendations:
@GoodFoodInst
,
@TheHumaneLeague
,
@MercyForAnimals
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Health economists, epidemiologists, modelers, vaccine consultants - consider dipping your toe in on strep A vaccines, likely to become hot in the next few years after idiosyncratic neglect due to an FDA ban in 1979.
Paper deadline July 31st:
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One drug used for both syphilis and rheumatic fever - both hard to control because neither has a vaccine, hundreds of thousands of deaths a year globally.
Vaccinologists/microbiologists/structural bio/immunologists much needed, if you’re looking for impactful technical problems!
A shortage of Bicillin L-A - the only drug that pregnant people can take to treat syphilis - will worsen the nation's STI epidemic
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I enjoy pieces like this -- reflecting on 50 years in syphilis research, and what's changed in American science.
Lukehart's discoveries of how the bacteria evade your immune system are useful for vaccine design, and also just fascinating (clever bug).
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Maybe purgatory is where you sit down and read your Goodreads Want to Read list, and if you make it to the end without adding more books that is heaven
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