Hype springs eternal in medicine, but lately the horizon of new possibility seems almost blindingly bright.
“I’ve been running my research lab for almost 30 years,” says Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley.
And yet these brutal years — which brought more than a million American deaths and probably 20 million deaths worldwide, and seemed to return even the hypermodern citadels of the wealthy West to something like the experience of premodern plague — might also represent an unprecedented watershed of medical innovation.
“It’s stunning,” says the immunologist Barney Graham, the former deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center and a central figure in the development of mRNA vaccines, who has lately been writing about a “new era for vaccinology.” “You cannot imagine what you’re going to see over the next 30 years.
The pace of advancement is in an exponential phase right now.”
Persons:
I’ve, ”, Jennifer Doudna, Doudna, Barney Graham
Organizations:
University of California, Army, Vaccine Research Center
Locations:
Berkeley, West