COVID-19 Vaccines: Why the Speed of Development Should Not Be Questioned
Just ask Jennifer Doudna why.
COVID-19 anti-vaxxers and skeptics alike have their (not so good) reasons for opposing or questioning vaccines. The speed at which certain vaccines were developed though should definitely not be one of them. In Walter Isaacson’s recent book, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, he details in part how research on vaccines used to fight COVID-19 were years in the making. The book, which had been recommended on this reading list, also covers a number of other fascinating topics, including designer babies and of course, the story of the gene editing star herself, Jennifer Doudna. What I appreciated most though was Isaacson’s telling of how we were prepared to fast-track a COVID-19 vaccine because of significant research that had recently been done on the molecular superstar, RNA.
What is RNA?
It stands for Ribonucleic Acid, which is “a nucleic acid present in all living cells. Its principal role is to act as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA for controlling the synthesis of proteins, although in some viruses RNA rather than DNA carries the genetic information.”
The genetic material in a Coronavirus is RNA, a molecule which happens to be…
