Seth Berkley
Seth Berkley
Seth Franklin Berkley, M.D.is a medical epidemiologist by training. He is the CEO of the GAVI Alliance and a global advocate on the power of vaccines. He is also the founder and former President and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. After graduation from McBurney School, New York, in 1974, he received a Bachelor of Science and medical degrees from Brown University, and trained in internal medicine at Harvard University. Berkley has been featured on the cover of Newsweek...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
CountryUnited States of America
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History will not judge HIV/AIDS kindly... the harshest words will be reserved for how the world responded, or rather failed to respond, to the epidemic.
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Massive numbers of vaccines would be needed and companies are concerned, 'who's going to pay for that,'
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Now, you might think of flu as just a really bad cold, but it can be a death sentence. Every year, 36,000 people in the United States die of seasonal flu. In the developing world, the data is much sketchier, but the death toll is almost certainly higher.
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In large part, thanks to widespread immunization, the number of young children dying each year has declined significantly, from approximately 14 million in 1979 to slightly less than eight million in 2010.
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You can't stop wars to build tertiary teaching hospitals, but you can say, 'Let's stop for a couple of days to immunise the kids.' It has been done.
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I love science, and I believe in it. I have a faith that science can solve problems and make the world a better place.
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When AIDS first appeared, people didn't know what it was. You'll remember that it affected mostly young gay men - it was actually called GRID for a short period of time: Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Syndrome - and people thought it actually might be recreational drugs or other types of toxins.
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The virus that causes AIDS is the trickiest pathogen scientists have ever confronted. It mutates furiously, it has decoys to evade the immune system, it attacks the very cells that are trying to fight it, and it quickly hides itself in your genome.
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I wish we could have state-of-the-art hospitals in every corner of the earth... but realistically, it's going to be a while before that can happen. But we can immunise every kid on earth, and we can prevent these diseases. It's only a matter of political will, a little bit of money and some systems to do it.
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You'd see little shallow graves, lined up, one after the other - babies. That's what happens when measles goes through a nutritionally deficient community. It's a horrible disease, and it spreads incredibly efficiently.
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Measles is probably the best argument for why there needs to be global health, and why we have to think about it as a global public good. Because in a sense, measles is the canary in the coal mine for immunization. It is, you know, highly transmissible. The vaccine costs 15 cents, so it's not - you know, shouldn't be an issue in terms of cost.
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Science is one of the comparative advantages of our knowledge-based economy, and focusing on our prowess in providing better tools to address diseases of poverty is one of the best forms of foreign aid.
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New vaccines are being developed all the time, which could save many more lives and dramatically improve people's health. And this goes beyond the traditional burden of childhood infectious diseases.
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Now, when you get a viral infection, what normally happens is it takes days or weeks for your body to fight back at full strength, and that might be too late. When you're pre-immunized, what happens is you have forces in your body pre-trained to recognize and defeat specific foes. So that's really how vaccines work.