‘Anti-vaxxers existed before, but never led governments’

Drew Weissman warns that a rise in anti-vaxxers could lead to deaths from preventable diseases like measles and polio, reversing decades of progress.

A new wave of anti-vaxxers around the world means that children may soon start dying of measles, polio, and other diseases that we thought were behind us, Dr Drew Weissman, the 2023 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, told HT in an interview. The head of the Weissman Lab at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr Weissman and his then colleague Katalin Kariko discovered a foundational tweak to RNA, which became the basis for successful mRNA platform

Drew Weissman arrives at the 9th Annual Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on April 15, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (FilmMagic,)