Post by the Scribe on Jul 28, 2022 7:24:55 GMT
Trump Takes Credit For Vaccine Created By Others, Including Immigrants
www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/12/01/trump-takes-credit-for-vaccine-created-by-others-including-immigrants/?sh=6258fab4374c
Stuart AndersonSenior Contributor
Dec 1, 2020,12:47am EST
Moderna To Request Emergency Authorization For Its Vaccine After Positive Trial Results
The Moderna headquarters is seen on November 30, 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Moderna has ... [+] GETTY IMAGES
Donald Trump did not invent or develop the vaccines to combat Covid-19, despite his claim he should receive the credit. Ironically, immigrants played the crucial role in developing the vaccines, a group Trump as president has vilified. It’s fair to say if Trump administration immigration policies had been in place years earlier, including policies on international students, employment-based immigrants and H-1B and L-1 visa holders, the individuals instrumental in making the Covid-19 vaccines a reality would never have lived or worked in America.
After the recent election, Trump alleged that Pfizer withheld the results of the vaccine trials to hurt him politically, even though the pharmaceutical company did not receive the results of the trials until November 8, five days after Election Day (November 3). The following week, Moderna received the results of its vaccine trials. Both trials showed “vaccine efficacy” (effectiveness) of over 90%. The companies await emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to begin vaccine distribution.
On Thanksgiving, after alleging fraud in the general election, Trump took credit for the vaccines. “Trump also glancingly addressed the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed at least 262,000 people in the United States, though mainly to brag,” reported Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post. In the Oval Office, Trump said, “The vaccines – and by the way, don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine. . . . Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines, because the vaccines were me.” (Emphasis added.)
The evidence shows Donald Trump had no role in creating the vaccines to fight Covid-19. There is nothing in the record that warrants him taking “credit” for the vaccines. A review of events shows immigrants and immigrant-led companies created the vaccines.
In January 2020, Moderna’s French-born CEO Stéphane Bancel, who came to the U.S. as an international student and later immigrated to America, led the company to design a Covid-19 vaccine in two days. On February 24, 2020, the company announced the release of “the first batch of mRNA-1273, the company’s vaccine against the novel coronavirus, for human use.” Vials were shipped to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a Phase 1 study.
To put the dates in perspective: It was not until May 15, 2020, months after the start of the Phase 1 study and the original design of the vaccine by Moderna, that the Trump administration announced Operation Warp Speed to help with vaccines. The government program, whose chief adviser was Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan-born immigrant, assisted Moderna in logistics, including facilitating the shipping of an air handling unit and a specialized pump for the company.
While Operation Warp Speed helped Moderna in overcoming bottlenecks and is considered one of the few bright spots in the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, it is difficult to see how Donald Trump can use this to claim credit for the vaccine. “The president credits himself with vaccine development,” according to the New York Times Maggie Haberman. “Moderna timeline shows it began working on a vaccine while the president was still denying the virus was spreading in the U.S.”
Stéphane Bancel foreshadowed his company’s capability to use messenger RNA (mRNA) in 2015: “Instead of making protein medicines in factories very far away, what we are trying to do is to inject you with messenger RNA so that your own body will make the protein.” In an interview in 2016, Moderna chairman and cofounder Noubar Afeyan explained to me the promise of messenger RNA by comparing it to software that can be programmed to perform a specific task.
Noubar Afeyan and Stéphane Bancel are part of a Moderna team that would not exist without immigration. Afeyan was born to Armenian parents in Lebanon and immigrated with his family in his early teens to Canada. After earning a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he immigrated to America. Afeyan has helped found approximately 40 companies, primarily through VentureLabs and Flagship Pioneering.
“The company is a fascinating case study in American innovation and provides a roadmap for policymakers to support U.S. leadership in scientific and technological advancement,” according to Jeff Farrah, general counsel of the National Venture Capital Association. “Moderna might seem like a one-off success story. The reality, however, is that this is just the type of new company formation that venture capital backs to the benefit of our country.” (A startup visa for immigrants could generate more such companies.)
Noubar Afeyan’s cofounder, Derrick Rossi, was born in Canada and gained H-1B status in the United States. Moderna’s Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks, in charge of clinical development at the company, came in on an employment visa from Israel. Chief Digital and Operational Excellence Officer Marcello Damiani immigrated from France, and Moderna’s Chief Technical Operations and Quality Officer Juan Andres immigrated from Spain.
An immigrant also led to the underlying research that helped make messenger RNA possible for vaccine use. “It is a story that began three decades ago, with a little-known scientist who refused to quit,” writes Damian Garde of STAT. “Before messenger RNA was a multibillion-dollar idea, it was a scientific backwater. And for the Hungarian-born scientist behind a key mRNA discovery, it was a career dead-end. Katalin Karikó spent the 1990s collecting rejections. Her work, attempting to harness the power of mRNA to fight disease, was too far-fetched for government grants, corporate funding and even support from her own colleagues.”
After a decade of research at two U.S. universities, including with Drew Weissman, her “longtime collaborator at Penn,” Karikó solved the problem plaguing mRNA, namely that the body fought the new chemical after an injection. “Karikó and Weissman [created] . . . a hybrid mRNA that could sneak its way into cells without alerting the body’s defenses,” writes Garde. “And even though the studies by Karikó and Weissman went unnoticed by some, they caught the attention of two key scientists – one in the United States, another abroad – who would later help found Moderna [Rossi] and Pfizer’s future partner, BioNTech.”
Today, Karikó, who lives and works in America, is a senior vice president at German-based BioNTech, the company that made headlines when it developed an mRNA vaccine in partnership with Pfizer to fight Covid-19. While Moderna accepted government funding to assist with manufacturing the vaccine, Pfizer did not take federal money through Operation Warp Speed. Like Moderna, Pfizer has a contract with the U.S. government to supply vaccine.
Dr. Ugur Sahin founded BioNTech with his wife, Dr. Özlem Türeci. Dr. Sahin immigrated to Germany from Turkey as a child, and Dr. Türeci is the child of Turkish parents who became immigrants in Germany. BioNTech teamed up with a much larger company, Pfizer, based in New York, whose chief executive Albert Bourla immigrated to America from Greece. Bourla decided to front “BioNTech’s development costs and manage the clinical trials, manufacturing and distribution.”
“The pair said in recent interviews that they had bonded over their shared backgrounds as scientists and immigrants,” reported the New York Times. “We realized that he is from Greece, and that I’m from Turkey,” said Dr. Sahin. “It was very personal from the very beginning.”
A German member of Parliament, Johannes Vogel, wrote on Twitter “there would be no #BioNTech of Germany with Özlem Türeci & Ugur Sahin at the top” if the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party had its policies in place. “If it were up to critics of capitalism and globalization,” he tweeted, “there would be no cooperation with Pfizer. But that makes us strong: immigration country, market economy & open society!”
In January, Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel contacted the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, working with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, and Dr. John R. Mascola, the head of the Vaccine Research Center at NIH., and the deputy director, Dr. Barney Graham. “Dr. Graham said that after China released the genetic sequence of the new virus, the vaccine research center zeroed in on the gene for the virus’s spike protein and sent the data to Moderna in a Microsoft Word file,” according to the New York Times. “Moderna’s scientists had independently identified the same gene. Mr. Bancel said Moderna then plugged that data into its computers and came up with the design for an mRNA vaccine. The entire process took two days.”
In November, while at home in Boston, Bancel listened to the results of the trial. Ninety of the 95 infections were in the placebo group, and only five were in the vaccine group. “Then the outside panel broke down the cases by severity of illness, a critical measure of the vaccine’s potency,” reported the New York Times. “Eleven volunteers had developed severe illness, the voice said. Then came a pause that Mr. Bancel said ‘felt like forever,’ before the final word: Every one of them had gotten the placebo. He ducked out into the hallway to tell his wife. His 18-year old daughter raced down from the second floor. His 16-year-old flew up the basement stairs. ‘The four of us were crying.’”
During his four years as president, Donald Trump issued proclamations that banned nearly all employment-based immigrants, H-1B and L-1 visa holders from entering the United States. His administration dramatically increased denials of skilled work visas, introduced new restrictions on international students, proposed eliminating a path for foreign-born entrepreneurs and issued three regulations on H-1B visas that companies say would make it virtually impossible for many existing employees and foreign-born graduate students to work in America.
An objective review of the record shows immigrants and others, not Donald Trump, created the vaccines destined to save the lives of many Americans.
I am the executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan public policy research organization focusing on trade, immigration and related issues based in Arlington, Virginia. From August 2001 to January 2003, I served as Executive Associate Commissioner for Policy and Planning and Counselor to the Commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Before that I spent four and a half years on Capitol Hill on the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, first for Senator Spencer Abraham and then as Staff Director of the subcommittee for Senator Sam Brownback. I have published articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other publications. I am the author of a non-fiction book called Immigration.
www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/12/01/trump-takes-credit-for-vaccine-created-by-others-including-immigrants/?sh=6258fab4374c
Stuart AndersonSenior Contributor
Dec 1, 2020,12:47am EST
Moderna To Request Emergency Authorization For Its Vaccine After Positive Trial Results
The Moderna headquarters is seen on November 30, 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Moderna has ... [+] GETTY IMAGES
Donald Trump did not invent or develop the vaccines to combat Covid-19, despite his claim he should receive the credit. Ironically, immigrants played the crucial role in developing the vaccines, a group Trump as president has vilified. It’s fair to say if Trump administration immigration policies had been in place years earlier, including policies on international students, employment-based immigrants and H-1B and L-1 visa holders, the individuals instrumental in making the Covid-19 vaccines a reality would never have lived or worked in America.
After the recent election, Trump alleged that Pfizer withheld the results of the vaccine trials to hurt him politically, even though the pharmaceutical company did not receive the results of the trials until November 8, five days after Election Day (November 3). The following week, Moderna received the results of its vaccine trials. Both trials showed “vaccine efficacy” (effectiveness) of over 90%. The companies await emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to begin vaccine distribution.
On Thanksgiving, after alleging fraud in the general election, Trump took credit for the vaccines. “Trump also glancingly addressed the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed at least 262,000 people in the United States, though mainly to brag,” reported Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post. In the Oval Office, Trump said, “The vaccines – and by the way, don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine. . . . Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines, because the vaccines were me.” (Emphasis added.)
The evidence shows Donald Trump had no role in creating the vaccines to fight Covid-19. There is nothing in the record that warrants him taking “credit” for the vaccines. A review of events shows immigrants and immigrant-led companies created the vaccines.
In January 2020, Moderna’s French-born CEO Stéphane Bancel, who came to the U.S. as an international student and later immigrated to America, led the company to design a Covid-19 vaccine in two days. On February 24, 2020, the company announced the release of “the first batch of mRNA-1273, the company’s vaccine against the novel coronavirus, for human use.” Vials were shipped to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a Phase 1 study.
To put the dates in perspective: It was not until May 15, 2020, months after the start of the Phase 1 study and the original design of the vaccine by Moderna, that the Trump administration announced Operation Warp Speed to help with vaccines. The government program, whose chief adviser was Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan-born immigrant, assisted Moderna in logistics, including facilitating the shipping of an air handling unit and a specialized pump for the company.
While Operation Warp Speed helped Moderna in overcoming bottlenecks and is considered one of the few bright spots in the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, it is difficult to see how Donald Trump can use this to claim credit for the vaccine. “The president credits himself with vaccine development,” according to the New York Times Maggie Haberman. “Moderna timeline shows it began working on a vaccine while the president was still denying the virus was spreading in the U.S.”
Stéphane Bancel foreshadowed his company’s capability to use messenger RNA (mRNA) in 2015: “Instead of making protein medicines in factories very far away, what we are trying to do is to inject you with messenger RNA so that your own body will make the protein.” In an interview in 2016, Moderna chairman and cofounder Noubar Afeyan explained to me the promise of messenger RNA by comparing it to software that can be programmed to perform a specific task.
Noubar Afeyan and Stéphane Bancel are part of a Moderna team that would not exist without immigration. Afeyan was born to Armenian parents in Lebanon and immigrated with his family in his early teens to Canada. After earning a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he immigrated to America. Afeyan has helped found approximately 40 companies, primarily through VentureLabs and Flagship Pioneering.
“The company is a fascinating case study in American innovation and provides a roadmap for policymakers to support U.S. leadership in scientific and technological advancement,” according to Jeff Farrah, general counsel of the National Venture Capital Association. “Moderna might seem like a one-off success story. The reality, however, is that this is just the type of new company formation that venture capital backs to the benefit of our country.” (A startup visa for immigrants could generate more such companies.)
Noubar Afeyan’s cofounder, Derrick Rossi, was born in Canada and gained H-1B status in the United States. Moderna’s Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks, in charge of clinical development at the company, came in on an employment visa from Israel. Chief Digital and Operational Excellence Officer Marcello Damiani immigrated from France, and Moderna’s Chief Technical Operations and Quality Officer Juan Andres immigrated from Spain.
An immigrant also led to the underlying research that helped make messenger RNA possible for vaccine use. “It is a story that began three decades ago, with a little-known scientist who refused to quit,” writes Damian Garde of STAT. “Before messenger RNA was a multibillion-dollar idea, it was a scientific backwater. And for the Hungarian-born scientist behind a key mRNA discovery, it was a career dead-end. Katalin Karikó spent the 1990s collecting rejections. Her work, attempting to harness the power of mRNA to fight disease, was too far-fetched for government grants, corporate funding and even support from her own colleagues.”
After a decade of research at two U.S. universities, including with Drew Weissman, her “longtime collaborator at Penn,” Karikó solved the problem plaguing mRNA, namely that the body fought the new chemical after an injection. “Karikó and Weissman [created] . . . a hybrid mRNA that could sneak its way into cells without alerting the body’s defenses,” writes Garde. “And even though the studies by Karikó and Weissman went unnoticed by some, they caught the attention of two key scientists – one in the United States, another abroad – who would later help found Moderna [Rossi] and Pfizer’s future partner, BioNTech.”
Today, Karikó, who lives and works in America, is a senior vice president at German-based BioNTech, the company that made headlines when it developed an mRNA vaccine in partnership with Pfizer to fight Covid-19. While Moderna accepted government funding to assist with manufacturing the vaccine, Pfizer did not take federal money through Operation Warp Speed. Like Moderna, Pfizer has a contract with the U.S. government to supply vaccine.
Dr. Ugur Sahin founded BioNTech with his wife, Dr. Özlem Türeci. Dr. Sahin immigrated to Germany from Turkey as a child, and Dr. Türeci is the child of Turkish parents who became immigrants in Germany. BioNTech teamed up with a much larger company, Pfizer, based in New York, whose chief executive Albert Bourla immigrated to America from Greece. Bourla decided to front “BioNTech’s development costs and manage the clinical trials, manufacturing and distribution.”
“The pair said in recent interviews that they had bonded over their shared backgrounds as scientists and immigrants,” reported the New York Times. “We realized that he is from Greece, and that I’m from Turkey,” said Dr. Sahin. “It was very personal from the very beginning.”
A German member of Parliament, Johannes Vogel, wrote on Twitter “there would be no #BioNTech of Germany with Özlem Türeci & Ugur Sahin at the top” if the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party had its policies in place. “If it were up to critics of capitalism and globalization,” he tweeted, “there would be no cooperation with Pfizer. But that makes us strong: immigration country, market economy & open society!”
In January, Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel contacted the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, working with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, and Dr. John R. Mascola, the head of the Vaccine Research Center at NIH., and the deputy director, Dr. Barney Graham. “Dr. Graham said that after China released the genetic sequence of the new virus, the vaccine research center zeroed in on the gene for the virus’s spike protein and sent the data to Moderna in a Microsoft Word file,” according to the New York Times. “Moderna’s scientists had independently identified the same gene. Mr. Bancel said Moderna then plugged that data into its computers and came up with the design for an mRNA vaccine. The entire process took two days.”
In November, while at home in Boston, Bancel listened to the results of the trial. Ninety of the 95 infections were in the placebo group, and only five were in the vaccine group. “Then the outside panel broke down the cases by severity of illness, a critical measure of the vaccine’s potency,” reported the New York Times. “Eleven volunteers had developed severe illness, the voice said. Then came a pause that Mr. Bancel said ‘felt like forever,’ before the final word: Every one of them had gotten the placebo. He ducked out into the hallway to tell his wife. His 18-year old daughter raced down from the second floor. His 16-year-old flew up the basement stairs. ‘The four of us were crying.’”
During his four years as president, Donald Trump issued proclamations that banned nearly all employment-based immigrants, H-1B and L-1 visa holders from entering the United States. His administration dramatically increased denials of skilled work visas, introduced new restrictions on international students, proposed eliminating a path for foreign-born entrepreneurs and issued three regulations on H-1B visas that companies say would make it virtually impossible for many existing employees and foreign-born graduate students to work in America.
An objective review of the record shows immigrants and others, not Donald Trump, created the vaccines destined to save the lives of many Americans.
I am the executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan public policy research organization focusing on trade, immigration and related issues based in Arlington, Virginia. From August 2001 to January 2003, I served as Executive Associate Commissioner for Policy and Planning and Counselor to the Commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Before that I spent four and a half years on Capitol Hill on the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, first for Senator Spencer Abraham and then as Staff Director of the subcommittee for Senator Sam Brownback. I have published articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other publications. I am the author of a non-fiction book called Immigration.