COMPELLING ISSUE OF THE DAY: AN AUTHOR TALK ABOUT VACCINES FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE
Pequot Library hosts a kick-off to the New Year of their Meet the Author programs with a compelling issue of the day. Meet the Author - Kendall Hoyt, who wrote "Long Shot: Vaccines for National Defense".
Kendall Hoyt is an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth Medical School and a Lecturer at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. Dr. Hoyt studies biosecurity strategy and biomedical research policy. Hoyt’s timely investigation teaches important lessons for the United States’ efforts to rebuild twenty-first-century biodefense capabilities, especially when the financial payback for a particular vaccine is low, but the social returns are high.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the United States contended with a state-run biological warfare program, bioterrorism, and a pandemic. Together, these threats spurred large-scale government demand for new vaccines, but few have materialized. A new anthrax vaccine has been a priority since the first Gulf War, but twenty years and a billion dollars later, the United States still does not have one. This failure is startling.
Historically, the United States has excelled at responding to national health emergencies. World War II era programs developed ten new or improved vaccines, often in time to meet the objectives of particular military missions. Probing the history of vaccine development for factors that foster timely innovation, Kendall Hoyt discovered that vaccine innovation has been falling, not rising, since World War II.
Book Signing following the lecture in the Auditorium.
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