The Passion and Innovation behind Vaccines

Apr 28th, 2010 1:58 PM UTC
By Richard T. Clark

This entry in our series on “Vaccines: The Next 10 Years” comes from Richard T. Clark, Chairman and CEO of Merck:

The vaccine landscape 10 years from now will be shaped by the two things that have shaped decades before in the world of vaccines — passion and innovation. And when I think about passion and innovation for vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, the legendary vaccine researcher who passed away in 2005, is the first person I think of.

Dr. Hilleman wasn’t just legendary to those of us at Merck who had the privilege of working along side him. He was as passionate about what vaccines can do as he was skilled at creating them. His New York Times obituary ran on the front page, and said, “He is credited with having developed more human and animal vaccines than any other scientist, helping to extend human life expectancy and improving the economies of many countries.”

His legacy tells us what passion and innovation can accomplish. The vaccines that Dr. Hilleman and his colleagues at Merck developed targeted a whole slew of diseases that were once incredibly common and rightfully feared. Those vaccines, and those who work so hard to produce, distribute and administer them, are now the backbone of immunization schedules and public health in many countries around the world. And it is thanks to passion and innovation.

We have a very recent example of what passion and innovation can accomplish in 10 years. In January, I had the honor of sitting on a panel at Davos to mark the 10-year anniversary of the GAVI Alliance. And in those 10 years, thanks to passionate advocates for vaccines and innovation in both funding and delivery, more than 200 million children have been vaccinated and more than 3 million lives have been saved.

There are so many diseases for which we still need vaccines, and there are so many children who we will still lose to vaccine-preventable death. But the remarkable success that we have had with vaccines is reason to believe that even more is possible in the next 10 years, something we can’t even imagine.

Merck is as passionate about the pursuit of new vaccines as we were when Dr. Hilleman joined the company in 1957. But we are also innovating in other ways, by pursuing new technologies and approaches to bring the benefits of vaccines to as many people as possible. Last year, Merck had the opportunity to establish an partnership with Wellcome Trust designed to foster innovation in creating, producing, packaging and delivering affordable vaccines designed to meet the needs of developing countries — and we called it the MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories. Other crucibles for innovation already exist, too — such as the $10 billion investment the Gates Foundation announced at Davos this year and countless programs led by GAVI, PATH and others.

We have never been more likely to do great things with vaccines. That’s because we know — because we can see — how much good they have done, and so many people are working toward the same goal, a world where “vaccine-preventable death” is as rare in Uganda as it is in the United Kingdom. And that is something to be passionate about.

-Richard T. Clark, Chairman and C.E.O., Merck

TAGS: Vaccines 10 Years, vaccines