“The Vaccine Race”

Meredith Wadman, M.D.
Neuroscience Reporter,  Science Magazine
Washington DC

Meredith Wadman began medical school at the University of British Columbia, in her native Vancouver, Canada, and completed her medical degree at Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar; and has a master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is currently a neuroscience reporter at Science magazine in Washington, D.C. Before joining Science, she was an editorial fellow at New America. Prior to that, she was a Washington-based reporter covering the medical research community for Nature and has also written on biotech and on biomedical policy issues for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time and Fortune magazine. 

Her book, THE VACCINE RACE documents the development of the first widely-used normal human cell line that resulted in some of the world’s most important vaccines. It focuses on the Wistar Institute, and the contributions of Leonard Hayflick & Stanley Plotkin, and how their work led to vaccines for rubella, polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus. Her masterful account recovers not only the science of this urgent race, but also the political roadblocks that nearly stopped this vaccine development; as well as the huge changes that took place in the laws and practices governing who “owns” research cells and the profits made from biological inventions. 

Free Reception:  5:00pm
Seminar:  6:00pm

Thomas Jefferson University
Bluemle Life Sciences Building, Room 101
233 S. 10th Street (10th and Locust)
Philadelphia

Discounted parking at the garage on 11th Street
(entrance on 11th St., under the Hamilton Bldg)