Catherine Gilbert and Sarah Green led the team that created the AstraZeneca vaccine. In their book, they tell the story of how they did it so swiftly
It’s Tuesday, June 29, at Wimbledon. The mostly unmasked crowd filling the stadium are on their feet, clapping and cheering for a full minute, defying the commentator’s efforts to continue his prepared speech. But they’re not cheering for tennis players; Novak Djokovic and Jack Draper are yet to hit a single shot.
Gilbert is one of the scientists who led the almost superhuman research effort that culminated in development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19, a key weapon in bringing the pandemic under control. In, she and her colleague, Associate Professor Catherine Green, also from the University of Oxford, describe in painstaking detail the remarkable journey that saw an effective vaccine developed faster than has ever happened before.
Whether she is successful in convincing the vaccine-hesitant woman is unknown. But this book feels partly that same effort writ large: a detailed, blow-by-blow account of how the vaccine was conceived of, developed, produced, trialled, manufactured and distributed. The two scientists, who each write individual chapters in the book, describe moments of elation when things went right, despair when things went wrong and the constant drumbeat of exhaustion as they and their teams worked days, nights and weekends in a race not against other scientists, but against the deadly virus that was killing hundreds, then thousands, then millions around the world.It’s a race that usually takes a decade or more.
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