Dolly Parton helped fund Moderna’s vaccine. It began with an unlikely friendship
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The fun starts around the 5-minute mark.
“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap” - Dolly Parton
If you search for pics of her "out of uniform" (i.e. without wig, makeup, etc.), you'll see how Dolly can walk around more or less completely anonymously when she's not in her full performance regalia.
Generous professional that she is, when she chooses to be "in character" I assume that she's at the ready for performance at the drop of a hat.
She really is fantastic.
"Parton’s $1 million donation went a long way toward funding the “critical” early stages of research and testing. Her money helped us develop the test that we used to first show that the Moderna vaccine was giving people a good immune response that might protect them,” [team leader] Denison said.
“Her work made it possible to expedite the science behind the testing,” Abumrad [inventor], 76, said on Tuesday night. “Without a doubt in my mind, her funding made the research toward the vaccine go 10 times faster than it would be without it.”
See also the actual research report in the New England Journal of Medicine, "An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — Preliminary Report" where the credits are, in total, "Supported by the NIAID, National Institutes of Health (NIH)...; by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NIH...; and by the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund... Funding for the manufacture of mRNA-1273 phase 1 material was provided by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI)."
So, it may have billions of dollars behind it now, but without her donation at a critical moment, it may not have gotten to that stage for a much longer time, if at all.
And for the super wealthy, seeing that a modest-relative-to-the-scope-of-complete-clinical-trials amount matters is also useful, and may encourage more of said behavior.
When I began to consider what might go into a massive, big-pharma dev proj, 1M didn't seem that substantial - like someone tossing $5 at a national food bank. Worse, it seemed to highlight an overall lack of fiscal & resource preparedness (this last might still be reality).
Glad to see my initial take was incorrect.
If that’s the case then shouldn’t we be seeing a lot more activity? I have seen a carwash funded more so than this.
Could be why a lot of folks are leaving medicine and "going into car washing"...
The “modular” budget (which many grants use) is $250k/year, and has been for some time, inflation be damned. You can certainly try asking for more, but there’s lots of contradictory advice about whether that’s wise.
In theory, the R01 is supposed to be enough to perform all of the proposed research. In practice, however, there's a lot of subsidization from other sources: one RA is on work-study, maybe another one working for course credit (only), and some of the grad students and postdocs have individual fellowships.
This really sucks: it makes it very hard to hire/keep experienced people who aren't bringing in their own money and there are fewer and fewer opportunities for those people (a lot of fellowships now cut off at <5 years post-PhD).
In the grand scheme of things, this churn can't actually be that cost-efficient and if I ran the NIH, this is one of the first things I would change: you'd get better research while taking some of the strain off the job market.
$1m won't change research priorities or have changed the timeline for vaccine development.
It's still a very generous offer, although somewhat unusual that it went to a for-profit company.
From 'drfuchs comment a bit higher,
> “Her work made it possible to expedite the science behind the testing,” Abumrad [inventor], 76, said on Tuesday night. “Without a doubt in my mind, her funding made the research toward the vaccine go 10 times faster than it would be without it.”
Vanderbilt University isn't a company valued at CAD$7 billion.
But if you want to really move the needle if all aspects of science...
Americans spend almost $100 billion on pet food every year.
Imagine what we could do if we donated an equal amount to basic research every time we bought food for our furry little friends.
America is a rich country and we could do so much more.
As a country we could fund a lot more research, if we could figure out how to tap into it.
It would be educational to hear from someone who understands this industry (as opposed to speculation) about the economics of such donations. Does this move the needle for a company as large as Moderna? Since this donation was made to Vanderbilt, does it enable multiple streams of research that gets licensed by Moderna? Does it enable the company to try out avenues that they wouldn't have done in the absence of the funding? What does this level of money actually purchase? (grants to individual researchers, equipment etc)
The parent has a reasonable question. A million dollars in a world where companies with no revenue get billion dollar valuations seems like nothing, on the face of it.
But a well-targeted million dollars, to a research university, is actual real money, and can carry them through the “oh no we need another grant” stage.
Do even the most superficial research into her past and you see she is immensely generous and doesn't give fuck one what people think of her.
Citation needed.
It's not "making the rounds," which suggests that it is a planned media campaign. He was interviewed on one show and other media companies are relating what happened on that show. Her donation was back in the spring, unrelated to the attention she is now drawing. According to the New York Times, the recent notoriety was fueled by her fans, and started when the results of the vaccine testing were revealed.
You usually need preliminary data to get a grant, but you need a grant (or at least money) to collect that preliminary data. This is especially true for NIH funding, where the competition is cut-throat (~10% of grants funded) and the experiments are relatively expensive.
At an early stage, a million dollars of foundation money (or even a lot less) can launch a research program that would otherwise not get off the ground. In a more established program, this would still open up “riskier” directions that would not be feasible otherwise.
You might be thinking of actual drug development and clinical trials. There, a million bucks still wouldn’t be anything to sneeze at, but isn’t enough to run a complete Phase III trial, which usually cost in the tens of millions.
She gave a million dollars of her own money to help start a university's research into curing a global pandemic.
As for me, personally? I'm a research scientist at a hospital and once I finish my tea, I'm getting back to work. Due to the...salary differential between this and ad-tech, I think it counts, at least a little bit.
If that 1 million goes towards remuneration of a hopeful postdoc who later comes with a breakthrough, yes, it could move the needle quite a bit. I still believe that human ingenuity is a large part of the whole picture.
A lot of talented people with scientific education are forced (or at least highly motivated) to search for well-paid jobs outside science, so keeping them in might be a very effective investment.
Or it might not. People are notoriously unpredictable and their "needle" is volatile.
If anyone hasn't listened to the podcast "Dolly Parton's America" it is totally worth a listen--even if you don't like her music at all. Totally engrossing on creativity, the history of American music, modern red-state thinking, and a generous view of Appalachia.
Extremely listenable and totally engrossing. It also tells the full story behind the friendship that made the early research being this vaccine possible.
As a non-American I don't think I understand the zeitgeist about Appalachia, but I was touched by the whole story.