Some of this is universal, but much of her story is particular to how US med schools operate: their research faculty tend to be largely soft money in nature, so grant money is even more necessary than in other 'hard money' jobs in non-med school fields. Such a system is destined to fail when geniuses like Kariko pursue risky new territory for which large grants are hard to secure.

The really distasteful thing here is Penn as an institution. They have reaped the benefits of her work in terms of mRNA patent royalties (a very large number I believe), and of course reputationally. Yet, they treated her truly terribly and have never - and it seems like will never - acknowledge it. For example, Sean Grady, mentioned here as the one that essentially cleared out her lab in 2013 without telling her is the chair of neurosurgery at Penn Medicine. Will he apologize? I doubt it.