This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel with Gregory Zuckerman.

His new book is A Shot to Save the World,

the inside story of the life or death race for a COVID-19 vaccine.

We've watched the American companies,

but Oxford is now teamed up with a European company, AstraZeneca. Remember, you need to R&D it,

and Oxford is using the AD approach, the antinevirus approach that J&J is using. That would make it

possible for one shot and not a series of shots. That would also make it possible

to create a vaccine that is easily transported. That's important for the world that is not

well to do or has an infrastructure for keeping vaccines cool as they're delivered, as we have

here in North America or in Northern Europe. However, Oxford has AstraZeneca to

manufacture the vaccine when they develop it. The trouble is they have also the same trouble

raising money. Now, Hill and Gilbert are very confident, perhaps too confident. At one point, Gregory, you tell the story that they were ready to send a representative of seat,

the Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Was there reluctance on the British government's part to believe in Oxford?

Well, I think it was reluctant shortly on among experts, government bodies, including in the UK, to believe this thing

would be serious. It took a while for most of us to acknowledge the possibility of a pandemic.

And yeah, I write about early on Adrian Hill, this much detested scientist in Europe, who is very ambitious and he's got a really interesting

approach to potentially save lives. He wants to create a vaccine. He has colleague Sarah Gilbert.

Others do too. It took them, frankly, a few weeks also to get serious about it. There was a

younger scientist that was prodding them and nudging them and finally they got on board. But yeah,

they needed the money and it took them a little while. It's funny that one of the subplots, and I think you mentioned earlier, earlier, my whole book, it's about money. And, you know, it's a book about science, obviously, but you need the money to be able to pull off the science and it's always a struggle. So yeah, early on, it was for Adrian and Helen's colleagues. But then they got the money and they were in the leads. They were the ones that were acknowledged by U.S. bodies, UK bodies, European money. They were going to be the ones that were going to save us all. And they had the best shot with this. They had a method that others will imitate. They put phase one and phase two together. What does that mean?

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