The Innovation Gap with Prof. Shobita Parthasarathy

America Dissected

Incision Media LLC

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marginalized communities–including low-income and Black and brown folks, and women and LGBT people–are less likely to have reliable healthcare access in America. But it’s not just that, they’re less likely to have treatments tailored to the health challenges they’re more likely to face. That innovation gap, that’s a function of the way we fund research and the process by which innovations go to market, namely patents. Abdul reflects on the innovation gap and speaks w/ Professor Shobita Parthasarathy, an expert on science and technology policy about how to solve it. For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/americadissected.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The CDC pressed forward on its five-day isolation guidelines even after blowback from doctors
0:15.9	and scientists.
0:17.4	This is America Dissected.
0:18.4	I'm your host, Dr. Abdul Al-Sahid.
0:20.8	And wow, we've got a lot to catch up on.
0:27.4	Do you remember way back to around this time last year when the first COVID-19 vaccine
0:31.6	from Pfizer was being rolled out across the world?
0:34.4	One of the primary concerns was this.
0:37.2	The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, the Moderna vaccine
0:44.0	minus 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit.
0:47.5	mRNA vaccines are a hugely forward in vaccine technology.
0:50.5	They really are a game changer.
0:52.3	But because of the touchy physics of mRNA, they require a really complex cold chain to
0:56.3	keep them from spoiling.
0:57.6	A cold chain that's really hard to maintain in lower-income settings.
1:00.9	If you listen to this pod, I don't need to remind you how much of the global south remains
1:04.6	without the same vaccine access that we enjoy here in the United States.
1:08.4	Other vaccines like AstraZeneca's and Johnson & Johnson's, which don't require the same
1:12.0	cold chain, have been extremely helpful in extending vaccine access.
1:15.5	But it stands to question why the technology we need to transport mRNA vaccines while keeping
1:19.5	them cold wasn't available as the new vaccine rolled out.
1:22.2	It's an example of what our guest today calls a fundamental innovation gap in health and
	...

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