Our senior producer, Mariel Carr, talks with John Maraganore, the CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, a company developing an antiviral medication for COVID-19. When news broke in January about the new coronavirus, John Maraganore made the decision to pause other drugs in development and pivot to working on an antiviral medication for this new and alarmingly infectious virus. He says it was a difficult decision, but this virus had all the ingredients to become a pandemic. “And when you have a public health crisis like this, that’s what you do.”

BONUS EPISODE: Pandemic Perspectives with John Maraganore

Each episode of Distillations podcast takes a deep-dive into a moment of science-related history in order to shed light on the present.

History

Society & Culture

Science

Check out our new season, dropping weekly on Tuesdays, starting June 4th.

New Season Trailer! Coming June 4th

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a new public interest in health inequities research. With this new focus, there also has come new funding with many researchers and institutions clamoring to receive lucrative funding and recognition in the field, but there are no official guidelines to distinguish a health equity expert. In this episode we sit down with Dr. Elle Lett who coined the term "health equity tourism" to describe when privileged and previously unengaged scholars enter the health equity field without developing the necessary expertise. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producers: Padmini Raghunath & Sarah Kaplan Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

Exploring 'Health Equity Tourism'

Of all wealthy countries, the United States is the most dangerous place to have a baby. Our maternal mortality rate is abysmal, and over the past five years it’s only gotten worse. And there are huge racial disparities: Black women are three times more likely to die than white women. Despite some claims to the contrary, the problem isn’t race, it’s racism. In this episode we trace the origins of this harrowing statistic back to the dawn of American gynecology—a field that was built on the bodies of enslaved women. And we’ll meet eight women who have dedicated their lives to understanding and solving this complex problem. Credits Host: Alexis Pedrick  Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. 

The Mothers of Gynecology

Certain medical instruments have built-in methods of correcting for race. They’re based on the premise that Black bodies are inherently different from White bodies. The tool that measures kidney function, for example, underestimates how severe some Black patients’ kidney disease is, and prevents them from getting transplants. Medical students and doctors have been trying to do away with race correction tools once and for all. And they’re starting to see some success. About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race “Correcting Race” is Episode 9 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innateis made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.  Credits  |    Resource List   |    Transcript  Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.   Resource List A Unifying Approach for GFR Estimation: Recommendations of the NKF-ASN Task Force on Reassessing the Inclusion of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Disease, by Cynthia Delgado, Mukta Baweja, Deidra C Crews, Nwamaka D Eneanya, Crystal A Gadegbeku, Lesley A Inker, Mallika L Mendu, W Greg Miller, Marva M Moxey-Mims, Glenda V Roberts, Wendy L St Peter, Curtis Warfield, Neil R Powe A Yearslong Push to Remove Racist Bias From Kidney Testing Gains New Ground, by Theresa Gaffney   ‘An entire system is changing’: UW Medicine stops using race-based equation to calculate kidney function, by Shannon Hong  Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics, by Lundy Braun  Expert Panel Recommends Against Use of Race in Assessment of Kidney Function, by Usha Lee McFarling  Hidden in Plain Sight – Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms, by Darshali A. Vyas, Leo G. Eisenstein, and David S. Jones Medical student advocates to end racism in medicine, by Anh Nguyen  Precision in GFR Reporting Let’s Stop Playing the Race Card, by Vanessa Grubbs  Reconsidering the Consequences of Using Race to Estimate Kidney Function, by Nwamaka Denise Eneanya,  Wei Yang, Peter Philip Reese 

Correcting Race

When the plague broke out in San Francisco in 1900 the public health department poured all of their energy into stopping its spread in Chinatown, as if Chinatown were the problem. This episode reveals why they did it, what it has to do with race science, and what it tells us about the history of public health. Credits Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

BONUS EPISODE: Pandemic Perspectives with John Maraganore

Download our free app to listen on your phone