Seth Berkley Quotes

Seth Berkley — American Scientist

Seth Franklin Berkley, M.D. is a medical epidemiologist by training. He is the CEO of the GAVI Alliance and a global advocate on the power of vaccines. He is also the founder and former President and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Graduated McBurney School, New York, 1974, he received a Bachelor of Science and medical degrees from Brown University, and trained in internal medicine at Harvard University. Berkley has been featured on the cover of Newsweek and recognized by Wired Magazine as among "The Wired 25"—a salute to dreamers, inventors, mavericks and leaders—as well as by TIME magazine as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2009. In 2010, Fortune magazine named Berkley as one of its "Global Forum Visionaries." Speaking at the TED 2010 conference, Dr. Berkley explains how innovative vaccine design and production technologies are bringing us closer to controlling global health threats like flu and HIV... (wikipedia)

For just a few dollars a dose, vaccines save lives and help reduce poverty. Unlike medical treatment, they provide a lifetime of protection from deadly and debilitating disease. They are safe and effective. They cut healthcare and treatment costs, reduce the number of hospital visits, and ensure healthier children, families and communities.

Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power.

New vaccines are being developed all the time, which could save many more lives and dramatically improve people's health. And this goes beyond the traditional burden of childhood infectious diseases.

Now, when you get a viral infection, what normally happens is it takes days or weeks for your body to fight back at full strength, and that might be too late. When you're pre-immunized, what happens is you have forces in your body pre-trained to recognize and defeat specific foes. So that's really how vaccines work.

Measles is probably the best argument for why there needs to be global health, and why we have to think about it as a global public good. Because in a sense, measles is the canary in the coal mine for immunization. It is, you know, highly transmissible. The vaccine costs 15 cents, so it's not - you know, shouldn't be an issue in terms of cost.

Seth Berkley Quotes

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