From The Atlantic Magazine
9-23-22

One target of Malone's ire, the biochemist Katalin Karikó, has been featured in multiple news stories as an mRNA-vaccine pioneer. CNN called her work "the basis of the Covid-19 vaccine" while a  New York Times  headline said she had "helped shield the world from the coronavirus." None of those stories mentioned Malone. "I've been written out of the history," he has said. "It's all about Kati." Karikó shared with me an email that Malone sent her in June, accusing her of feeding reporters bogus information and inflating her own accomplishments. "This is not going to end well," Malone's message says.

Karikó replied that she hadn't told anyone that she is the inventor of mRNA vaccines and that "many many scientists" contributed to their success. "I have never claimed more than discovering a way to make RNA less inflammatory," she wrote to him. She told me that Malone referred to himself in an email as her "mentor" and "coach," though she says they've met in person only once, in 1997, when he invited her to give a talk. It's Malone, according to Karikó, who has been overstating his accomplishments. There are "hundreds of scientists who contributed more to mRNA vaccines than he did.

Malone insists that his warning to Karikó that "this is not going to end well" was not intended as a threat. Instead, he says, he was suggesting that her exaggerations would soon be exposed. Malone views Karikó as yet another scientist standing on his shoulders and collecting plaudits that should go to him. Others have been rewarded handsomely for their work on mRNA vaccines, he says. (Karikó is a senior vice president at BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to create the first COVID-19 vaccine to be authorized for use last year.) Malone is not exactly living on the streets: In addition to being a medical doctor, he has served as a vaccine consultant for pharmaceutical companies.

In any case, it's clear enough that Malone isn't singularly responsible for mRNA vaccines. The process of achieving major scientific advancements tends to be more cumulative and complex than the apple-to-the-head stories we usually tell, but this much can be said for sure: Malone was involved in groundbreaking work related to mRNA vaccines before it was cool or profitable; and he and others who believed in the potential of RNA-based vaccines in the 1980s turned out to be  world-savingly correct .