Science - USA (2022-01-07)

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NEWS | IN BRIEF

solving. The results were adjusted for factors

including the infant’s gestational age at

birth and the mother’s age and educational

level. Lower educational attainment was

found in children born during the influenza

pandemic of 1918, note the researchers, who

report the new findings this week in JAMA

Pediatrics. The new findings, they write,

“support the need for long-term monitoring

of these children” to prevent outcomes seen

in previous pandemics.

Fossil hunter Richard Leakey dies

SCIENTIFIC LIVES | Paleoanthropologist

and conservationist Richard Leakey died at

his home near Nairobi, Kenya, on 2 January

at age 77. The son of famed paleoanthropolo-

gists Louis and Mary Leakey, Richard Leakey

added to their legacy with numerous impor-

tant finds in Kenya, where he was born. His

team found fossils crucial to our current

understanding of human evolution, includ-

ing skulls of Australopithecus boisei, Homo

rudolfensis, and the famed H. erectus skel-

eton, “Nariokotome boy.” Several of his finds

helped support the once-contentious notion

that more than one type of ancient hominin

had lived side by side. Leakey also worked

for conservation, directed the Kenya Wildlife

Service, and helped limit the poaching of

elephants for ivory. He supported students

and scientists, especially other Kenyans,

studying their country’s scientific riches.

CORRECTION

The news article “Omicron sparks a vaccine

strategy debate” in the 24 December 2021

issue included an image described as

a false-color electron micrograph of the

coronavirus variant. Instead, it was an

illustration based on an electron micrograph.

BIOLOGY

Goodbye to two champions of biodiversity

D

ecember’s end saw the deaths of two of the world’s most influential naturalists

and advocates for using science to protect the world’s flora and fauna. Edward O.

Wilson, 92, an ant researcher and evolutionary biologist at Harvard University, died

on 26 December 2021. He introduced controversial theories about the evolu-

tionary basis of animal societies, including human ones, and became a Pulitzer

Prize–winning author of books about the natural world that inspired millions of readers.

Thomas Lovejoy, a National Geographic Society conservationist who coined the term

“biological diversity,” drew attention to species loss in the Amazon, and helped rally the

political will to protect them and their habitats, died at age 80 on Christmas Day. Both

men were known for quirks of dress—Lovejoy for his bowties and Wilson for his field vest

full of pockets—and both did research that drove home that smaller natural areas like

those created by human activities tend to be more vulnerable to losing species. In large

part through Wilson’s writings, Lovejoy’s “biological diversity” became “biodiversity”

and a household word. The scientists “were really sort of bookends of the conserva-

tion movement,” says Daniel Simberloff, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee,

SCIENCE.ORG/NEWS Knoxville, and a former Wilson student.

Read more news from Science online.

THREE QS

COVID-19 pills for the poor

Many health advocates celebrated after
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
last month authorized the emergency
use of two diff erent oral treatments
for early SARS-CoV-2 infections. They
also lauded decisions by the pills’
manufacturers, P zer and Merck &
Co., to allow other drug companies to
make low-cost versions accessible to
the poorest countries via the Medicines
Patent Pool (MPP). Set up in 2010, the
nonpro t was modeled after a cross-
licensing agreement to free airplane
patents controlled largely by the Wright
brothers. MPP’s founder, attorney Ellen
’t Hoen, notes that it has helped bring
cheaper AIDS and hepatitis C drugs to
many millions. ’T Hoen, who works at the
nonpro t Medicines Law & Policy, spoke
with Science about the COVID-19 deals.
(A longer version of this interview is at
https://scim.ag/COVIDpillpool.)

Q: Some prominent groups have
criticized MPP’s deals with Pfizer
and Merck for not allowing generic
manufacturing everywhere that
could benefit. What do you think?
A: Those big, brand name NGOs
[nongovernmental organizations] suff er
a little bit from knee-jerk responses
to things that aren’t perfectly perfect.
If you read the license agreements
carefully, there are no barriers to [generic
manufacturers] supplying drugs in
countries where patents have not been
led or have not been granted—or where
governments have decided to issue a
compulsory license.

Q: Where has patent sharing yet
to succeed with COVID-19?
A: Both P zer and Moderna have dug in
their heels: They don’t want to license
their vaccines. What I’m hoping is that
this experience P zer now has [with
MPP] will lead it to take the next, and
much more important, step to license its
vaccine technology. And that would have
to include a technology transfer package.

Q: The tech transfer is far more
important for vaccines than drugs?
A: Indeed. It’s the [manufacturing]
know-how that needs to be transferred,
and you don’t nd enough of that in
the patent.

Edward O. Wilson, seen by

many as an heir to Charles

Darwin, was a student

of ants but an advocate

for all of nature.

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