Chemists on a mission
The dramatic footage from a humanitarian crisis rarely features chemists, but they can play a vital role. Fiona Case is inspired by some examples
In 2004, Bego Gerber, a retired chemist in California, US, saw an article in Chemical and Engineering News about carbohydrate-based vaccines. He was appalled to learn that a new typhoid fever vaccine was sitting on the shelf while over 10 million people were infected with a disease that has a 12–30% mortality rate if untreated. Gerber wondered how many other examples there were of chemistry that could address a humanitarian crisis, but were not considered to be profitable enough, or not used because no one had connected the dots to realise its value. He wrote a letter to the editor proposing a group of ‘chemists without borders’ (deriving the name from the well-known Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders).