Readings

Transcript of Dr. Gregory Poland’s remarks to the World Vaccine Congress, April, 2025

I have been struck that at least in my forty-five years in this field, I have never seen the conflicting juxtaposition of so many diametrically opposed factors present all at the same time.

I have ten parts to my remarks over the next few days—they’re brief.

Part one of my remarks today is entitled "The Fork in the Road."

As you know, there is a moment in every great and enduring story when the protagonist reaches a crossroads—a moment when the path forward divides into two, and only two, paths which do not overlap. The stakes are high, and the weight of authority and fear presses down. We are at such a moment in vaccinology and dare not remain silent.

History will divide us—you and me—into those who spoke out and those who, by their silence, gave tacit approval. And today, I speak out as others have, knowing only that this path is one of moral responsibility and of truth.

Vaccines have been the silent guardians of our individual and public health, preventing suffering on a scale too vast for any of us to truly comprehend. Yet today we face the great unraveling—an anti-science regression back toward a world we thought we had left behind, where vaccine-preventable diseases remain and return, fueled by misinformation, mistrust, and denial.

George Orwell was right when he observed that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world—lies will pass into history.

We now face not just disagreement about values, but disagreement and disinformation about basic facts and truth itself. The question before us is no longer what science can accomplish next, because scientific progress is meaningless if it is rejected, prevented, and punished.

No—the real question is this: what kind of future will we collectively choose?

Make no mistake: progress is not inevitable. The mere existence of better vaccines, faster technology, and deeper immunologic insights does not guarantee that they will be accepted, authorized, funded, distributed equitably, or trusted by the public.

We are at a fork in the road.

One path leads to an era of vaccine innovation, rapid response to emerging threats, renewed trust in science, promotion and protection of public health, and lives saved.

The other path leads to stagnation, to division, the continued erosion of public trust in immunization, and inevitably—as we are seeing—to illness, disability, and death.

The path we take will be determined not just in labs, but in digital spaces and communities, in the way we communicate science itself, in the way we vote, and in the kind of society we want.

We stand at a crossroads for the very soul of science itself.

For centuries, we vaccinologists have been the torchbearers of human health and longevity—unraveling the mysteries of immunology and virology, preventing disease, and building a better world through reason, curiosity, and the scientific method.

But now, that torch flickers in the winds of doubt and misinformation. We cannot—and we must not—stand idly by.

Through one of humanity’s greatest triumphs, vaccines are under siege. Born from the rigor of the scientific method, vaccines have saved billions of lives. They eradicated smallpox, tamed polio, and shielded our children from measles, rubella, meningitis, tetanus, and more.

Until now.

Each syringe carries not just medicine, but the weight of decades of meticulous research, peer-reviewed studies, and hard-won data.

This is not just an attack on vaccines—it is an attack on the scientific method itself, on the disciplined pursuit of truth.

When doubt is weaponized, when facts are dismissed as opinions, when no amount of data sways, when fear drowns out reason—we lose more than a debate. We lose lives. We lose trust. We lose the very foundation of progress.

So I’m calling on each of you—every scientist, every researcher, every student in a lab coat or behind a microscope—to stand up and speak up. Not just for vaccines, but for truth. To not spend the rest of your life lamenting that you were silent when courage was needed.

John Gardner, the Yale psychologist, was right about many when he said: We build our own prisons and serve as our own jailkeepers.

Speak out. Not with anger, but with clarity. Not with arrogance, but with compassion.

Share your stories—the late nights sequencing proteins, the breakthroughs that made your heart race, the patients saved because of your work.

Speak out and let the world see the human side of science—the passion that drives us, and the hope that fuels us.

We don’t need to shout louder than the skeptics. We need only shine brighter.

Flood the world with facts—yes—but wrap them in empathy. Acknowledge fears, but answer them with evidence. Build bridges where others burn them.

Our voices—your voices—can cut through the cacophony of myths and disinformation.

A tweet. A heartfelt post. A conversation with a neighbor. It can ripple across communities and across nations.

Let’s make the case for science so compelling, so human, that it becomes unstoppable.

Because this is the moment—not to retreat into fear and ivory towers—but to step into the public square. To remind the world that science isn’t some cold machine. It’s a beating heart driven by people who care.

We’ve seen what happens when fear trumps reason. Lives are lost. Communities changed. Children die, and others are disabled by preventable diseases.

But we’ve also seen what happens when we collectively stand together—when we speak with one voice, when we refuse to let misinformation win.

So, my colleagues: join the rising tide. Be the antidote to doubt. Stand up and speak up.

Make today—this Congress—the moment when scientists reclaim the narrative. Not for glory, but for good. For the children who deserve a future free from preventable diseases. For the parents who need to trust again. For a world that needs science now more than ever.

Together—and I stress together—we can turn the tide.

Together we can stand for truth.

Stand up and speak up and show the world what science can do.

Insist on truth, on morality, on equity, and on moral coherence.

Your future—your children and grandchildren—and countless others are depending on what we do now, and how we respond.

Colleagues, let us be counted on the right side of history.

Thank you.

George Church’s foreword to the novels of John Sundman

As a child, like many children, I wanted to be a fireman, construction worker or paperback-writer when I grew up. John Sundman is all that and much more. He lived for four years with subsistence farmers in Senegal and wrote world-class technical manuals for Sun Microsystems. He modestly claims to have done the latter without understanding the underlying ware (a refreshing alternative to manuals lacking knowledge of any human language). Like Clemens, Rowling, Clark Kent, and other greats, Sundman uses pseudonyms (changing his middle names) to protect his secret identity. He is a master of machines —computing, biological and political —and his books include details that will convince an expert, and yet enchant a distant outsider with a compelling page-turner plot. Not just plot and mechanisms, but unforgettable personalities that haunt us long after the pages stop.

John’s “Mind Over Matter” trilogy began with his first novel, Acts of the Apostles, in 1999, (significantly reworked as Biodigital in 2014). His second was Cheap Complex Devices and his third, The Pains. These books get the reader amazingly quickly into a jarringly jamais vu/deja vu world — especially for aficionados of Orwell’s 1984 and Christian doctrine. While refreshing style changes occur among them, you can find a consistent “meta” component that adds to the puzzles in each one. We must now suffer the pain of waiting for his next books Creation Science and Meekman Rising.

Long before synthetic biologists were quoting the bongo physicist, Sundman’s 1999 novel Acts of the Apostles was about “The Feynman Nine” a programmable nanoscopic machine described as “a device for finding a DNA sequence and converting it into another sequence.” Sounds a lot like the CRISPR craze of genome editing. As Joe Davis, a ‘hybrid’ artist at Harvard and MIT, might remind us, the best conceptual art (including novels) prods us to visualize vital issues that are lurking at, or far beneath, the surface of our science and cutting edge engineering. My lab specializes in the subset of topics pejoratively classified as sci-fi/impossible, which, sometimes, turn out to be relatively easy. For this we need a constant stream of challenges and inspirations. A very rich source of such challenges lies at the interface between “bio” and “digital” – the realm of synthetic genomics, virus-resistant recoded organisms and Obama’s BRAIN initiative. It is precisely this biodigital interface that lies at the heart John Sundman’s novels. Read them and you may find yourself challenged as well.

George Church

Harvard & MIT, 2015