Dolly Parton helped fund Moderna’s vaccine. It began with an unlikely friendship

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/18/dolly-parton-moderna-vaccine-abumrad-covid/

by wallflower • 6 years ago

170 51 6 years ago

MattyMc• 6 years ago

Of course she did. Dolly is a brilliant, wonderfully kind person. Here's my favourite video of Dolly, taken while she was on vacation in Ireland. Dolly Parton in Paídi Ó Sé's Pub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qXFoNrqi3Y

The fun starts around the 5-minute mark.

stickfigure• 6 years ago

Lovely! But hard to believe that was impromptu - unless she goes to every bar with a full staff for wardrobe, hair, makeup, nails.... geez.

addicted• 6 years ago

Probably not impromptu but it’s not unlikely that the entire crew would hang out together on trips.

bobthepanda• 6 years ago

I mean, she is so overdone that she is a big icon in the drag community.

“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap” - Dolly Parton

CharlesW• 6 years ago

…unless she goes to every bar with a full staff for wardrobe, hair, makeup, nails…

If you search for pics of her "out of uniform" (i.e. without wig, makeup, etc.), you'll see how Dolly can walk around more or less completely anonymously when she's not in her full performance regalia.

Generous professional that she is, when she chooses to be "in character" I assume that she's at the ready for performance at the drop of a hat.

celticninja• 6 years ago

Dolly goes out like that all the time. Not like almost always, I mean always. So yes impromptu it certainly was.

bradknowles• 6 years ago

She actually does all her own makeup, and her hair is always a wig. Even her closest friends never see her without makeup and a wig.

deadbunny• 6 years ago

She also started a foundation to send books to children ages 0-5, for free[1] about 20 years ago which has sent out > 100MM books so far.

She really is fantastic.

1. https://imaginationlibrary.com/

noman-land• 6 years ago

Thank you for sharing this charming video.

rasengan2• 6 years ago

Great story - but does 1m really move the needle in biomed/covid vaccinations?

If that’s the case then shouldn’t we be seeing a lot more activity? I have seen a carwash funded more so than this.

criddell• 6 years ago

She gave her gift and encouraged her fans to give what they could. She has a lot of fans, so her impact was probably significantly greater than $1 million.

michaelmcdonald• 6 years ago

It moves the needle more than $0.

kyleblarson• 6 years ago

Did you donate more than a million bucks to the cause?

sokoloff• 6 years ago

Or even just more than $0?

rasengan2• 6 years ago

I didn’t have any path to getting funds into such a thing and wasn’t sure if I could move the needle so I opted to donate 100k to families in need instead.

caycep3• 6 years ago

well, by comparison, in medicine, foundation grants go for $25-50k, NIH "training grants", about $98k/year (K23/K08), R01s which are meant to fund entire labs $750k-$1M/year?

Could be why a lot of folks are leaving medicine and "going into car washing"...

mattkrause4• 6 years ago

If only an R01 were $1M!

The “modular” budget (which many grants use) is $250k/year, and has been for some time, inflation be damned. You can certainly try asking for more, but there’s lots of contradictory advice about whether that’s wise.

Closi• 6 years ago

Not sure why you are getting downvoted, it's a $1m donation to a company that was then valued at c$7 billion.

$1m won't change research priorities or have changed the timeline for vaccine development.

It's still a very generous offer, although somewhat unusual that it went to a for-profit company.

alex_anglin• 6 years ago

From TFA, the donation was to Vanderbilt.

zimpenfish• 6 years ago

$1m won't change research priorities or have changed the timeline for vaccine development.

From 'drfuchs comment a bit higher,

“Her work made it possible to expedite the science behind the testing,” Abumrad [inventor], 76, said on Tuesday night. “Without a doubt in my mind, her funding made the research toward the vaccine go 10 times faster than it would be without it.”

reaperducer5• 6 years ago

it's a $1m donation to a company that was then valued at c$7 billion.

Vanderbilt University isn't a company valued at CAD$7 billion.

melling2• 6 years ago

Sure, every bit helps. Little research projects can turn into billion dollar ideas.

But if you want to really move the needle if all aspects of science...

Americans spend almost $100 billion on pet food every year.

Imagine what we could do if we donated an equal amount to basic research every time we bought food for our furry little friends.

America is a rich country and we could do so much more.

kortilla• 6 years ago

As someone who grew up with pets in a lower income household, that isn’t exactly an indicator of wealth to spare. If the cost of pet food doubled we likely would have had to put the dog up for adoption.

alphakappa• 6 years ago

Instead of downvoting the parent (who is asking a legitimate question) or getting snarky, maybe the commenters can actually explain how such a donation makes a significant difference to an industry that operates with much larger numbers.

It would be educational to hear from someone who understands this industry (as opposed to speculation) about the economics of such donations. Does this move the needle for a company as large as Moderna? Since this donation was made to Vanderbilt, does it enable multiple streams of research that gets licensed by Moderna? Does it enable the company to try out avenues that they wouldn't have done in the absence of the funding? What does this level of money actually purchase? (grants to individual researchers, equipment etc)

perardi• 6 years ago

Sing it.

The parent has a reasonable question. A million dollars in a world where companies with no revenue get billion dollar valuations seems like nothing, on the face of it.

But a well-targeted million dollars, to a research university, is actual real money, and can carry them through the “oh no we need another grant” stage.

an_opabinia• 6 years ago

Another interpretation is, now she looks extremely good. Not in some cynical sense. If you are making an effort to seem smart, not merely generous, then donating money to a research lab - much like making angel investments - is going to work pretty well.

reaperducer5• 6 years ago

Dolly Parton is beyond posturing and trying to look good like some social media wannabe.

Do even the most superficial research into her past and you see she is immensely generous and doesn't give fuck one what people think of her.

mattkrause4• 6 years ago

Science funding is aggravatingly hard to bootstrap.

You usually need preliminary data to get a grant, but you need a grant (or at least money) to collect that preliminary data. This is especially true for NIH funding, where the competition is cut-throat (~10% of grants funded) and the experiments are relatively expensive.

At an early stage, a million dollars of foundation money (or even a lot less) can launch a research program that would otherwise not get off the ground. In a more established program, this would still open up “riskier” directions that would not be feasible otherwise.

You might be thinking of actual drug development and clinical trials. There, a million bucks still wouldn’t be anything to sneeze at, but isn’t enough to run a complete Phase III trial, which usually cost in the tens of millions.

reaperducer5• 6 years ago

Maybe he's being downvoted because he comes off sounding like like a jerk, and perhaps the world — and the internet in particular — could use a little less cynicism?

She gave a million dollars of her own money to help start a university's research into curing a global pandemic.

inglor_cz• 6 years ago

Depends on how you use it.

If that 1 million goes towards remuneration of a hopeful postdoc who later comes with a breakthrough, yes, it could move the needle quite a bit. I still believe that human ingenuity is a large part of the whole picture.

A lot of talented people with scientific education are forced (or at least highly motivated) to search for well-paid jobs outside science, so keeping them in might be a very effective investment.

Or it might not. People are notoriously unpredictable and their "needle" is volatile.

Fnoord• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/NcEpm

drfuchs• 6 years ago

Dolly Parton's donation was somewhere between Seed funding and Round A, so to speak, at a critical moment, and thus very worth calling out. From the article:

"Parton’s $1 million donation went a long way toward funding the “critical” early stages of research and testing. Her money helped us develop the test that we used to first show that the Moderna vaccine was giving people a good immune response that might protect them,” [team leader] Denison said.

“Her work made it possible to expedite the science behind the testing,” Abumrad [inventor], 76, said on Tuesday night. “Without a doubt in my mind, her funding made the research toward the vaccine go 10 times faster than it would be without it.”

See also the actual research report in the New England Journal of Medicine, "An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — Preliminary Report" where the credits are, in total, "Supported by the NIAID, National Institutes of Health (NIH)...; by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NIH...; and by the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund... Funding for the manufacture of mRNA-1273 phase 1 material was provided by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI)."

So, it may have billions of dollars behind it now, but without her donation at a critical moment, it may not have gotten to that stage for a much longer time, if at all.

jseliger• 6 years ago

It also seems useful (in a Girardian but not just Girardian way) to demonstrate to other super wealthy people that it's worth donating to biotech and other causes. Effusive praise from fans may help that.

And for the super wealthy, seeing that a modest-relative-to-the-scope-of-complete-clinical-trials amount matters is also useful, and may encourage more of said behavior.

WarOnPrivacy• 6 years ago

That's helpful context.

When I began to consider what might go into a massive, big-pharma dev proj, 1M didn't seem that substantial - like someone tossing $5 at a national food bank. Worse, it seemed to highlight an overall lack of fiscal & resource preparedness (this last might still be reality).

Glad to see my initial take was incorrect.

nkingsy• 6 years ago

Wait is this the same doctor that’s in dolly partons America, as in the host of radio lab’s dad? Amazing!

compiler-guy2• 6 years ago

Yes, that is him.

If anyone hasn't listened to the podcast "Dolly Parton's America" it is totally worth a listen--even if you don't like her music at all. Totally engrossing on creativity, the history of American music, modern red-state thinking, and a generous view of Appalachia.

Extremely listenable and totally engrossing. It also tells the full story behind the friendship that made the early research being this vaccine possible.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america

anitil• 6 years ago

A fantastic podcast series!

As a non-American I don't think I understand the zeitgeist about Appalachia, but I was touched by the whole story.

caycep3• 6 years ago

Also...just realized, (after reading several paragraphs deep) the Jad Abumrad/Radiolab/Dolly Parton's America connection

Dolly Parton helped fund Moderna’s vaccine. It began with an unlikely friendship

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