n Linda McQuaig
The public lab that could have helped fight to control coronovirus pandemic
C
anada once had a pub-
ColdType | Mid-March 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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Photo: NIAID-RML
a diphtheria treatment available tetanus, typhoid and meningitis. licly owned pharmaceufrom a US manufacturer. But, at Connaught developed an imtical company that could $25 a dose, it was unaffordable pressive research capacity, with have made a difference to all but the rich. FitzGerald set its scientists contributing to some in the current coronavirus crisis out to change that – and he did. of the biggest medical break– except that we sold it. After experimenting on a throughs of the 20th-century – Connaught Labs was a superhorse in a downtown Toronto including penicillin and the Salk star in global medicine. For seven stable, FitzGerald developed and Sabin polio vaccines. It also decades, this played a central publicly owned role in the global Canadian comeradication of pany performed smallpox. brilliantly on the “It was a national and inpioneer in a lot ternational stage, of ways”, says contributing to Colleen Fuller, a medical breakresearch associate throughs and of the Canadian developing affordCentre for Policy able treatments Alternatives. “It and vaccines for did things comdeadly diseases. mercial companies Hated by its wouldn’t do becorporate competicause they weren’t tors, Connaught This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (orange) – also willing to take the was unique in that known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19 – isolated from a patient financial risks.” its focus was on in the US, emerging from the surface of cells (green) cultured in the lab. Fuller argues human need, not that if a publicly profit. an antitoxin that proved effecowned Connaught were still It would have come in handy tive in treating diphtheria, and operating today, it could be contoday. made it available to public health tributing to the development of In fact, Connaught got its start outlets across the country. Then, the coronavirus vaccine – and amid a diphtheria outbreak in with lab space provided by the ensuring a Canadian supply if 1913. Toronto doctor John Gerald University of Toronto, he and his there was a global shortage. FitzGerald was outraged that team went on to produce lowYet, tragically it isn’t. children were dying in large cost treatments and vaccines for Succumbing to corporate presnumbers even though there was other common killers, including sure and a misguided belief that
