Developing accessible vaccines for neglected diseases.
Highlights:
- Dr. Hotez keeps doing the work even when people attack him online and at home, showing that protecting the truth often means staying calm under pressure.
- He chose saving lives over making money, proving that doing what’s right can matter more than personal gain.
- His decades-long commitment to vaccines for neglected diseases reminds us that real progress takes time and patience.
- He believes science moves faster when people share and help each other, instead of trying to win alone.
- When misinformation spreads, he answers with facts and steady communication, not drama.
In 2023, Elon Musk wrote on X that Dr. Peter Hotez, a defender of science, “is afraid of a public debate because he knows he’s wrong.” Days earlier, Joe Rogan, a podcaster with millions of followers, had offered to donate one hundred thousand dollars to a charity of Hotez’s choosing if he agreed to debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his show. At the time, Kennedy was promoting misinformation; today, as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, he simply does so from a larger stage. Several other magnates joined in, increasing the stakes. But for many, including members of the scientific community, this hostile incident was seen as a media trap designed to turn science into a cheap spectacle to harass a scientist.
Since 2018, when Hotez published Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, a book inspired by his daughter that debunks the myth linking vaccines to autism, he became a target of attacks from anti-vaccine groups. He has received violent messages, death threats, and has even been confronted in front of his home. Over time, the attacks took on an openly antisemitic tone. Hotez, who is Jewish, received emails with swastikas. “I ended up researching it from a historical perspective and found that when Einstein’s theory of relativity emerged, in Germany at the time it was labeled a ‘Jewish fraud.’”
He has published articles analyzing the relationship between antisemitism and the anti-science movement, including in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, a scientific journal of Johns Hopkins University. “It’s a side issue, something I never thought I would have to get involved in,” he says with a distressed tone.
I was a nerdy kid. I wanted to be a microbiologist and study microbial diseases.
Peter Hotez
As a child, he was fascinated by microbes and also by maps. “I was a nerdy kid,” he recalls with a smile. “I wanted to be a microbiologist and study microbial diseases.” He studied at Yale University, where he had great mentors among his professors. Later, he earned a PhD from Rockefeller University and an MD from Weill Cornell Medical College. He focused his research on developing a hookworm vaccine under the guidance of Dr. Anthony Cerami. Four decades later, this work has shown successful results in clinical trials to prevent infection by these parasites, which can cause iron deficiency due to chronic blood loss. In endemic regions, hookworms are a major cause of iron-deficiency anemia.
Developing such vaccines involves overcoming several obstacles. “There are scientific challenges because these are eukaryotic organisms,” Hotez explains. They are more complex than bacteria or viruses, as they have more genes and defense mechanisms. “That’s one problem, but I think the bigger problem is that many of these diseases only occur in low-income countries, or if they appear in middle-income countries, they affect the poorest people.” This lack of financial incentive hinders industry interest in developing vaccines.
Perhaps due to the combination of scientific curiosity and a sense of social justice, Peter found in tropical medicine the intersection of his childhood fascination with microbes and maps. His thesis marked the beginning of his work on vaccines for neglected diseases, a path that would later lead him to help develop low-cost COVID-19 vaccines.
When the pandemic began, he and his team at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine adapted their recombinant vaccine technology, based on yeast fermentation, to create a COVID-19 vaccine. However, his model did not fit into Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government program launched in 2020 to accelerate the development and distribution of treatments, diagnostics, and vaccines during the pandemic, nor into the race among pharmaceutical giants for patents. They were unable to obtain major funding through those mechanisms. Instead, they built the vaccine through philanthropy.
We showed that you don’t have to be a big pharmaceutical company to accomplish big things in vaccines.
Peter Hotez
“We received funding from private foundations like the MD Anderson Foundation and King Ranch.” They also received support from the Dunn Foundation, the JPB Foundation (now Freedom Together Foundation), other nonprofits, and several anonymous donors. “Then Tito’s Vodka, based in Austin, Texas, gave us two million dollars,” Hotez confirms. “We showed that you don’t have to be a big pharmaceutical company to accomplish big things in vaccines.” After developing the formula, Dr. Hotez and his team shared it patent-free with producers in India and Indonesia. Within months, millions of doses were manufactured. The vaccines, Corbevax and IndoVac, were distributed to nearly 100 million people, mostly adolescents in low- and middle-income countries. Hotez says that, according to some estimates, those efforts saved between 300,000 and 500,000 lives. “We didn’t make any money from the deal,” he adds, but the moral return was enormous.
During that period, the infodemic that has defined the past two decades became clear, marked by an excess of false information that confuses the public, weakens trust in health systems, and makes emergency preparedness and response more difficult. “Now we have the rise of the health and wellness influencer industry, which tries to discredit science to promote whatever product they can buy wholesale. You know the story of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine,” he explains.
Many of these influencers claim they want to “make America healthy again,” but their true goal is money. They have millions of followers and even “an entire army of bots and trolls who follow them” and attack real scientists. They try to portray them as enemies just to get more attention. They appear on television or social media, distort facts, and sound convincing, even if they are not experts in the topics they discuss.
We decided to join forces to analyze both issues in depth, with the idea that misinformation prevents us from addressing climate change or tackling pandemic threats.
Peter Hotez
These experiences led Hotez to reflect on the phenomenon. The idea that science is never only about facts, but also about fear, power, and identity, became the central theme of his latest book, Science Under Siege, published in september. Written with scientist Michael Mann, the book examines how misinformation today threatens society’s ability to respond to pandemics and climate change. “We decided to join forces to analyze both issues in depth, with the idea that misinformation prevents us from addressing climate change or tackling pandemic threats,” Peter explains.
In the book, they describe what they call “the five Ps,” the main forces fueling the anti-science movement. The first are plutocrats, individuals with economic power who use their influence to spread or legitimize misinformation. “It’s organized. It’s intentional. It’s politically motivated,” he says. Next are petrostates, nations that, due to reliance on fossil fuels, attack climate scientists while paradoxically supporting biomedical research. The third force is pros, people with academic training who, while running wellness businesses or related industries, distort scientific facts to fit their interests. Fourth are phonies, figures who, especially through social media, amplify false narratives until they appear true. Lastly, they point to the press, media outlets that, in seeking controversy or artificial balance, end up fueling confusion.
In the face of this landscape, Peter insists that the only possible response is to strengthen scientific cooperation. “Science is international,” he says. It has no borders and thrives on collaboration and curiosity. “We must keep an open mind and be flexible; that’s how we achieve great things,” he adds. After a brief pause, he says that by definition, he is an optimist, and he keeps moving forward.
