Health care workers answer questions about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD explains that the mRNA technology being used in the COVID vaccines has been in development for over a decade.
I have been doing clinical and basic science research for most of my career. I am a clinician scientist. I started the Center for Women’s Health Research at Meharry, which was the first center that looked at diseases that disproportionately impacted of women of color almost 15 or so years ago.
So, I’ve been involved in research for a long period of time. So, one of the things that I knew is that the mRNA—the messenger RNA technology—has been in development for the last 12 years. So even though you hear this thing about warp speed, believe me, that was not warp speed.
It just happened to be at a time, at a point in time, where it was ready for prime time. And, so, looking for a candidate vaccine to actually showcase this technology. So, I was very comfortable with that.
