Posts

Showing posts from July 27, 2020

You read it here first

I heard the most extraordinary programme on BBC Radio Four on Saturday evening. The 14-minuter was called Profile: Professor Sarah Gilbert and heralded the professor as "The no-nonsense scientist whose team is developing a coronavirus vaccine at record speed." What was extraordinary about this programme was not that Prof. Gilbert played the oboe very well as a kid, although that is remarkable. It is a very difficult instrument to play at all, let alone well. Neither is it that she later sprung triplets. Again, remarkable, but not, in itself, deserving of a 14-minute slot on Radio Four. That she has done some snappy work in the labs is obviously good news all round, especially for those of us who haven't had Covid-19 and don't particularly want it. No, what was extraordinary about this programme was the clear sense that Professor Sarah Gilbert had cracked it. That the vaccine was going to work. That the thing was done. They'd solved it. That she and her team...