Menchik’s “STAT” Op-Ed Tops the Publications Most Read of 2022
“Confessions of a ‘human guinea pig’: Why I’m resigning from Moderna vaccine trials,” an op-ed by Jeremy Menchik, Associate Professor of International Relations at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, was the most read op-ed published by STAT in 2022.
Of the nearly 500 First Opinion essays published by STAT in 2022, written by more than 700 authors from the biopharmaceutical industry, health care, academia, government, and private life in the United States and beyond, Menchik’s recollection of taking part in the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine trial was the site’s most viewed. In his piece, Menchik discusses his desire to advance the vaccine’s development and dissemination. However, he states that his excitement over the vaccine’s success has diminished as “the noble enterprise of science-making I had imagined I was a part of is actually, first and foremost, an exercise in ruthless corporate profit-making.” Menchik lamented Moderna’s decision not to share its mRNA technology so global production could be scaled up quickly and criticized the company for choosing profit over the collective good of the world.
The list of STAT‘s top opinion articles of 2022 can be read on the publication’s website. Further details on Menchik’s op-ed can be read on the Pardee School website.
Jeremy Menchik is an Associate Professor in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and a faculty affiliate in Political Science and Religious Studies. His first book, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explains the meaning of tolerance to the world’s largest Islamic organizations and was the co-winner of the 2017 International Studies Association award for the best book on religion and international relations. His work has appeared in the academic journals Comparative Studies in Society and History, Comparative Politics, International Studies Review, Politics and Religion, Asian Studies Review and South East Asia Research as well as in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. His recent research focuses on social movements, the politics of modern religious authority, and the origins of the missionary impulse. Read more about Professor Menchik on his faculty profile or his personal website.