February 16th
from a special issue of New Scientist
WHEN Krishna Ella went to venture capitalists in 1995 he was laughed out of their offices. A molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he was proposing to make hepatitis B vaccine in India, his native land, for a mere dollar a shot. At the time UK drug firm SmithKline Beecham was selling the product in the west for 20 times that amount. "People thought: there's no way this guy can produce this vaccine at a dollar," Ella recalls....
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