Interviewee: Meredith Wadman (British Columbia & Magdalen 1985) [hereafter ‘RES’]
Moderator: Jamie Byron Geller [hereafter ‘INT’]
Date of interview: 11 July 2025
INT: This is Jamie Byron Geller on behalf of the Rhodes Trust and I am here on Zoom with Meredith Wadman, British Columbia and Magdalen, 1985 to record Meredith’s Rhodes Scholar Oral History Project interview, which will help us to launch the first ever comprehensive Rhodes Scholar Oral History Project. So, thank you so much Meredith for your participation in this project. Today's date is July 11th, 2025, and may I ask Meredith, would you mind please saying your full name for the recording?
RES: Yes, it's Meredith Kathleen Wadman.
INT: Wonderful, and do I have your permission to record audio and video for this interview?
INT: Wonderful. Thank you, we are having this conversation over Zoom today but, where are you joining from?
RES: I'm joining from my home in Arlington, Virginia.
INT: And how long has Arlington been home?
RES: Oh gosh, I guess it's now 28 years -- a long time.
INT: Right, well I would love as we dive in to ask first for us to go all the way back to the beginning and where and when were you born Meredith?
RES: I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on October 13th 1960.
INT: And did you spend your entire childhood in British Columbia?
RES: Yes, I did, right up until the age of almost 18 when I left for Stanford.
INT: And did you grow up in Vancouver, in the Vancouver area?
RES: Yes, in Vancouver in Oakridge and Kerrisdale area.
INT: Great, and I'm really curious about you know, when you reflect on your childhood, if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about you know, maybe your earliest educational experiences and what comes to mind when you reflect on elementary school for example?
RES: Let's think. I loved school. I think it's fair to say I was a student and studiously did my homework and all those kinds of things. I loved learning all kinds of things, from spelling to--- I had a really great third grade teacher, Miss Van Ness, who would take us into the cloakroom and pretend we were flying to like, Saudi Arabia for our geography and then we would learn all about Saudi Arabia. She would play her guitar and we would sing and she would read out loud to us Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. We dissected a frog which was memorable. Everything was new and almost everything was interesting. So, I guess those are some of my earliest grade school experiences.
INT: And did you have any particular subjects academically that you gravitated towards?
RES: Well I loved writing from the get-go. I would write these little murder mysteries and wanted to be an author I think from, I think it's fair to say age eight. Certainly by age nine that was in my sights and never really left, although it got submerged for a period of time, which I'm sure we'll talk about eventually.
INT: And what about outside of academics and school? What kind of, hobbies or recreational activities filled your leisure time during your younger years?
RES: Well I should note that- And I don't know if this is exactly hobby but, my mum was American, born and raised in Chicago. She was patriotic and always kept her American citizenship. My dad had met her when he was in Cleveland as a surgical resident, she was a nurse in the OR at Case Western Reserve. And so he was, for a Canadian, appreciative of the US. So there was always a, pro American, American focus in our household. Which I think eventually led me to apply to college in The States. Although I was a dual citizen from the day I was born.
But, the other strong influence was, I had an older brother and I loved all things boy. I was a complete tomboy. I played tackle football with the boys on the block and gave as good as I got. I was into GI Joe whereas other girls were into Barbies. I was just completely in that world and bored by things girlish and couldn't understand why girls were interested in dolls. And I don't know why I go here except to say that with the emergence now of just a lot more openness about trans identity and stuff, I do wonder, had I been born in another era, if that might have been my inclination.
I remember a very specific point in time when an older girl on the block said, “Oh come now, you must stop wearing jeans and start acting like a girl.” I was probably about six and I remember thinking, `Yeah, you know, I really should. And just like that, I just closed that door. I have been thinking in the last I would say three to five years especially about how life might have been different and how impossible it would have been to even claim that as a young girl in that era, the early 1960s.
So, that was one of my influences. My hobbies were like, playing war and playing GI Joe and football and trying to keep up with my brother who was three years older, and his friends. And also being very bossy with I think, everyone my age. My kindergarten report card at one point -- my mum saved it – said “Meredith has become less domineering with her friends.” So, I think I was, an in-charge kid from very early on.
INT: And you mentioned that you know, both of your parents were in medicine. I'm curious if during your childhood and high school, if you had a hope or expectation of the direction that your own career might take?
RES: So, what happened was along about age 10 or maybe 11, when I was still clear I wanted to be a writer, I got a lot of positive feedback if I also said I wanted to be a doctor. And the more I said it, the more positive feedback I got, especially from my dad, who I just adored and who was and obstetrician-gynaecologist., I was malleable to that praise and that affirmation and started heading in that direction and because I could do it and do it well, it was also a path of relatively little resistance. You know, if I flunked out of biology or chemistry it might have made my life very different and easier many ways.
I did have some genuine interest in biology, I will say that, but, it wasn't a passion, it wasn't: ‘I have got to go into science.’ What did appeal to me about medicine was the caregiving aspect and the idea increasingly as I grew older, that one could put that to use in a global context in countries that were so much less well served than Canada was medically. And so, that was kind of the track I was on and, doing very well in school. So, it was clear that, even though there were fewer women in medicine in the 70s, that I would have the grades and the wherewithal to do it.
And then, the week after my 14th birthday, my older brother Greg was tragically killed in a car accident. This was just devastating, as you can imagine, to our whole family; I also have a younger sister, Andrea. My parents were so broken, so broken by it. We all were. But, I think coming out of that or, trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other and help my parents in some way, that the notion after that of disappointing my dad by not doing medicine became even harder, if not impossible.
And so, I went to Stanford. I remember filling out a questionnaire for freshmen that asked `What do you think you might want to do?’ I had sort of dutifully put pre-med on it. But, there's this little voice in my head whispering, “History, history.” And I just I couldn't go there. It was just too hard. It was too scary to challenge my dad, who was a very forceful personality. And so onward I went and I majored in human biology and then ended up going to UBC to begin medical school.
INT: Well I am, first of all Meredith, so deeply sorry for your family's loss, I cannot imagine and I'm just, I'm just so sorry and appreciate your openness in sharing that. Would you, before we jump through to your experience in medical school, I was wondering if you would mind reflecting a little bit about your experience at Stanford and what defined those years? And I know you ended up pursuing you know, you mentioned pursuing pre-med but, having this idea of history in the back of your mind and wondering if you were exploring other subjects at the time while pursuing pre-med?
RES: I did. I would take a sample course in Western civ or remember taking 19th century German history with Gordon Craig, a really famous scholar. I was so out of my depth because I had no training in that, right? For one thing, we didn't have APs in Canada so I didn't have AP history. I hadn't studied government. I hadn't studied much that would have put you into that liberal arts path. And so it just didn't take. And again, all the reinforcement was coming for doing biology and chemistry and physics and all those things.
You know, I have wonderful memories of Stanford in terms of friends I made there and also its natural beauty, the smell of the eucalyptus and running up into the foothills to this radar dish that we called The Dishish. It was much more pastoral in that era, it's so built up now. But, it was thrilling and full of interesting people and I made some very close friends there, and kept some others from high school who had come down with me from my high school.
INT: And you mentioned growing up you know, having dual citizenship and your mom having grown up in the US and I'm curious if you wouldn’t mind sharing a little bit about your decision to pursue college in the US and then to travel back to Canada for med school?
RES: Right. I must say that some of wanting to go away to college where most of my friends were going to UBC for undergrad, which was kind of, the Canadian approach --: you go to the school in your hometown by and large—was it was just dark in Vancouver emotionally because of my brother's loss. And it was really hard being at home and so, it was an escape route as well and that's just the truth of it. But, I applied also colleges in Eastern Canada and in the Midwest and so on. I really wanted to spread my wings. It wasn't just running away, it was wanting to see the big world.
It was a very expensive proposition to go to Stanford in that day when tuition was you know, an order of magnitude beyond what it would have been at UBC. And so feeling that burden on my dad, coming back to UBC financially was the thing to do. But, I didn't come back with a sense of excitement, I came back out of a sense of, `This is what I have to do.’ I did, by the way, take a year off between undergrad and medical school when I was supposed to be `finding myself’ and getting to terms with who I was.
I went travelling with a friend and we went through 17 countries from Spain through North Africa to the Middle East to South Asia and on to East Asia with backpacks and money I made from working on fishing boats in Southeast Alaska the summer after I graduated. So I had had that hiatus. But, I hadn't used it to confront my demons which were really that I didn't want to go to med school. So, there I was in UBC, working very hard because it was easily the most academically rigorous and demanding environment, those first two years of medical school, that I've ever been in before or since -- it’s a very, very high bar there.
INT: And I'm curious about, in that year before medical school when you were travelling, I'm curious if you spent time in the UK and if so, if that had any impact on your thinking about the Rhodes Scholarship when that time came?
RES: You know what, I didn't. This was very much a sort of, developing country tour, I mean we did start in Spain but, basically it was in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, India, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia. So, no, is the short answer to that. I had been in France as an undergraduate at Stanford's campus in Tours, but before I went to Oxford I'd never been to England.
INT: So when, perhaps while you were at Stanford but, perhaps while you were at med school at UBC, when did the Rhodes Scholarship become something that you started to think about as a potential next step?
RES: A friend of mine who was a year ahead of me in medicine at UBC and who'd also been with me at Stanford and went to my high school, Andrew Clarke, had applied for the Rhodes Scholarship the prior year and we were housemates. And so, that's how it got on my radar. Andrew got right into the interviews and then realised during his interviews that he really didn't want to go to Oxford. So, he withdrew but, his experience served to put it on my radar. So the following year, I applied and was accepted and I was the second woman from British Columbia. There'd been one prior to me in the mid-70s, right after the scholarship opened up to women.
INT: And do you recall the moment of learning that you had been selected for the scholarship?
RES: Yes, I remember where I was standing, at the kitchen island of my parents’ house and the phone call and just letting out this --probably to the secretary’s ears --very loud whoop. I was just over the moon: very, very, very, very, very excited.
INT: Wonderful, and did you travel over to Oxford with your class?
RES: No. There was I guess a Canadian sailing and dinner, I once knew these things but, I had to I believe join early because the medical school curriculum was different; it started earlier. I did not go over there with the group because of that. Being in clinical medicine also kind of, threw out my experience, made my time there a little different from some Rhodes Scholars. Much of our training was up the hill in Headington at the John Radcliffe II Hospital. My class was almost entirely British folks. There were a few non locals I guess, or non UK people. So I spent a lot of time with British people and not with, say, PPE American types, hanging out. There was one Rhodes Scholar in my class, Kai Ming Choi from Singapore. We're still in touch and he was a good friend.
INT: And would you mind sharing a little bit Meredith about the- I'm curious about any differences you found with regards to studying medicine in Canada versus the UK and in the latter years of your training?
RES: Right, so the part of my training in Canada was the first two years of medical school. It was like in the anatomy lab or, in pathology lab or, in classrooms and lectures. It was largely preclinical. - There's a bit of clinical at the end of the second year so I saw some but, by the time I got to Oxford it was moving into clinical and being with patients and being in hospital wards. So, it was not really an apples to apples comparison. But, I did notice that I had been going at 110 miles an hour at UBC, just working so hard. You had to study every night, you would come home- a least I did -and work from like 7 to 10 pm and do it again the next night because that was the only way to keep up with the glut of material.
Once I got to Oxford- and I don't know if it's a British thing but, people were so much more relaxed. I was still running, running, running and I was looking around going, `Well everyone else doesn't seem to be running quite so fast.’ And that was an adjustment and I'm sure I probably stuck out as a real keener at least for a while in that first year. I also felt very loud and very- I mean I was, my identity at that point was primarily Canadian, I was coming from Canada but, I still felt really loud and really too outgoing. The person who is in the store speaking loudly.
I can't explain it but, it was a sense of being a bull in a China shop, except the shop is conversation. It was hard. The English were so much more reserved than I was and you didn't really know where you stood with them. It took a while to begin to understand that and then to, communicate in a maybe more culturally appropriate way I hope. I still think I stood out to some degree, for being loud and that was just how it was. But, I made really good friends there who were British and so it was possible. But, it took time and it wasn't the same sort of social interaction as I was used to. And that could be quite lonely too.
INT: I'm curious Meredith about you know, you shared that when you were pursuing medicine in Canada, you know, that this was a track that you were on but that there were other things that were still, it sounds like, pulling your attention as possibilities. But, it sounds like your academics were so rigorous at that time that there was probably less time for reflection than there was when you were in the UK. And I'm curious if, with that, with the slower pace that you described and perhaps more time with reflection, for reflection if that impacted how you might be thinking about what your career could look like?
RES: I think it did. There's definitely more space and as a result I began to really wrestle with this knowledge that would not be pushed down, that I didn't want to spend my life seeing patients and being a doctor. And in a way, moving to Oxford had been what they call the geographical cure, right? Like, `Wherever you go there you are,’ I think is what Confucius or other people since have said. And moving across the pond hadn't gotten rid of the real primary conflict at the heart of my life, which was that I was doing something for a career I didn't want to do.
But, I did, within the constraints of being in medicine, do all I could to express myself and my other interests. And one of the ways that happened was asking to go to South Africa in the fall of my second year there, to do a rotation in paediatrics that normally I would have done in Oxford at a children's hospital. And I was able to go to what was, then called the King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban which was the major referral centre for black people in the province of what was then Natal, that today is called KwaZulu-Natal. And this was the height of the apartheid era, there was tremendous repression and police brutality. It was a horrible environment.
And into this hospital would come from the far reaches of Natal by bus or foot or however they could get there, really, really sick black people because it was a hospital for blacks, right? So society was separated and it was terribly rundown and overcrowded and all of that. And I had my little Minox camera with me and went through the paediatric rotation under a physician named Jerry Coovadia who's a legend and South African paediatrics and [later] in HIV medicine. Jerry himself was also a tremendous anti-apartheid leader. And I would go to his house in the evenings, he made me welcome with his family. I'm still in touch with his son.
But, a year later that house was bombed by agents of the government. I mean that’s how much out there he was in the anti-apartheid movement. Fortunately, he and his wife and daughter -- his son was not at home at the time -- survived and were uninjured. But, anyway he was a total inspiration because, he was fighting the good fight and I was able through that experience, seeing these kids dying of vaccine preventable diseases like measles or in terrible, moribund condition from tetanus which no one should get, there's a jab for that. Or shoved off in the corner of the ward with typhoid fever which should demand strict isolation but, there were no isolation wards.
I was able to photograph a good deal of this and then to write an article, an op-ed, when I came back in December 1986, for the Toronto Globe and Mail. And that was the first article I ever published in journalism. It was just like coming home. It's like `Yes, this is who I am and this is what I want to do and now I just need to kind of, tough it out through this last-‘ Because by then it was one and a half years of medical school. But, it was costly emotionally. I was not doing well emotionally and I didn't- You know, I think as my time progressed at Oxford because I wasn't dealing with this.
I was reading one of the other oral histories a woman who came I think, from Newfoundland In 1980, I'm forgetting her name, to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and she was in medicine but, she was in her first month, she pivoted to doing theology which was another passionate interest of hers. One of the questions in your questionnaire you sent me was `What would I do differently?’ Well, I would do politics, philosophy and economics or international relations. I would put a pause on the medicine and go get connected with some of these more social science humanities subjects that have always drawn me. And actually, now, given what I know about myself, I would do history because I just love history. That’s where my heart is when I'm not beavering away at my day job which I still am doing, for another few weeks anyway.
INT: Oh well, congratulations first of all, I would love to talk about that as we get a little further in our interview. But, thank you so much for sharing that Meredith, and so it sounds like after your experience in South Africa did you return to Oxford or was that the- Yeah, okay, and then finished the year and a half remaining in your medical training?
INT: And where did your journey bring you after Oxford?
RES: So, I went back to Vancouver and initially worked for the peace movement with a group called Project Ploughshares and that was funded by the Mennonite Central Committee to do just basic community organising. I did that for a while and then I sort of, drifted into writing a biography of a peace activist but couldn't settle to it. I wrote various freelance pieces and even wrote, directed and produced a video documentary on Hiroshima through a friend who ran a TV station in Vancouver. I was dipping my foot in journalism and wanted to just jump with both feet.
But, I found it was hard to be taken quite seriously you know, by employers. `What, you’re a doctor, you want to do this?’ And so in the end decided I would go to journalism school which, in retrospect I really needed. Both to be taught the ropes but also because it just moved me into a different pond and a bunch of networking opportunities and meeting people in this industry. I was at Columbia in their Master’s of Journalism programme. I ended up out of that with an internship at the Wall Street Journal. And one thing led to another and I was off and running as a journalist and based in Washington DC for my first job. I've never left.
INT: And what is it, you shared a little bit about in your childhood that there was this you know, kind of passion for storytelling even, I think you said eight was the year that you started to maybe think of yourself as a storyteller. What is it about, you know, what is it about journalism and reporting that really spoke to you during these years as you were thinking about what might be next in your career?
RES: It just came out of out of here, well you can't see `here,’ but it was a way of making a difference in the world by simply communicating what I saw and what I learned. And as a profession, as a career, I was going to be paid to learn about things and then communicate them which were both, my favourite things. What wasn't to like about that? Things I cared about, social justice issues, really from that very first article about those sick kids in South Africa through to what I'm working on at this very moment and stopped working to come and talk to you: an article about endometriosis, this really difficult gynaecological disease where tissue like that which lines the inside of the uterus grows outside it and causes tremendous pain and disability. It affects up to one in 10 women and is grossly underfunded in terms of research --shamefully underfunded.
And so, writing about that, writing about an article centred on an endometriosis researcher, Katie Burns at the University of Cincinnati, who herself has endometriosis and is determined to solve this and who has overcome tremendous obstacles in order to work as a scientist. It's already so hard to work as a scientist, she’s like running a race with heavy leg weights on. And she's doing it. So telling her story, it's another way of telling a story about a group that's been in the shadows, a disease that's been in the shadows. And I think that's always what I've been drawn to throughout my career, this telling the story of the underdog., There's a truism about journalism, [whose source was the 19th century Chicago Evening Post newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne:] it's intended to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted., I think there's truth in there, let me put it that way.
INT: You know, I think it’s so lovely Meredith that part of our hope for this project is to illuminate all of the ways that scholars around the world fight the world's fight, which you have done in your career. In part by illuminating the ways that the individuals in the stories that you tell are fighting the world's fight, like the doctor that you just described and I think that's such a, such a meaningful way to fulfil the mission of the Rhodes Scholarship.
RES: Well thanks. I hope I've done it justice, because it was a tremendous opportunity.
INT: And you mentioned going from Columbia to the Wall Street Journal as an intern and then did you stay at the Wall Street Journal after that internship?
RES: No. It was a summer, limited 10 week thing. From that I went to a job as the founding Washington Bureau Chief for the Oakland Tribune and a string of Bay Area, East Bay area newspapers, at a time when most newspapers had someone in Washington or wanted to. It was 1992, ‘93 coming in. My first stories were covering the inauguration of Bill Clinton so I'm dating myself but, it was a thrilling time personally to be in Washington. I was so green and I was being given this great opportunity to cover this new administration and begin to understand this town. That was really special.
INT: And was there a medicine and science lens on your work at that time or, was your reporting a bit more general?
RES: It was general political reporting at that time. It touched on medicine and science insofar as the Clinton administration was trying to do healthcare reform but, that was more policy and less medicine actually. So, after a couple, two and a half years in that job there was a really- How do I put it, a kind of legend but, a very erratic guy who hired me, named Dave Bergen, who, had a trail of bodies behind him.
So at some point he and I clashed and that was it. I was out and that was a chance to do some freelancing and then to find my way to Nature which was looking for a biomedical correspondent in Washington. And that's how my very long-term relationship with Nature began in 1995. I was with them until 2013 in one way or another, with a little bit of off time when my kids were brand new.
INT: Yeah, that is a remarkable career with Nature and I’m curious if you would mind, you know, reflecting a little bit on what experiences stand out as most meaningful or perhaps most challenging? You know, I'm just reflecting on the advances in science and medicine that you must have had the opportunity to report on during those years and curious if you would mind reflecting on that?
RES: There was a lot that happened. I guess like, one of the articles I feel really proud of- and it actually wasn't for Nature though. At the same time I was also a stringer, a contributing correspondent, for Fortune. And I had the opportunity to do an article about women and heart disease. And how unrecognised it was in women and how the symptoms presented differently and how doctors missed it and also how women denied it and did not want to talk about it if they did have a heart attack because, they feared it marked them as old or washed up. And so it was this kind of, disease in the shadows. And in women, heart disease is as big a killer over the lifespan of women as of men but, it's just that oestrogen protects us before menopause and then it doesn't anymore.
And so highlighting this through telling the stories of some prominent women including a congressman, Julia Carson of Indiana, who later passed away from heart disease, for Fortune was really exciting because I don't think other journalists had been there and it really highlighted the problem. It won a Time Warner Public Service Award or something. I felt really proud of that work Nature was many 600, 800 word stories of which I'm also cumulatively proud but, it's harder to pick out one.
One subject that was really very visible in the aughts when I was doing a lot of work for Nature was stem cell research, human embryonic stem cell research, and the controversy around that. Given what's going on today, it seems almost quaint that it was such a big controversy because now you know, given what this administration is doing every day of the week, it's just barely a blip to think that human embryonic stem cell lines were limited by the George W. Bush administration. Now, they're doing far more damage every day as we speak.
INT: Yes, I will. Okay, please go ahead Meredith?
RES: Part of the pleasure of being at Nature, and it has been the same at Science, where I've been since 2016, is just working with smart, humane, interesting, interested people. It's like, `Wow, this is my tribe. This is where I thrive. These are people who understand me and who I get.’ I never felt that way in medicine.
INT: That's really lovely, I'm curious if you- And we can talk about this a little bit as we talk about your time at Science but, you know, you reflected a little bit on the interconnected nature of science and politics and was wondering if you are able to reflect on the ways that you've seen that evidenced throughout your career?
RES: Oh wow, that's a big one, a big question. Well, there's always politics in science and politicians are always messing with science too to some degree. I think that's been so extremely heightened in the Trump era, that it’s hard to- I mean, it’s a quantum leap beyond anything that I can recall from my earlier career. I guess the closest analogy would be the fight over the use of human embryonic stem cells during the George W Bush administration. And just briefly, human embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that are leftover at fertility clinics that couples choose not to implant and that would be thrown out anyway and can be used a lot in science for many experiments from studying diabetes to Alzheimer's, name it.
There was a tussle in the early aughts over if and how the federal government, particularly the National Institutes of Health, would support such research and eventually George W Bush limited it to a handful of, several dozen I think, existing human embryonic stem cell lines -- they're called lines, the cells from one embryo -- that scientists could access. And since then, it’s greatly expanded to hundreds of lines that are available to federally funded scientists although who knows how long that lasts. I think all bets are off with this administration. But, that's an example of where science and politics you know, mess with each other or bump up against each other.
The FDA, the Trump FDA's move to try to regulate mifepristone -- the current administration's move to try to limit access to the abortion drug mifepristone which has been abundantly demonstrated to be safe and effective for at home, early trimester abortions. That's an example. I could go on and on. The wholesale, cancelling of peer-reviewed grants that have anything to do with diversity, equity and inclusion. So, a grant that in its abstract mentions that sickle cell disease disproportionately affects Black patients -- virtually everyone who has sickle cell disease in this country is black -- but, if that word’s in the abstract, bang, gone, defunded.
This is happening to hundreds and hundreds of grants. So, that's where we're at. And the current administration, what the White House has asked, is to cut $20 billion from the $48 billion National Institutes of Health, which is the world's paragon and premier biomedical research funder. This is what's going on in this country at this moment. Whether Congress will agree to do that remains to be seen. They've given Trump a lot of what he's asked for. This would be literally gutting the medical enterprise In terms of research that is the envy of the world.
INT: Thank you so much for sharing that Meredith, and you know, I've been reflecting on the, just the importance of the work that you do in terms of you're not only illuminating these issues to the public and helping them to understand them in a digestible way for those of us who do not have a medical background. You know, but also I'm thinking about the portion of your career that was spent during Covid and helping the public to navigate that and was wondering if you would mind reflecting a little bit on that chapter in your career?
RES: Well, I feel like I was very privileged to be able to be a part of recording the largest, single, medical event in all of our lifetimes and certainly in a century, as tragic as it was. I feel like I was insulated because the real, the heroes in Covid were the people on the front lines who were caring for patients at risk of their own lives. And I'm so humbled by that and so aware of yes, journalism was playing its part but the real actors and the real heroes were those at the bedsides of people and those also working to make vaccines that worked and did so in record time. That was an astonishing achievement and that it is now being denigrated and distrusted is just another sign of the times we live in.
Can I go back to say that vaccines have been a particular passion of mine, ever since I was a girl and my folks would tell me how important they were. When I was working at Nature in 2012, I came upon an article a letter to the editor, actually in Science magazine, about a group of cells that had been used to make particular vaccines including the MMR vaccine that had protected hundreds of millions of people from deadly disease since the 1960s. And it turned out that these cells came from a single aborted foetus legally aborted in Sweden, in 1962 without the mother's knowledge or consent. Scientists then used, developed the cells from this foetus’s lungs, to make this vaccine, the rubella vaccine – the “R” in “MMR” -- which is German measles. They did it in the middle of an epidemic of the disease in the 1960s.
German measles you don't hear as much about as classical measles but, it is devastating because if pregnant women get it, especially in the first trimester, it will damage their foetus. And so in the early 60s you had an epidemic in this country with thousands of kids being born blind, deaf, mentally disabled or, stillborn or, combinations of these. And there was a race to develop a vaccine using these cells as miniature vaccine `factories.’ And one scientist, Stanley Plotkin, who was kind of, the David to the company Goliaths, used these cells from this unknowing woman and tested the vaccine that was developed from them in orphans and in kids in homes for intellectually disabled kids, real warehouses in that era, the 60s.
And so there was this really lifesaving intervention, the R in the MMR vaccine, that came out of unethical uses of people in medical research. That paradox was fascinating to me. And I ended up writing a book about that whole chapter which was made possible by the New America Foundation. New America funded me for two years writing this book, for which I'm incredibly grateful called, The Vaccine Race. And writing that was possibly the most fun I've had in my career. It was just amazing because it was, truth is stranger than fiction: The scientists, the infighting, the woman, the nameless woman in Sweden who I actually managed to track down but, who didn't want to talk to me for understandable reasons. The very hubristic scientist, Leonard Hayflick, who developed the technology and then fled with the cells he developed across the country from Philadelphia to Stanford… - because the cells belonged to the government but, he thought they were his. And then he got in a big, career- ending fight with NIH, which owned them. This stuff you can't make up and it was such fun to write this book and to see how intricately human nature and science and politics intersect in almost any enterprise that involves science.
INT: That is so inspirational and I'm really curious about you know, you at that time when you started this book had been at Nature for nearly 20 years?
RES: Yeah, close to, off and on, off and on.
INT: Okay, curious about what inspired you to take this leap with the support of New America to pursue writing a book?
RES: So, I had wanted to write a book forever or, since I was 11, whatever. And some stories I'd worked on had spoken to me and said, `You know, you could turn me into a book,’ but none had absolutely insisted to me that I make them into a book. And when I read this little letter in Science Magazine from Hayflick, the scientist who developed cells, saying, “Hey, I developed these cells, they were used to make vaccines that saved billions of lives, I got into a huge fight with the NIH over who owned them and it raised Issues about tissue ownership that are still unresolved,” I thought: `This is my story to tell. This is an amazing story.’
And, I must credit Rebecca Skloot who wrote the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks that was published in 2010, which is another story about cells taken from you know, a woman who was ill treated by the medical profession and used to further science. And it's, if you haven't read it, a great read. So Rebecca Skloot had shown that you could write a really compelling book about cells being used in science, full of human failure and opportunity and personality. And had I not read her book I wouldn't have realised that this other group of cells called WI-38 was also a book and it was waiting for me to write it.
INT: Wow, and so was that about 2013 to 2015 that you were working on this book? Okay.
RES: Correct yeah, actually to 2016. I went to Science right afterwards so, I ended up writing it for most of three years in fact.
INT: And so you joined the team at Science in 2016?
RES: Yeah, in September 2016 so, it'll be nine years in September that I've been there.
INT: Great and would you mind sharing a little bit about the nature of your work at Science and how that might be different than the work that you did at Nature in that chapter of your career?
RES: Sure. It’s very similar. Wherever biology bumps up against policy, that's often where my stories are. It has been, as you can imagine, nonstop since January. Trying to keep up for instance, with what RFK Junior is doing to vaccine confidence and the structures, the committees, the science that undergirds our vaccination schedule, is extremely concerning. But, also the gutting of whole teams at the CDC, like, the group of people who develop contraceptive guidelines for women who have particular risks. They developed this Bible of contraceptive use that is used by physicians. So when a woman who's 31 years old comes into your office and has lupus and wants birth control for the first time,
What's safe for her? What's the best approach? What's the best dosage? It's that kind of Bible. And the entire team that updates those guidelines, impacting millions of women in this country, has just been eliminated. That's just one for instance. I could go on and on but, I won't. There is one area I tackled at Science for several years that I didn't cover at Nature, which is sexual harassment in science. I was able to document the cases of several abusive men who used their power and their influence in science to, prey on all kinds of women around them. And with some results. Those men are no longer in science, some of them.
INT: Thank you for sharing that Meredith, and you alluded earlier in our conversation that you might be navigating towards a new chapter in your life in the next few weeks and was wondering if you could share more about that?
RES: Yeah, so in early September on my 9th anniversary working at Science I am going to retire, which I'm very excited about because I have lots, lots of projects that I've been putting off and wanting to get to. I’m looking forward to engaging with them. Foremost among them is a novel I've been working on. I don't know if I have the chops of a novelist. I've never given it, in all this time, a really sincere effort.
I've been busy like raising children and working full time and a few other things so, that's some of the reason. But I'm very excited about this incipient novel which has to do with eugenics and a young woman who was at the heart of a Supreme Court case in 1927. It’s historical fiction. It’s based on real events and what happened to her at the hands of the medical and legal establishments which is a very dark story but, I think a really important one to tell.
INT: Wow, that is so exciting and you know, it really leads me to a question that I would love to ask you to reflect on. You've described some really, you know, some challenging times in your career and some challenging times in science and as you reach your retirement in the next few weeks- Which is so exciting and it's an opportunity to reflect on this incredible career where you have told so many important stories and illuminated so many important issues to the public, I was wondering if you would mind reflecting on what you would say motivates and inspires you at this point in your life and career?
RES: What motivates and inspires me? You know what inspires me most right now is people who are resisting what the Trump administration is doing without becoming haters, without becoming the thing that you are trying to oppose. It's a risk for me at least, like, to fall into that thinking that people are, evil, that they are monsters, to put it mildly, rather than wanting to oppose the deed and not the person.
And to do it in a way that has integrity, to channel anger into peaceful protest that one can be proud of and model for our children. I worry so much about what our kids see being modelled by the leaders of this country right now. That it's okay, to bully people and that it's okay to talk them down and that it's all okay to malign them on social media. And then we wonder why we have such a fractured society when this is what's being held up as what leadership is. And so people who can lead the way without becoming haters, call out what's happening without being consumed by anger, those are the folks who inspire me.
INT: And you shared a little bit Meredith about what children see these days and conscious that that your own children are a bit older than that. I would love to ask if you wouldn't mind, you know, you shared a little bit about your parents and your brother and sister growing up and was wondering if you would mind sharing a bit more about your family and your children perhaps?
RES: Oh sure. Yeah, absolutely. I'm married to Tim Wells. We met at the National Press Club at a writers conference. He is retired but, he's working full time on a book that is a political history of the 1960s which is really his passion. His dad was a flight surgeon in Vietnam and that whole war really informed his youth. And so that’s what he's about, along with sports. We have two sons, Bobby who's a software engineer in Denver, who's 26, and Chris, who's 25, who is right now swotting as they say for his LSAT exam which he hopes to take this coming month and getting ready to apply to law school in the fall. And then two very important dogs.
INT: Wonderful, and I would love to ask as we move into kind of, the final phase of our conversation, I would love to ask you a few questions reflecting on your scholar experience. So, the first being what impact would you say that the Rhodes Scholarship had on your life?
RES: I think it's opened a lot of doors. It rightly or wrongly will give you a leg up sometimes in getting a job or, getting a fellowship. People are impressed. One of the scholars on the oral history site was making some kind of comment about like, you know, we're very privileged as a group but, we're not special. That’s how I feel too. Very lucky. It opened me up to other ways of seeing and doing. Certainly living in Britain and understanding that people come at things differently over there. Even the practice of medicine over there was-- clinically, I really appreciated the bedside manner. The approach to the patient was a little less machine and drug oriented and a lot more people oriented.
That gave me a view on medicine that was one I wouldn't have had if I'd stayed in North America. Lifelong friends. Folks I wouldn't have met. I haven't even mentioned some of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars that I met and was really influenced by in good ways, and the Americans too. The opportunity to travel to South Africa, that was life changing, I don't think that would have happened if I'd been at UBC. And the list goes on. So yeah, I feel very fortunate, very privileged to have been able to be there even though it was a hard time in my life.
INT: And I think you shared Meredith, in our last conversation about an opportunity to travel back to South Africa that came later in your career and I was wondering before we jump back to the questions about the scholarship, was wondering if I could ask you to reflect on that?
RES: Oh absolutely. So it was the fall of 1986 that I went to South Africa as a Rhodes Scholar and in 2022 I was there on assignment for Science because my editors [and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting supported me to] go back to Durban and look at paediatric health there more than 30 years later, after the demise of apartheid. And to compare where those black kids at that hospital had been, as a population, in ‘86 and where they were in ’22.
The headline on the article ended up being, “Small Victories” because yes, there's been terrific forward progress in democratic South Africa but, there's also tremendous problems and backsliding now. So, that these kids are not as healthy as we all want them to be and as they could be. So it was a bit heartbreaking but there were also hopeful signs and it was certainly better than it had been, not least because, it wasn't a brutal regime that would eliminate people for daring to oppose it.
INT: And we are approaching the 125th anniversary of the Rhodes Scholarship in a few years which is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the history of the scholarships, which is one of our hopes for this oral history project. But, it's also a natural moment to look ahead to the next chapter of the Rhodes Scholarships and I would be curious to know what your hopes for the future of the Rhodes Scholarship would be?
RES: It seems to me you're already doing so much to make it more inclusive and I would hope it would continue in that direction, right? Embrace more people, give opportunity to more people who wouldn't have had it, lift up people that otherwise would have very different career paths, and lift up future leaders, right? Because God knows we need them.
INT: No that’s lovely, that's lovely and I would love to ask you if you have any advice or words of wisdom that you would offer to today's Rhodes Scholars or, perhaps the Rhodes Scholars of tomorrow?
RES: Yes. Don't let the weight of the scholarship get you down or make you think that you're the impostor, that you don't really belong here. You do belong here and you are perfect just as you are and your contribution is going to be just as it should be. You've been given this opportunity for a reason, right? You've done what you've done and people see promise. But, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to knock it out of the park every time. Just what you do is good enough. That's the message I would give.
INT: That is beautiful. Well Meredith, I am so grateful for your time and your openness to joining us in this initiative and sharing about the incredibly important work that you do and I would love to ask, if there's anything else that you would like to share before we close?
RES: Let me think, I think you've covered just about everything. If I think of something I'll let you know.
INT: Yeah, well I will end our recording there then.
