“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Mexico’s Failed Patria Vaccine and Ideological Issues in Conacyt”

The good: Mexico already has its vaccine against COVID-19. The bad: announcing that it was ready two days before the WHO officially declared the pandemic over. The ugly: it doesn’t work. According to the FDA, “monovalent” vaccines like Patria are no longer useful. Money, effort and time wasted.

María Elena Álvarez Buylla, director of the National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies, announced just a few days ago that the Patria vaccine is already available. Yes, although it seems like a joke in bad taste, the lady boasted of it.

At the same time, he also managed to get the so-called “Buylla Law” approved by the Senate of the Republic. This without attending to the legislative processes, without listening to the experts in research, science and technology, while he decided that the military should form part of the Council from now on.

Then, faced with accusations and claims by the national scientific community (related to the multiple problems and errors contained in the aforementioned law), Álvarez Buylla decided to file a lawsuit and ask: “Where were you during the six-year term of Peña Nieto?” The response from the scientific community and the media was swift: a photo of the current director receiving the 2017 National Science Award from the former president circulated…

Álvarez Buylla has turned Conacyt into his private stronghold. Through this he takes revenge on his colleagues, he imposes a vision that has little or nothing to do with scientific innovation, research and free education, and he gives all of it a strong ideological weight.

It has been said over and over again: science and research do not work because of an ideology. They respond to the pressing needs of the population, to the questions posed by researchers, to the spirit of the human being who is not content with a mystical answer or a clean one with branches…

The Buylla Law actually normalizes vices and ideological obsessions in Conacyt. At no time does it seek to improve development processes in our country. Neither does it intend to optimize them or promote research institutions, whether public or private. And although I do not consider that science and research were optimal in previous six-year terms, progress was slowly made on the right track.

The Álvarez Buylla administration has been characterized by a combative spirit against the scientists themselves, the students who have a scholarship abroad, independent thought (they did not necessarily agree with the government and now they must), teaching centers as is the CIDE, from the same National System of Researchers (will this disappear soon?). Álvarez Buylla eliminates the already few opportunities that exist in the world for scientific research. His bet is not that of a researcher. She outlines a person who is only interested in looking good with power, doing politics and collecting personal insults.

The same bad luck that the Patria vaccine had characterizes the new science and technology law in “our country. It widens the distance between us and other nations that are investing and betting on research.

Let’s illustrate this point with the issue of the vaccine: it is now known that it is useless, but they still plan to manufacture it on a massive scale. It is necessary to ask oneself, then, how much will it cost to produce it? How much to “update” it? Could it be that they use the most ignorant and humble people as guinea pigs?

BY VERÓNICA MALO GUZMÁN
VERONICAMALOGUZMAN@GMAIL.COM
@MALOGUZMANVERO

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