01945 Spring 2021

32 | 01945
He answered the call
BY ELYSE CARMOSINO
When Peter Jackson received a call in
July asking him to participate in Moderna’s
COVID-19 vaccine trial, the Marblehead
resident didn’t hesitate.
An executive for a subsidiary of
healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson,
Jackson (who was not speaking on behalf
of his company) said he had no qualms
about jumping headfirst into the biotech
giant’s vaccine race, the local trials for
which would take place right at Brigham
and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“I knew it wasn’t going to kill me, and
I knew Brigham and Women’s was one
of the preeminent medical centers in the
United States,” Jackson said. “If you’re
going to be a part of any kind of trial for
a vaccine, you want to be in the academic
center.”
Jackson, who is Black, said his racial
background was largely what prompted
him to take on the challenge, adding
that thanks to his professional training
— which includes extensive working
Town resident and health executive Peter Jackson
help test COVID-19 vaccines.
PHOTO COURTESY PETER JACKSON
knowledge of Johnson & Johnson’s HIV
studies — he felt more than prepared for
what lay ahead.
“This is the world I live in. I’ve been in
pharmaceuticals for over 20 years. Even
though that had nothing to do with me
being in the study, I had the education,” he
said. “All I do is talk about clinical trials, so
I had a really strong understanding of what
was going on.”
Moderna, whose vaccine was approved
by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
in December, was the second healthcare
company — after Pfizer — to receive the
go-ahead for U.S. distribution.
However, medical experts across the
U.S. expressed concern during the vaccine’s
early trials that people of color weren’t
accurately represented, despite being one of
the demographics most devastated by the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Minority enrollment was so poor, in
fact, that Moderna was at one point forced
to shut down sites with high Caucasian
enrollment to avoid skewing test results.
“When you look at the graph, it’s
amazing,” Jackson said. “If you were a white
male living in the suburbs, they didn’t need
you anymore. They had too many people
living in the suburbs that were working at
home who weren’t exposed to anything.
What they really needed was the guy
driving the bus for the MBTA. He’s at risk
every single day.”
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