Ebola vaccine innovation: a case study of pseudoscapes in global health

Global vaccine development is driven by logics that can run counter to local understandings, needs, and contexts. In a global industrial complex, dependent on financial market logics that prioritize private enterprise, highly promising innovative health products developed in public laboratories may be shelved and revealed only when market opportunities attract investment interest. Such an opportunity arrived with the WHO declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in 2014. The West African Ebola outbreak mobilized a global platform to accelerate development of existing experimental vaccines. This article explores pseudo-authorship by industry of the rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine that disappeared its actual discovery by public scientists. It shows that vaccine development in a global health pseudoscape disguises the source and means of innovation, deflects resources to the private sector, and can hinder sustainability of health systems. Pseudo-collaborations give little credit to those who have done the risky work, and pseudo-capacity building seldom reaches the people on the ground needing general health systems. Pseudo-standards, however, may offer an opportunity to free evidence-based gold standards to better respond to public health emergencies.