Opinion | Maria Elena Bottazzi and Peter Hotez: The 2022 Dallas Morning News Texans of the Year
Houston microbiologists gave the world a patent-free COVID-19 vaccine and a partnership that could eradicate neglected tropical diseases.
Flores, who received an award for her work raising money and resources for sick children, sat next to Hotez at the gala. When they got to talking, she learned of his parasite research in China. They chatted about research possibilities in Honduras. The world is fortunate that Bottazzi and Hotez met. But their careers intersecting is less an instance of good luck than it is confirmation that our planet of 8 billion people is smaller than we think and that talent is everywhere we look. The Houston scientists share an unwavering conviction that those with resources have a duty to assist those without, no matter where they live, by preventing disease that perpetuates poverty.
When Bottazzi enrolled in Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras in 1983, she chose microbiology over medicine. Dr. Humberto Cosenza, a UNAH professor who was educated in the U.S. and Switzerland, secured a grant from the World Health Organization to equip a lab to research parasite diseases. He recruited Bottazzi to work there during her final undergraduate year.
Walking through Philadelphia’s central business district one day, she had a eureka moment. Bottazzi decided to go to business school at night. He blazed through Yale University in the 1970s as a molecular biophysics and biochemistry major and headed to New York for graduate school in the ‘80s. A Ph.D. program at The Rockefeller University allowed him to simultaneously earn a doctorate in medicine at Cornell University’s medical school.
But the traveling weighed on Hotez. The trips meant he would often leave his wife, Ann, alone with the kids. Rachel, the third of their four children, had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disabilities. George Washington University in Washington, D.C., came knocking with an offer to let Hotez start a new microbiology and tropical medicine department. He joined the faculty in 2000 with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a hookworm vaccine with the Sabin Vaccine Institute, of which Hotez became president. Funds were also channeled toward a vaccine for schistosomiasis, a parasitic infection spread by water snails.
Leaders at both Houston institutions believe they have a responsibility to eradicate childhood illness at home and in forgotten pockets of the world. Together, they created a network of HIV clinics in Romania and several African countries so that infected children there can receive the same lifesaving treatment available in the U.S.
“Going on the cable news channels several times a day for three years, I learned how they portray us in Texas,” Hotez said. “They all want to focus on the wackadoodle stuff. And I said, ‘Wait a minute, I came to Texas to do big things.’” Yet she still fights sexist perceptions that she’s riding Hotez’s coattails. Sometimes she’s invisible.
Still, her admirers lament that Honduras couldn’t hold on to her. Bottazzi misses her home, but she notes that her successes abroad have helped bring visibility and support to Honduras and her alma mater.
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