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In 2021 posed while getting a COVID-19 vaccine injection, quipping: “I’m old enough to get it, and I’m smart enough to get it.” Photo: Instagram/Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton’s most enduring contribution to science, from a public point of view, is probably Dolly, the cloned sheep. Though that was a reference to her prominent mammaries, a fact she reacted to with her characteristic good humour, despite the controversy, but the whole story is that Dolly Parton, singer, celebrity, and philanthropist, who died at 80, after a short battle with cancer, also stood solidly on the side of science.
Her contributions have been eulogised after her death last week, following a battle with cancer, and as a result, more people than ever know about her vast contributions provided specifically for the advancement of healthcare. In fact, Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, wrote on X, of her passing: “Today is a sad day as we mourn an exceptional artist, a true champion of kindness, and ambassador of science and public health.”
Her contributions to developing the COVID-19 vaccination have not received as much publicity as they deserve. In a tribute, Nature recorded that at least 37 research papers credit the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund with support. In March 2020, she gave $1 million to Vanderbilt Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee, to promote vaccine research. Nature also mentions that the “the money helped to fund the ‘critical’ early stages of research into a then-experimental messenger RNA vaccine eventually produced by Moderna, a biotechnology firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The fund is acknowledged in the first published report of a phase I trial of the vaccine, which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine in July 2020.”
But, that was not all. She posed while getting a COVID-19 vaccine injection, quipping: “I’m old enough to get it, and I’m smart enough to get it.” She went on to rewrite the lyrics to her famous song Jolene to promote vaccine uptake. “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I’m beggin’ of you, please don’t hesitate” she sang, to do her bit to push people to take the shot.
