Fair Doses

An Economist Best Book of 2025

"Fair Doses is an unflinching insider account of how science, politics, and human nature collided in the battle to vaccinate the world." —Atul Gawande, surgeon and author of Being Mortal

How vaccines became the world's most powerful and widely distributed health intervention, and the inside story of the challenging race to deliver COVID-19 vaccines globally.

Fair Doses is a story of vaccines: how they came about, why they are important, and how they have been made globally available—although our quest for vaccine equity is still ongoing. In this fascinating deep dive into vaccines, Dr. Seth Berkley, an internationally recognized infectious disease epidemiologist and public health leader, offers an inside view of the challenges of developing and disseminating vaccines for a broad swath of illnesses, from Ebola to AIDS to malaria and beyond.

COVID-19 was a lesson about the devastation a novel virus can bring on our world. When the first signs of this new infection appeared, Dr. Berkley co-created COVAX, a global initiative aimed at ensuring equitable vaccine distribution. The COVAX team had to navigate vaccine nationalism, vaccine diplomacy, intentional disinformation, political forces, and the conflicting incentives of vaccine companies in its race against the virus. In record time, the group organized 193 countries, raised more than $12 billion, built the world's largest portfolio of COVID-19 vaccines, and delivered two billion doses to 146 countries.

Future pandemics are an evolutionary inevitability, and future global response needs to be much faster and more equitable. Drawing from his personal experience, Dr. Berkley lays out a bold vision of preparedness that will help the global community take advantage of rapid advancements in science to make our world safer from infectious diseases.