Cuban (scientist) offended by US visa denial to claim science prize

Vicente Verez-Bencomo was to accept the award recognizing his team's technological achievement during a Wednesday ceremony at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif. He had also been scheduled on Friday to address a gathering of the Society for Glycobiology in Boston.

Verez-Bencomo said the U.S. State Department denied him a visa because the visit would be "detrimental to the interests of the United States."

"That is really offensive to me," the chemical engineer told The Associated Press as he sat on a stool inside the University of Havana's Synthetic Antigens Laboratory, where the vaccine was developed. "It's really a shame."

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Before the development of a similar vaccine more than a decade ago, Hib was the biggest cause of meningitis among infants in the United States. That earlier vaccine has all but stamped out the disease in the western world, but it is too expensive for many poor countries to do mass immunizations.
The synthetic vaccine created by Verez-Bencomo's team can be produced at a relatively low cost because antigens don't have to be grown in a bacterial culture, making it an attractive alternative for poorer nations.

So far more than 1 million doses have been administered to Cubans, and Science Magazine last month said the vaccine "may someday save millions of lives."