Nature Medicine replies

We thank Waters et al. for their comments.

Your correction of our claim concerning 100% protection being required for transmission-blocking vaccines to be effective is well taken, and we thank you for pointing out that oversight.

In preparing the News story, many people in the malaria vaccine research community were interviewed, including Arnot and members of his research cluster. These interviews revealed that most scientists in this community were surprised that, in contrast to the US malaria research community, the European Commission decided not to support much of the proposed clinically advanced vaccine research. (Indeed, the most clinically applied section of Arnot's own cluster was dropped from the program line-up.) It was this apparent divide between US and European research that we stressed in the article.

Finally, we make no apology for the political slant of the story—for better or for worse, politics can affect science even more than science itself. As such, it is important for journals like Nature Medicine to report on political issues that shape the science and medical communities.