It was during the first term of Donald Trump’s presidency that mRNA vaccines were developed with funding from the American government. When first administered to combat COVID-19, they played a crucial role in saving millions of lives, demonstrating the technology’s promise for use in vaccine development to address other viruses.
In his second term, Trump picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, while stating he is not anti-vaccine, has repeatedly demonstrated quite the opposite. He links autism to vaccines. He has banned thimerosal, a preservative, from vaccines, even though there is no evidence to indicate it has ever been a health hazard.
He associates with and holds similar views to anti-vaccine groups and has been a promoter of conspiracy theories. He has targeted fluoridation of drinking water as a health risk and outlawed its use. Dentists will be on the receiving end of that action in years to come as young people develop cavities and mouths have to be filled with amalgams. He associates the measles vaccine with autism even though the only study that supported such conclusions has been rejected by the scientific community.
Kennedy recently fired the 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) responsible for providing advice on immunizations. The reason given was that the 17 were too aligned with the biopharmaceutical industry, advocates for vaccine orthodoxy and, therefore, in conflict of interest.
His replacement advisors align more with him than with scientific consensus on vaccine research and safety. Some have no background in virology and epidemiology. Instead of scientific expertise, the new committee members state they will focus on safe vaccine practices. Like him, Kennedy’s new “experts” appear to be going down rabbit holes in search of evidence to undermine existing vaccination programs and future research.
It should be no surprise, therefore, that the Trump administration recently cancelled $500 million in contracts to researchers and developers of mRNA vaccines. mRNA vaccine research is creating treatments for Amapari (a viral disease native to Brazil), Adenoviruses (causing respiratory, eye, gastrointestinal, and urinary tract infections), Dengue fever, Ebola, Bird and swine flu, Influenza (the flu), HIV, Herpes, Malaria, Rabies, Reovirus (causing severe diarrhea and dehydration in children), Rhinovirus (the common cold), Sickle-cell disease, Tacaribe (spread by bats, often fatal and infecting multiple organs), TMEV (a disease of the brain), Varicella (chicken pox) and Zika.
Kennedy justifies the defunding of mRNA research by describing the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines as unsafe and ineffective, even though the data says otherwise.
Kennedy has recently stated he “supports safe, effective vaccines for every American who wants them. That’s why we’re moving beyond the limitation of mRNA vaccines for respiratory viruses and investing in better solutions.” The overwhelming response to Kennedy’s views on mRNA vaccines and COVID-19 from virologists and epidemiologists is that the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, responsible for the public health of Americans, is uninformed and backward.
Here are just a few examples:
- In response, Michael Osterholm, who runs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NPR, “This may be the most dangerous public health judgment that I’ve seen in my 50 years in this business. It is baseless, and we will pay a tremendous price in terms of illnesses and deaths.”
- Jennifer Nuzzo, who runs the pandemic research program at Brown University School of Public Health, agrees with Osterholm, stating, “This is a profoundly disappointing development. When there’s the next pandemic, we’re going to be caught flat-footed.”
- Rick Bright, who ran BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in Trump’s first term, describes the Kennedy move as irresponsible, and that in taking funding away from mRNA vaccine research, he is taking U.S. research in 2025 back to where we were in 1940, which is in his opinion, “a recipe for disaster and failure.” Bright notes that the advantage mRNA vaccine research has given medicine is the ability to develop quick responses to a pathogenic threat, where “speed is the name of the game.”
Meanwhile, COVID-19, the first virus to be tackled using mRNA technology, has demonstrated its effectiveness. The mRNA mechanism for vaccine delivery lies in its simplicity. The technology is described by Drew Weissman, a Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Perelman School of Medicine at UPenn, as “essentially plug-and-play.” Weissman continues, “We believe you can change the part of the mRNA that encodes a protein, plugging in new code specific to the virus we hope to protect against, and cause one’s body to produce proteins that match that virus’s proteins. We do not have to develop and manufacture an entirely new formula.”
With Kennedy in charge, however, a promising medical technology is being defunded by the American government for what he says are “better solutions.” Along with an infodemic of public misinformation coming from the Trump administration, this latest health decision is bizarre.
