Goodbye, mRNA vaccine funding
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Saw this today:
By Adam B. Kushner
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, isn’t just a vaccine skeptic. He especially dislikes one type of vaccine: those that use mRNA technology, such as the first Covid shots. He has canceled nearly $500 million to make mRNA immunizations and a bird-flu vaccine that Moderna was developing.
This is a relatively new technology, and it’s worth remembering the moment the shots debuted for widespread use in late 2020. Three hundred thousand Americans had died from Covid. (The number eventually exceeded a million, the most of any country.) Most schools were still closed. White-collar workers were still mostly remote. Americans were in a mental health crisis. When I got my jab, I hadn’t eaten in a restaurant for a year. The vaccines ended all that.
Kennedy says they’re no good, and he’s halting government support for them. For today’s newsletter, I asked Apoorva Mandavilli, who covers vaccines for The Times, to explain what’s happening.
What is an mRNA vaccine?
Some vaccines use a weakened version of a bacterium or virus to provoke an immune response and train your body’s defenses. Others use a piece of the virus that the body can easily recognize as foreign. MRNA has the instructions for making only one small part of a virus. It directs the body’s cells to make that fragment, which then sets off an immune response.
What is Kennedy’s argument about mRNA?
Kennedy echoes many people’s discomfort with the speed at which the vaccines were developed. But mRNA vaccines had been studied for more than 20 years before Covid struck. His criticisms also go further than most. He has said the vaccines are ineffective because they don’t prevent infection. He has also said they’re dangerous, at one point referring to them as the “deadliest” vaccines ever made.
And what does the evidence show?
Like all vaccines, the Covid mRNA shots have some side effects. Anecdotally, thousands of people reported problems. But extensive studies in the U.S. and elsewhere found only a few serious ones. For example, the vaccines can cause heart problems in a small fraction of young men, and one study said there were seven severe cases of shingles for every million shots administered. This is comparable to the safety record of most other vaccines. It’s not surprising that we’ve heard more about Covid vaccines, because they were given to billions of people worldwide.
Kennedy prefers “whole-cell” vaccines to mRNA shots. What does that mean?Whole-cell vaccines are based on a crude technology developed more than 100 years ago. Those vaccines use the entire pathogen, so they may expose the body to hundreds of antigens — the part of the bacterium or virus that provokes an immune response — at once.
Not surprisingly, they also cause very strong reactions, including seizures and fevers in young children. Over the decades, we have developed much cleaner, sleeker vaccines that contain only the few antigens they need. There is a trade-off: The newer vaccines sometimes are less protective than the cruder versions.
If more people getting shots have ugly side effects, as they would from those whole-cell vaccines, it may give even more fuel to the antivax movement.
It may. In the case of Covid vaccines, it may not even be mRNA tech causing the side effects. The coronavirus is a powerful adversary, and any vaccine designed to counter it may shock the immune system. There is no perfectly safe vaccine or drug.
One thing I don’t get: President Trump built Operation Warp Speed, the government effort to develop these Covid vaccines. And he spent years urging people to get them. What’s your best understanding of why mRNA is now out of favor with his administration?
The Covid mandates turned many against the vaccines as employers and schools required people to get inoculated. Kennedy brought his own political constituency, which includes many people opposed to vaccines, and Trump has given him a lot of autonomy to make decisions about public health.
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Daniel, I want to see real scientific proof that mRNA causes blood clots. Do you have any??? Because mRNA is present in your body already - your body uses mRNA every single time one of your cells makes a protein. The mRNA vaccine is using mRNA to get your body to build a protein that it wouldn't naturally build (in the case of the covid vaccine, part of the covid spike protein) so that your body can make antibodies to the foreign protein without actually needing to get sick from the full covid virus. So if there IS actual proof that the covid vaccine causes blood clots, my guess is that it's from the covid spike protein that the mRNA builds, not the mRNA itself (which is destroyed and recycled naturally by the body as soon as the protein is built -- your own body is making and destroying mRNA constantly.) And if it IS the covid spike protein that is causing blood clots, then that spike protein would cause blood clots whether you used an mRNA vaccine or a whole cell vaccine or just flat out caught covid naturally (and it IS proven that Covid causes blood clots.) So it makes ZERO sense to blame mRNA -- and mRNA has a whole host of other applications -- by enabling your body to make proteins it wouldn't otherwise make, you can target cancer cells and other diseases......there's a huge body of mRNA research that's about to be blown up and people WILL die of cancers and diseases that this research could and would have cured. All because we as a country can't seem to grasp 7th grade biology.
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Daniel, I want to see real scientific proof that mRNA causes blood clots. Do you have any??? Because mRNA is present in your body already - your body uses mRNA every single time one of your cells makes a protein. The mRNA vaccine is using mRNA to get your body to build a protein that it wouldn't naturally build (in the case of the covid vaccine, part of the covid spike protein) so that your body can make antibodies to the foreign protein without actually needing to get sick from the full covid virus. So if there IS actual proof that the covid vaccine causes blood clots, my guess is that it's from the covid spike protein that the mRNA builds, not the mRNA itself (which is destroyed and recycled naturally by the body as soon as the protein is built -- your own body is making and destroying mRNA constantly.) And if it IS the covid spike protein that is causing blood clots, then that spike protein would cause blood clots whether you used an mRNA vaccine or a whole cell vaccine or just flat out caught covid naturally (and it IS proven that Covid causes blood clots.) So it makes ZERO sense to blame mRNA -- and mRNA has a whole host of other applications -- by enabling your body to make proteins it wouldn't otherwise make, you can target cancer cells and other diseases......there's a huge body of mRNA research that's about to be blown up and people WILL die of cancers and diseases that this research could and would have cured. All because we as a country can't seem to grasp 7th grade biology.
@Lisa said in Goodbye, mRNA vaccine funding:
All because we as a country can't seem to grasp 7th grade biology.
Mhmmm. Yep. That's what drives people to accept bullshit from the internet and stupid anecdotes as the equivalent of the best peer-reviewed evidence. Even people here ...
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What a bunch of crap. 20 years previous? THERE WERE NO SUCCESSFUL EFFICACY TRIALS WHEN THEY WERE RELEASED- NONE. See: Pysyer testimony to the EU. They don't create blood clots?! See: Google. There are people who believe anything the MSM tells them to believe. Even here. Do your own research and stop listening to the propagandistic mouthpieces of corporations with a vested interest.
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A short history of mRNA vaccines:
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines
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What a bunch of crap. 20 years previous? THERE WERE NO SUCCESSFUL EFFICACY TRIALS WHEN THEY WERE RELEASED- NONE. See: Pysyer testimony to the EU. They don't create blood clots?! See: Google. There are people who believe anything the MSM tells them to believe. Even here. Do your own research and stop listening to the propagandistic mouthpieces of corporations with a vested interest.
THERE WERE NO SUCCESSFUL EFFICACY TRIALS WHEN THEY WERE RELEASED- NONE. See: Pysyer testimony to the EU.
Fact check:
And there is this paper:
COVID-19 vaccines approved in the European Union: current evidence and perspectives
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I watched the Physer executive testify in front of the EU. I don't need "fact checks." Sorry, he was plain as day. And why did you think you had to sign a form exempting these corporations from liability?
These discussions, like the ones about the origins of Covid are not worth having because of these asinine whitewashed narratives some like to lap up like it was mother's milk.
Buy by all means, carry on.
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It changes nothing that I said. This is tiresome. Try getting beyond the six major media conglomerates and doing your own research. You might be surprised that truth often doesn't arrive in a cardboard box, with nice wrapping paper, and tied up with a nice bow.
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It changes nothing that I said. This is tiresome. Try getting beyond the six major media conglomerates and doing your own research. You might be surprised that truth often doesn't arrive in a cardboard box, with nice wrapping paper, and tied up with a nice bow.
@Daniel. said in Goodbye, mRNA vaccine funding:
Try getting beyond the six major media conglomerates
I can read the professional medical literature. You cannot, and you will substitute "your own research" for an understanding of that professional literature.
You are irrelevant.
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Most professionals speak for themselves very easily. You are the exception to the rule especially when you're discussing topics about which you are only a layperson.
I don't know where you get your sense of superiority since I've never seen anything to justify it and where you get your hatefulness, who knows, and, finally, when it comes to the live streamed genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, you are as dumb as a box of rocks.
You're an ignorant, obstinate person masquerading as some kind of scholar. Your opinion is irrelevant to me.
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@Lisa said in Goodbye, mRNA vaccine funding:
We are so so so SO screwed.
No kidding.
Even the NIH knows it. The administration hasn't scrubbed this page yet:
https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2022/mrna-vaccines-to-treat-cancer
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@Lisa said in Goodbye, mRNA vaccine funding:
We are so so so SO screwed.
No kidding.
Even the NIH knows it. The administration hasn't scrubbed this page yet:
https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2022/mrna-vaccines-to-treat-cancer
@wtg said in Goodbye, mRNA vaccine funding:
Even the NIH knows it. The administration hasn't scrubbed this page yet:
https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2022/mrna-vaccines-to-treat-cancer
It's just the six major media conglomerates....
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mRNA: Vaccine or Gene Therapy? The Safety Regulatory Issues - PubMed https://share.google/L4l1tFkmSyE9534nL
They are gene therapy products, not vaccines, and they were not studied for thirty years. Good lord.
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mRNA: Vaccine or Gene Therapy? The Safety Regulatory Issues - PubMed https://share.google/L4l1tFkmSyE9534nL
They are gene therapy products, not vaccines, and they were not studied for thirty years. Good lord.
@Daniel. said in Goodbye, mRNA vaccine funding:
They are gene therapy products, not vaccines, and they were not studied for thirty years. Good lord.
It can be both. Just because it has not been studied 30 years as a method for gene therapy does not mean it has not been studied for 30 years as a method to develop vaccines.
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Op-ed by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, on why the US Dept. of HHS under the Trump administration pivots away from mRNA vaccines:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/12/nih-mrna-vaccines-jay-bhattacharya/
TL;DR : because mRNA failed to earn public trust, and it's Biden's fault.
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@Axtremus He's right that there's lack of public trust. But it's not exclusive to mRNA vaccines. And it certainly isn't Biden's fault. I don't see how it's an argument for shifting funding away from mRNA technology. The flu vaccine has been around forever, but the rate of flu vaccination across all populations is the same as he quoted for the COVID vaccine, less than 50 percent.
Interestingly enough, the flu vaccination rate went up during the COVID era. Was it a "side effect" of what Bhattacharya terms a useless media campaign? Is i possible that COVID campaign actually made people more aware of the usefulness of vaccines in general?
Additionally, I agree with him that science needs to drive the process, but we're facing major headwinds in that regard. The public understanding of how science needs to work is on the decline. And while the average person's access to quality information like scientific studies is unbelievable, I also think the science has become so complex that it's a huge challenge for even a determined person to stay well-informed. People either don't have the science background, or simply don't have the time, to investigate evolving medical technologies. Unfortunately the pseudo-science quacks have far-reaching platforms, too, and that complicates the picture even more.
It will continue to be interesting.
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I missed this announcement from a few months ago.
Vaccine experts are perplexed by a project the Trump administration has launched to develop a universal flu vaccine, which has long been a goal, though an elusive one, in medical research.
Dubbed Generation Gold Standard, the project is aimed at creating a flu shot that doesn't have to be updated every year to match the latest strains of the virus. The project also aims to produce a vaccine that could protect people against other respiratory viruses that could cause a pandemic, such as bird flu and coronaviruses.
"Generation Gold Standard is a paradigm shift," said National Institutes of Heath Director Jay Bhattacharya in a statement announcing the project. "It extends vaccine protection beyond strain-specific limits and prepares for flu viral threats — not just today's, but tomorrow's as well — using traditional vaccine technology brought into the 21st century."
The announcement surprised vaccine researchers, given the anti-vaccine stance of health officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"I'm glad to see that this administration is still wanting to invest in developing next-generation influenza vaccines or respiratory vaccines in general," says Ted Ross, director of Global Vaccine Development at the Cleveland Clinic.
An old vaccine technology back in the spotlight
But Ross and other outside vaccine experts are mystified by many aspects of Generation Gold Standard.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/05/13/nx-s1-5384934/trump-universal-flu-vaccine
There was this assessment in Science:
