Health experts, including some former Trump officials, are raising the alarm over the administration’s decision to pull nearly $500 million in funding for mRNA-based vaccine projects.
“I’ve tried to be objective & non-alarmist in response to current [Department of Health and Human Services] actions – but quite frankly this move is going to cost lives,” Jerome Adams, who served as Surgeon General during the first Trump administration, wrote on X. “mRNA technology has uses that go far beyond vaccines… and the vaccine they helped develop in record time is credited with saving millions.”
The former official added that mRNA vaccines could do more than just fight Covid, with scientists working to apply them to the flu, RSV, HIV, cancer, and Zika, among other pressing health issues.
On Tuesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that Health and Human Services was winding down 22 mRNA projects being run through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which invests in cutting-edge medical technologies.
In a video statement, Kennedy, a long-time vaccine skeptic, made multiple claims about mRNA vaccines that scientists said were inaccurate and counterproductive.
“As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract,” the secretary said, adding that such technology “prolongs pandemics” and “poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses.”
Health experts said Kennedy’s claims about mRNA vaccines, the core technology in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Modern Covid-19 vaccines, were incorrect.
“By issuing this wildly incorrect statement, the secretary is demonstrating his commitment to his long-held goal of sowing doubts about all vaccines,” Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, told The New York Times.
“Had we not used these lifesaving mRNA vaccines to protect against severe illness, we would have had millions of more Covid deaths.”
Researchers who pioneered the technology won a Nobel Prize in 2023.
Instead of mRNA vaccines, the administration said it will seek to invest in other approaches, including using vaccines based on whole killed viruses.
The approach has been used in past vaccines, but researchers say it takes longer to develop vaccines this way.
"It is irresponsible to strip funding from future technologies with great potential and shift it towards outdated old-fashioned technologies," Rick Bright, the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority during the first Trump administration, told NPR. "We're taking our country from 2025 back to 1940, and we all know that's a recipe for disaster and failure."
"In an outbreak, when you are facing a rapidly spreading virus — whether it's from nature or a nation-state adversary — speed is the name of the game," he added.
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