On Aug. 5, Trump-appointed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the cancellation of nearly $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine research and development. The funding cut will terminate 22 active research projects focusing on mRNA vaccines targeting respiratory illnesses. RFK Jr., a longtime opponent of vaccines and purveyor of health-related disinformation, offered a vague rationale for this dramatic shift in U.S. vaccine research, claiming that “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for … respiratory viruses.”
Infectious disease experts condemned Kennedy’s decision, maintaining that mRNA technology used in vaccines is safe and credit its development with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic that killed more than 1.1 million Americans. Future pandemics, they warned, will be harder to stop without the help of mRNA.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Dr. Ferric C. Fang, professor of laboratory medicine, pathology, and microbiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Here, he discusses the deadly consequences of ending mRNA research for U.S. and global public health that will undermine our ability to respond quickly to dangerous future pandemics.
DR. FERRIC C. FANG: There’s virtually no credible organizations of physicians, virologists, public health experts who think this was a good decision. There’s editorials in all the major scientific journals saying this is a disastrous decision that will place the country and the world at risk. Many medical associations have entered in joint statements to say what a ridiculously poor decision this is. It’s the worst decision made by the Trump administration in the areas of health according to many people, and a group of 80 expert virologists in the field have written to affirm their support for continuing the use and development of these vaccines.
So I think what we need at this point is a united public response to try to get RFK Jr. to reverse this decision. He’s clearly over his head in this position. He’s been pursuing this anti-vax agenda and also a lot of other things which are not really scientifically evidence-based, and he’s been neglecting important threats that the country is facing that should be in his purview, and he is now going to delay research progress and leave us poorly prepared for the next pandemic, which will inevitably come at some point.
A lot of people are calling for his removal. That could be very challenging, but at the very least, I think it’s important to put pressure on the government to reverse a bad decision before it’s too late. I think it’s still not too late to try to resume some of this research and get things back on track. But science and public health are facing a lot of different threats from the administration of all different kinds and I think people are feeling a little bit overwhelmed.
My colleagues I know who were already hit pretty hard by the emotional toll of the long hours and the stress of having patients so severely ill and sometimes dying from infection and felt really relieved to get through the pandemic, only to find that we’re actually as a country in worse shape than before in terms of people’s information about public health and preparation moving forward. I think everybody in the public health field is really shocked by this.
SCOTT HARRIS: Dr. Fang, you’ve talked about the loss to our country and the world in terms of valuable research. Some of that research of course, we will need in the event of future pandemics of which you said we can count on one coming. You’ve concluded that this cancellation of this research will result in people dying. Just say a quick word about that if you would.
The vaccines that have been developed are for really terrible diseases. They’re diseases that can kill you. They’re diseases that can be permanently disabling or cause severe lifelong complications. And so when we’re talking about using this technology, we’re talking about using it for some of the most serious disease threats that the world has. Not just COVID, but looking at things like AIDS or things like hemorrhagic fever viruses or other sorts of pathogens we haven’t even thought about that we may encounter.
Influenza has been a recurring challenge because like COVID, it mutates frequently and every year people probably wonder, why do I have to get a new flu shot? It’s because the flu virus comes back in a different form every year, and so we’re trying to develop better technologies that can develop robust responses that are more conserved against various flu strains so that maybe we don’t have to take the flu vaccine so often.
mRNA technology could allow us to make the vaccine later, so we could wait to see a better idea about what this flu season was going to be comprised of in terms of those strains. And what if we get something like an avian type flu that ends up being transmissible from person to person? We don’t have immunity to that and so it could be a disaster, but the mRNA technology could allow us to make a really rapid response to avian flu or other flu strains.
Abandoning this technology is also going to hurt us in terms of our place in the world. When the COVID vaccine was developed or when other breakthroughs have happened, the U.S. has often been in the lead. And so Americans are among the first to get access to these new vaccines. During COVID, COVID started in China and China was investigating it very carefully, but they developed a different kind of vaccine — a whole virus, an activated vaccine and that vaccine technology ended up being not as effective.
And when they wanted to get mRNA vaccines, it was only much later that they were able to get access to it. So we’re going to put our country into that position where we’re no longer the ones driving the technology, and were going to be at the back of the queue trying to get these things that everybody wants. It’s really hard to comprehend why we would take this huge advantage that we’ve had as a scientific community and how important it’s been — not just for the health of Americans, but for the economy of the country — and tear that apart the way the Trump administration is doing right now with the war on universities and on the NIH and research grants and so on. It’s really unfathomable. I can’t understand any good reason for it.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Dr. Ferric C. Fang (20:08) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
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