Many public health experts and scientists say they are stunned by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s decision to cancel nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for future vaccine development. MRNA technology was central in the battle against COVID and can be developed more quickly than traditional vaccines. Geoff Bennett discussed the implications with Dr. Michael Osterholm.
The latest move comes after the Trump administration already withdrew a multimillion-dollar contract with the biotech company Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine using what’s known as mRNA technology; mRNA vaccines work by using a single strand of genetic code to create a fragment of a virus that sets off the body’s immune response.
Similar to Colbert’s joke, this is like saying we’re going to be explicitly using a Nokia Actionman, instead of a Samsung Z Fold 7.
Why would you deliberately cut science off at the knees for a technology that has proven itself (after decades of research) during a global pandemic?
Just compare the mRNA covid vaccines versus the non-mRNA covid vaccine - the older technology is just an awful product in comparison.