The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses that cause diseases such as the flu and Covid-19.
That will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, announced he was pulling the funding over claims that “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses”.
Doctors and health experts have criticised Kennedy’s longstanding questioning of the safety and efficacy of vaccines and his views on health policies.
The development of mRNA vaccines to target Covid-19 was critical in helping slow down the pandemic and saving millions of lives, said Peter Lurie, a former US Food and Drug Administration official.
He told the BBC that the change was the US “turning its back on one of the most promising tools to fight the next pandemic”.
In a statement, Kennedy said his team had “reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted”. “[T]he data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu,” he said.
He said the department was shifting the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”.
Kennedy also claimed that mRNA vaccines can help “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine”.
Health experts have said that viruses mutate regardless of whether vaccines exist for them.
This was true every year for the flu virus, for example, said Dr Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dr Offit said mRNA vaccines were “remarkably safe” and a key to helping prevent against severe infections from viruses like Covid-19.
HHS said the department that runs the vaccine projects, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), would focus on “platforms with stronger safety records and transparent clinical and manufacturing data practices”.
While some vaccines use an inactivated virus to trigger an immune response, mRNA vaccines work by teaching cells how to make proteins that can trigger an immune response. Moderna and Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines were tested in thousands of people before being rolled out and were found to be safe and effective.
Dr Offit, who invented the rotavirus vaccine, said the funding cancellation could put the US in a “more dangerous” position to respond to any potential future pandemic. He noted mRNA vaccines have a shorter development cycle, which is why they were crucial to responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since taking office, Kennedy has taken a number of steps to transform how the nation’s health department develops and regulates vaccines.
In June, he fired all 17 members of a committee that issues official government recommendations on immunisations, replacing them with some people who have criticized the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
He also removed the Covid-19 vaccine from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women.
We dropped all precautions after the vaccines were released and almost everybody was infected with covid. Right wingers who got long covid blamed the fucking vaccines while declaring covid harmless. And now we are trying to snuff out vaccines altogether and are adopting of a policy of eugenics.
Future’s looking great.
What’s great is in the liberal “Covid doesn’t hurt you” vs the conservative “Covid doesn’t hurt you” discourse, if you ever say “Covid hurts you” they both scream and accuse you of working for The Other Team
2019 was a bad time to go on immunosuppressants for the rest of my life, huh
Comrades, worry not! With the Left’s overwhelming resistance to Eugenics this but a pebble in our path… Sorry, excuse me for a second, I’m being told that the western left isn’t resisting eugenics at all despite the historical presedence for fascism to opportunistically isolate and attack the sick and disabled in their rise to power‽ And they still call themselves leftist?
Really cool that we are choosing to be less healthy because social media told us it’s hip and trendy to be anti-vaxx.
The kids love RFK jr.
In before another pandemic event starts in North America.
These pharmaceutical companies make bank and don’t need such a small amount. However this defunding and dropping sarscov19 from recommended vaccination schedules will certainly exacerbate the anti-vaxx frenzy.
These pharmaceutical companies make bank and don’t need such a small amount.
NGL I don’t know the exact details with how much they’re getting.
In general, with scientific research, especially medical research, the private sector won’t do any research that’s even remotely unprofitable unless they’re paid to do so. The correct solution is to nationalise the companies, but we’re living in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, so this is what happens in our timeline.
Really almost nearly all medical breakthroughs in the last century came from an abundance of state grants and guarantees.
Breakthroughs, sure, but specifically novel mRNA vaccines no.
The major cost drivers for mRNA and saRNA vaccine production are the raw material costs.
https://www.genengnews.com/insights/rna-vaccine-platforms-have-cost-and-speed-advantages/
pdf warningPfizer was making over $100 billion dollars while people were taking it seriously, more profit than they made in the previous decade.
Hugely profitable with a captive audience. The mRNA tech is understood enough to quickly reformulate for new threats. The biggest hurdle is time for trials. Having, say, an H5N1 formula in pocket would be very profitable should the threat rise to pandemic levels.Could be off, and open to correction. The article isn’t very specific about what the funding covers and implies it is for new threats, but if it’s also for boosters, annual, routine vaccines for existing threats then as you say, those are less profitable and maybe affected.
Skeptical the funding is actually spent on vaccines in the first place considering how often governments pay private companies for things they never actually end up producing.
Sure. With mRNA vaccines, producing a working vaccine is much faster, although a lot of the chemical precursors are harder to obtain. Still, many many trials need to be done to ensure safety and efficacy (I hate that I typed out the word “efficacy”, it makes me sound like a tech bro).
For sure Pfizer and Moderna are wasting a lot of money on shareholder dividends and executive pay. I can’t say enough how much better this would be done by a state company. I hate how governments poured (I assume) hundreds of millions into mRNA technology for decades, only for private companies to patent the final 1% of the development.
The neutrality in articles like this drives me insane. Oh he’s “transforming” HHS? Why don’t you just say “openly sabotaging” you fucking worthless liberals.
