The Trump administration is finishing 22 contracts focused on the development of RNM vaccines and decrease additional federal investments in RNM technology, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday.
Many scientists and experts in infectious diseases quickly denounced the movement as a wide side in a research area considered particularly promising after use in rapidly developing COVID vaccines.
The projects that are being eliminated were funded by the Biomedical Authority for Advanced Research and Development (Bard), a program of the Department of Health and Human Services that works with the pharmaceutical industry to develop vaccines and other countermeasures for public health emergencies.
“It’s not just about vaccines,” said Rick Bright, who directed Barda from 2016 to 2020, in a text message. “It’s about whether we will be ready when the next crisis arrives. Cutting the development of RNM now puts all Americans at greater risk.”
“Covid pandemic showed us what is possible when science moves quickly,” he added. “Dismantling that impulse is now how to dissolve the fire department because the fire is out.”
Kennedy said Tuesday that finished contracts were worth almost $ 500 million. Among them is an award for the medical branch of the University of Texas and the Modern Biotechnology Company to develop an H5N1 -based vaccine, the voltage of the avian flu that has infected dozens of people in the United States.
“After reviewing science and consulting the main NIH and FDA experts, HHS has determined that RNM technology raises more risks and benefits for these respiratory viruses,” Kennedy said in a video ad in X.
“Let me be absolutely clear, HHS supports safe and effective vaccines for all Americans who want them,” he added. “That is why we are moving beyond the Limitations of the RNM for respiratory viruses and investing in better solutions.”
The movement adds to the growing evidence that Kennedy, a high profile figure in the anti -cacuna movement that softened his rhetoric after the presidential elections and in the confirmation hearings, is looking for an aggressive anti -cacamous agenda that includes gutting a crucial vaccial advisory committee and reducing $ 2 billion from a program that supports vaccines against vulnerable children.
Kennedy has referred to Covid shots as the “most fatal vaccine ever made”, a contradicted claim for studies that have found that they are safe. The centers for disease control and prevention estimates that vaccines saved more than 200,000 lives in the United States and prevented more than 1.5 million hospitalizations in the first 10 months that were available.
Many pharmaceutical companies have prioritized RNM research because the platform can easily be updated to attack new viruses or variants, and scientists see it as an important tool to prepare for future pandemics.
But RNM technology has become a main objective for antivacamic activists who have argued, despite continuous and considerable research, which represents a threat of mass security.
Children’s Health Defense, the anti -cacuna group founded by Kennedy, applauded the Low Barde Barde HRNA Vaccine projects on Tuesday.
“While we believe that RNM’s shots in the market are insecure and should be out of the market, this is a welcome step in the right direction. The pandemic preparation industry as it exists today is a threat to human well -being,” said CEO Mary Holland in a statement on X.
In his announcement on Tuesday, Kennedy suggested that RNM vaccines do not protect sufficiently against Covid and Fla, which can be ineffective from a single mutation and even that pandemics can prolong.
But experts in infectious diseases and vaccines said that science badly characterizes.
“That is exactly the reason why MNA is so valuable: it is the only platform on which you can update the vaccine very quickly,” said Dr. Jake Scott, a specialist in Stanford Medicine infectious diseases.
Finishing RNM contracts under a fence is “very wrong, irresponsible and would say an reckless movement,” Scott said. “It really reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccines work and how to expect a vaccine against a particular respiratory virus.”
Kennedy said on Tuesday that fence financing would be changed “towards safer and wider vaccine platforms that remain effective even when viruses mutate”, such as vaccines against the integral virus, which use weakened or deactivated virus versions to trigger immune responses.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center of the Children’s hospital in Pennsylvania, said that virus vaccines have existed since the end of 1800, noting that “we make safer and more better vaccines” today due to technological advances.
The cutting of RNM contracts is “another political decision designed by our Secretary of Health and Human Services that is not based on science,” said Offit. “That is something dangerous.”
