What happened is well known. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a statement Tuesday Aug 5th that 22 projects, totaling $500 million, to develop vaccines using mRNA technology will be halted.
But why?
There is a quick easy answer – RFK Jnr is an anti-vaccine crank. His appointment more or less guaranteed that stuff like this would happen.
He explained why he did it, and as you can now perhaps anticipate if you are reading this, his justification for this is total bullshit.
First, let’s cover the basics?
What is mRNA technology?
mRNA is a reference to messenger ribonucleic acid. Think of it as something that is akin to a recipe for cells to use. In your body, mRNA is the natural molecule that tells your cells which proteins to make. One used, it then gets broken down, so it is very short lived. This has been known about since the 1960s.
With that quick cheat-sheet description you can now probably see why mRNA can be used to create a vaccine.
In essence, the beauty of this natural process is that it can be leveraged like this – Simply create some mRNA with a recipe for a harmless piece of a virus or bacterium (like the spike protein from COVID-19). You then package this in a tiny protective bubble (usually lipid nanoparticles) so it can enter your cells safely. Your cells then proceed to follow the recipe and create the required proteins. Your immune system then encounters the new harmless protein, deems it to be foreign and learns to recognize it, creating antibodies and memory cells to fight it – job done. Meanwhile, the mRNA does not hang about, it quickly gets broken down once the required protein has been created.
The emergence of this mRNA platform truly is a very big deal for a couple of reasons:
- You can cook up a recipe very rapidly – weeks, not months or years
- It’s very generic and can be used for any protein needed, so this is not just a way to create a vaccine, you can use this approach get your cells to churn out a protein your body needs to treat a disease.
- As for vaccines, no live virus is needed, so it is far safer to manufacture
It is of course familiar to vast numbers of people because this was the basis for many COVID vaccines such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. That rapid success has quite naturally led to mRNA research for tackling other challenges such as flu, cancer, and even rare genetic disorders.
Further Reading
- Wikipedia – Messenger RNA
- Johns Hopkins – The Long History of mRNA Vaccines
Here also is the Johns Hopkins mRNA explainer (it is very brief).
OK, now that you are armed with a quick mRNA primer, you are all set to wade into the RFK Jnr cesspool – You have now in effect been immunised against his BS.
What has RFK Jnr claimed to justify this?
On the HHS website we have the alpha-source press release …
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced the beginning of a coordinated wind-down of its mRNA vaccine development activities under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), including the cancellation and de-scoping of various contracts and solicitations. The decision follows a comprehensive review of mRNA-related investments initiated during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
…
The wind-down affects a range of programs including:
- Termination of contracts with Emory University and Tiba Biotech.
- De-scoping of mRNA-related work in existing contracts with Luminary Labs, ModeX, and Seqirus.
- Rejection or cancellation of multiple pre-award solicitations, including proposals from Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, CSL Seqirus, Gritstone, and others, as part of BARDA’s Rapid Response Partnership Vehicle (RRPV) and VITAL Hub.
- Restructuring of collaborations with DoD-JPEO, affecting nucleic acid-based vaccine projects with AAHI, AstraZeneca, HDT Bio, and Moderna/UTMB.
While some final-stage contracts (e.g., Arcturus and Amplitude) will be allowed to run their course to preserve prior taxpayer investment, no new mRNA-based projects will be initiated. HHS has also instructed its partner, Global Health Investment Corporation (GHIC), which manages BARDA Ventures, to cease all mRNA-based equity investments. In total, this affects 22 projects worth nearly $500 million. Other uses of mRNA technology within the department are not impacted by this announcement.
Bogus data and “Safety”
Injected into the above press release, you will also find claims to supposedly justify doing this.
To be specific – this …
“We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “BARDA is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”
I really don’t need to tell you this, but hey, let’s do it. The above claim is a lie.
It is a lie that can be empirically demonstrated to be a lie. The press release cites a supposedly “Scientific” study titled “COVID-19 mRNA “vaccine” harms research collection“.
That paper is not a standalone peer-reviewed study, but rather a cherry-picked collection of over 700 articles compiled by individuals including Dr. Martin Wucher, Dr. Byram Bridle, Dr. Steven Hatfill, and others. It claims these “studies” demonstrate a wide array of harms associated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
It was published on advocacy websites—not recognized scientific journals—and appears as an editorial compilation, not as original research subjected to independent review.
In essence, it is a BS claim for multiple reasons …
- The International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, where similar content often appears, is widely noted as an anti-vaccine journal lacking credible scientific standards Wikipedia.
- Many of the contributing authors (like Dr. Bridle and Dr. Hatfill) are linked with non-mainstream or controversial views and have had prior publications dismissed or retracted Wikipedia.
- The Cureus journal, which has hosted similar critical reviews of mRNA vaccines, has been criticized for its rapid and low-stringency peer-review process—including hasty publications and high acceptance rates—and multiple retractions FactCheck.org.
- Independent reviewers and scientists have described these works as methodologically flawed, ideologically driven, and lacking expertise in relevant fields
What is there is enough to fool many, but it really is just incandescent vapours and translucent surfaces (smoke and mirrors).
Meanwhile back in the reality of cold hard scientific data, the most comprehensive review we have to date to lean upon looked at 99 million doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine internationally and found that the benefits far outweigh the risks. No cherry picking here, it was also a study that confirmed what previous research had also found.
His plan is for better vaccines
“To replace the troubled mRNA programs, we’re prioritizing the development of safer, broader vaccine strategies, like whole-virus vaccines and novel platforms that don’t collapse when viruses mutate,” Kennedy said in the video.
“Better and safer” sounds fine, as does the goal of a vaccine that can handle virus mutations.
The problem is that to actually do that is not possible.
A vaccine, by nature gives you specific harmless proteins that enable your immune system learn how to fight. If the virus mutates you need to vary the protein. There is no known way, currently, to handle that. We do now however have mRNA and with it was can very rapidly create new recipes for new variations of protein – it’s literally the best we have right now, and he is tossing it all away because of some bogus non-scientific claims.
Another Bogus Claim – mRNA vaccines “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics”
The truth is quite the opposite of this claim.
Variants actually tend to emerge in the absence of vaccinations, and in people with long-term infections – often those who are immunocompromised and can’t get over the virus quickly. That gives the virus more chances to multiply and mutate.
“Vaccines reduce the risk of transmission and infection,” Head says, which means fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate. “So vaccines will have a protective effect against new variants emerging, rather than as Kennedy suggests.”
Michael Head, a UK based global health researcher
More Responses via Tweets from real subject matter experts
Dr. Katalin Karikó who won a Nobel Prize for developing mRNA vaccines responds to RFK Jr:
Having mRNA took many decades of research …
- Part of the problem we face can be seen by the avalanche of ideological ignorance under the above tweet. Various fools who think they know better, promoting claims that have been very robustly debunked.
This potential is what is being cancelled …
Cutting funding into mRNA is utter lunacy …
mRNA is the safest most effective vaccine …
Now What?
The future is still mRNA. What will actually happen is that this technology isn’t going to disappear. Just the US lead in it will.
Meanwhile, people in the US will die because we have opted to replace science with ideological ignorance.
The bottom line is this – literally billions of people, roughly about 70% of the population on the planet have received at least one dose of an mRNA based vaccine. The result is demonstrable – millions of lives have been saved and an even bigger number have been protected from the worst impacts of COVID.
RFK Jr. saw 20 million lives saved by mRNA vaccines and thought, ‘let’s try the opposite!‘
Tossing the mRNA platform now is akin to jettisoning and discarding the lifeboats off the side Titanic as we sail full steam ahead into catastrophe. The next pandemic is not a matter of “if”, but instead is simply “when”, there is no avoiding the emergence of something lethal in a world with a changing climate and rapid transport to enable it to spread and literally decimate us.
What we are not seeing here is a policy change, it is a direct assault on life-saving medical progress.