Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. canceled $500 million in contracts and grants funding the development of mRNA vaccines. This follows a decision in May to revoke a $600 million contract with Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine. The Secretary’s rationale—that mRNA vaccines are ineffective and dangerous—is false and misleading. That is, unfortunately, not a surprise.
This is a deadly decision, as mRNA vaccines have proved effective and faster to develop and deploy, meaning they’re a critical tool in responding to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. We have to expect more outbreaks in the future, and people will die because we set back this research.
The lives lost and ruined will be this decision’s most important cost, but there is another. This statement by the Secretary hit me hard:
As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract.
I cannot begin to understand this assertion. The entire planet just lived through a catastrophic event in which millions died, and which we got under control on the strength of these vaccines. They were an absolutely astonishing achievement. We developed and started to deploy an effective treatment in less than a year, a previously unthinkable timeline. We translated basic research quickly into something that could be mass-produced and administered at scale. We worked across sectors: public funding and coordination, philanthropic funding, university research, and private companies. We worked across borders, for example, between Pfizer, an American company, and BioNTech, a German one. We even worked across parties: some vaccines were developed with support from Operation Warp Speed under President Trump while the Biden Administration picked up the task of distribution. Altogether, the vaccines were an effort that mobilized the United States and the world to save millions. When Microsoft turned its conference center into a free mass-vaccination clinic for the community, I was part of the team that ran it, and even in that very minor capacity those few months were some of my proudest because I was able to support this incredible work.
The COVID-19 vaccines could have been a moon landing for this generation, a unifying achievement to help us recognize what’s possible when we overcome divisions and combine the best of our efforts. We need moments like that more than ever. In the last century, we had them, in scientific, economic, cultural, and military accomplishments. We had division and strife, but still we had shared purpose and moments that affirmed it. Think of Neil Armstrong on the moon, or Martin Luther King, Jr., on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—even if we weren’t alive at the time, we can see the images and hear the words in our memory because they became a part of our national story. Looking back on the first quarter of this century, it’s difficult to name even a few moments like that.
Instead of being celebrated by the nation, this extraordinary accomplishment was swallowed by partisan politics, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. That cynicism feeds on itself: when we don’t see shared achievement, we stop believing it’s possible, and we stop investing in it. And so the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in direct contradiction to not only clear scientific evidence but the lived experience of millions, can say that the pandemic showed that mRNA vaccines don’t work, to cut off funding for the next generation of life-saving treatments.
He can say that, but he can’t change the facts. The vaccines show us that we are still capable of great things. We need leadership that sees that potential, celebrates it, and fights for it, so that we can all benefit from the breakthroughs yet to come.