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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
How RFK Jr.’s misguided science on mRNA vaccines is shaping policy
− a vaccine expert examines the false claims
By Deborah Fuller, University of Washington
Updated:
8:00 AM EDT, Wed September 10, 2025
Source: CNN
At a Sept. 4, 2025, , Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. about his vaccine policies, including his stance on
COVID-19 vaccines and mRNA vaccine technology generally.
Although Kennedy agreed that Operation Warp Speed, President Donald
Trump’s signature initiative to produce COVID-19 vaccines in nine
months, was a tremendous achievement, he also maintained that COVID-19
vaccines cause widespread and serious harm, including death,
particularly in young people – a claim for which there is no
evidence.
Some especially pointed questions came from Republican Sen. Bill
Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician in February 2025 after Kennedy
promised him that he would not change the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention’s process for recommending vaccines. Cassidy pointed
out that with the caused by the , “I would say effectively we are
denying people vaccines.” To which Kennedy replied, “Well, you’re
wrong.”
At the hearing, Kennedy stood by his decision to for 22 research
contracts on mRNA vaccine technology. HHS has said it will instead pour
these funds into research on a traditional approach to designing
vaccines that was . With such vaccines, , a person’s immune system is
, often in weakened or inactivated form. This switcheroo .
A few days before the hearing, on Sept. 1, Trump demanded that
pharmaceutical companies , saying that the CDC was “being ripped
apart over this question.” It was his first public acknowledgment of
the chaos roiling the CDC , and subsequent resignations of four
high-level agency officials.
Meanwhile, and are calling for Kennedy to be fired, and several
senators at the hearing echoed that call.
who has for over 35 years, I see that the science behind mRNA vaccine
technology is being widely misstated. This incorrect information is
shaping long-term health policy in the U.S. – which makes it urgent
to correct the record.
Are mRNA vaccines less safe than whole-virus vaccines?
HHS defended its cancellation of mRNA vaccine research based, in part,
on a nonpeer-reviewed compilation of selected publications called the .
This document lists about 750 articles claimed to describe harms caused
by mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. However, the vast majority of these
articles aren’t about vaccines but about the harms of getting
infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. And notably
absent from it is the huge body of data .
Spike proteins on SARS-COV-2 can cause tissue damage – and although
mRNA vaccines produce them in small amounts, they prevent the virus
from replicating to produce them in large amounts. , For example, the
document being used to justify RFK Jr.’s claims about mRNA vaccines
highlights 375 studies reporting that the virus’s spike protein
alone, which is produced when the virus replicates, . This is true. But
the document marshals this evidence to support the claim that mRNA
vaccines, which are designed to produce spike proteins, cause the same
harm – which is not accurate.
While viral replication results in uncontrolled production of a large
amounts of the protein, the way it’s produced by the mRNA vaccine is
very different. The vaccine produces a – just enough to induce an
immune response without causing damage. And by blocking the virus’s
replication, it reduces the amount of spike protein in circulation,
actually having the opposite effect.
Read more:
What about side effects like myocarditis?
Early reports flagged a type of as a rare side effect of the mRNA
vaccine, particularly for young men ages 18 to 25 after a booster dose.
A 2024 review identified who received the vaccine. However, that same
study found that unvaccinated people had an elevenfold higher risk of
getting myocarditis after a COVID-19 infection than vaccinated people.
What’s more, another 2024 study showed that people who than those who
developed the condition after getting infected with COVID-19.
Do mRNA vaccines make the SARS-CoV-2 virus resistant?
Another claim from the that was cited as a reason for cutting funding
for mRNA technology is that mRNA vaccines that make them resistant or
less susceptible to the vaccine.
When a virus replicates in its host, it produces millions of copies of
its genetic material. Mutations are during the replication process.
These acquired mutations produce new variants, which is why both the
COVID-19 mRNA and the whole-virus flu vaccine get updated annually –
to keep up with natural changes in the virus.
Slowing down viral replication decreases the rate at which . Since both
mRNA and whole-virus vaccines , both types of vaccines help reduce the
emergence of resistant viruses.
Viruses can mutate to escape from antibodies, but the mRNA vaccines are
not causing , likely for at least two reasons. First, mRNA vaccines
induce immune responses that can attack the virus at multiple spots, so
it would have to come up with many mutations at once to escape the
vaccine’s defenses. Second, even if the virus could acquire all these
mutations, , making it unable to cause or even transmit disease.
Read more:
mRNA vaccines versus new SARS-CoV-2 variants
Kennedy, in on Aug. 5, 2025, claimed that mRNA vaccines don’t work
against respiratory viruses and that HHS was moving toward “safer,
broader vaccine platforms that .”
Both whole-virus vaccines and mRNA vaccines protected against COVID-19
and for millions of people worldwide between 2020 and 2024, but
there’s clear evidence that the provided than whole-virus vaccines.
And for COVID-19, mRNA vaccines , which emerge as viruses mutate, than
whole-virus vaccines.
mRNA vaccines’ superpower is that they can be updated and
manufactured very quickly, unlike traditional whole-virus vaccines.The
COVID-19 mRNA vaccines , exceeding 94%. When the in the spring and
fall of 2021, mRNA vaccines . However, they remained , whereas in
unvaccinated people the rates of severe illness and hospitalization
remained high.
This is because mRNA vaccines induce the immune system to make and .
These elements can recognize multiple parts of the virus, including
ones that don’t change, enabling significant protection against new
variants.
What’s more, the mRNA vaccines have a superpower that no other type
of vaccine can currently match: They can be within two to three months.
To develop a whole-virus vaccine, researchers must first . Conversely,
making an mRNA vaccine – a process that today takes just hours.
If a new pandemic began today, mRNA vaccines are currently the only
type of vaccine that could be developed quickly enough to disrupt its
spread.
Read more:
The future of mRNA vaccine technologies
Thirty years ago, when scientists , they recognized its potential to
overcome – namely, slow production time and more limited ability to
protect from new viral variants. Today, mRNA vaccines are also being
developed to prevent or treat diseases including .
Of course, . New mRNA vaccine technologies are aimed, among other
things, at making mRNA vaccines easier to store to allow for faster
distribution and reduce their short-term side effects, and .
The National Institutes of Health is funneling money away from new mRNA
technologies toward a single project based on traditional whole-virus
vaccine technology. to provide broader protection against ever-changing
respiratory viruses, such as influenza, that are major pandemic
threats.
A 2022 study in mice and ferrets . However, multiple studies of
potential show . Such vaccines could induce broader immunity than
whole-virus vaccines by eliciting antibody and T-cell responses that .
It’s hard to square those benefits with the fact that HHS and NIH
have named the planned new universal vaccine platform “,” insisting
that it represents a new standard in science and transparency. The
effort seems more akin to eliminating all e-bike technology and telling
everyone who seeks one to get by with a single brand of a 10-speed
bike: Getting to the intended destination may still be possible, but it
will be slower and harder.
And in the case of abandoning mRNA vaccine research, it may lead to
lives needlessly lost, whether due to potential medicines untapped or
to pandemic unpreparedness.
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