On Sept. 4, 2025, Health and
Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is scheduled to testify
before the Senate Finance Committee, where he is expected to face questions
about his vaccine policies.
A few days prior, on Sept. 1,
2025, President Donald Trump demanded pharmaceutical companies to
prove that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines work, saying that the CDC was “being
ripped apart over this question.” It was his first public acknowledgment of the
chaos roiling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid
the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez and subsequent resignations
of four high-level agency officials.
Meanwhile, public
health experts and HHS
staffers are calling for Kennedy to be fired.
The turmoil comes about a month
after HHS
announced US$500 million in funding cuts for 22 research contracts on
mRNA vaccine technology. The agency said it will instead pour these funds into
research on a traditional approach to designing vaccines that was first
used more than 200 years ago. With such vaccines, called
whole-virus vaccines, a person’s immune system is presented
with the whole virus, often in weakened or inactivated form. This
switcheroo has
puzzled many scientists.
As a
vaccinologist who has studied
and developed vaccines 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 COVID-19
mRNA “vaccine” harms research collection. 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 showing mRNA vaccines actually
prevent these harms.
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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. https://www.scientificanimations.com/wiki-images/, CC BY-SA
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, can
cause excessive inflammation and tissue damage. 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 small,
controlled amount of spike protein inside a few cells – 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.
What about side effects like
myocarditis?
Early reports flagged a type
of heart
swelling called myocarditis 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 about 20
cases out of 1 million people 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 developed
myocarditis after vaccination had fewer complications 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 compilation
of supposed mRNA vaccine harms that was cited as a reason for cutting
funding for mRNA technology is that mRNA vaccines cause mutations in the
SARS-CoV-2 virus 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 copying
errors that occur naturally 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 a virus can acquire
new mutations. Since both mRNA and whole-virus vaccines stop or slow the virus from
replicating, 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 the emergence of more virulent
strains, 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, they
would likely weaken it, making it unable to cause or even transmit disease.
mRNA vaccines versus new
SARS-CoV-2 variants
Kennedy, in announcing cuts to
mRNA vaccine research 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 remain
effective even as viruses mutate.”
Both whole-virus vaccines and
mRNA vaccines protected against COVID-19 and prevented
hospitalization and death for millions of people worldwide between
2020 and 2024, but there’s clear evidence that the mRNA-based
vaccines provided significantly
better protection than whole-virus vaccines. And for COVID-19, mRNA
vaccines are more
effective against new variants, 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 started with exceptionally
high efficacy, exceeding 94%. When the SARS-CoV-2
delta and omicron variants emerged in the spring and fall of 2021,
mRNA vaccines became
less effective in preventing infections. However, they remained highly effective in
preventing severe illness, whereas in unvaccinated people the rates of
severe illness and hospitalization remained high.
This is because mRNA vaccines
induce the immune system to make both antibodies and specialized immune cells called T
cells. 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 quickly
updated and manufactured within two to three months. To develop a
whole-virus vaccine, researchers must first spend
months isolating and propagating the virus. Conversely, making an mRNA
vaccine requires
just sequencing the virus’s genetic code – 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.
The future of mRNA vaccine
technologies
Thirty years ago, when
scientists first
started developing mRNA vaccine technology, they recognized its potential
to overcome major
limitations of whole-virus vaccines – 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 HIV
and cancer, as well as autoimmune and genetic diseases.
Of course, this technology can be
further improved. 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, eliminate the rare risk of
myocarditis and more quickly block a
respiratory infection.
The National Institutes of Health
is funneling money away from new mRNA technologies toward a single
project developing
universal vaccines based on traditional whole-virus vaccine
technology. Universal
vaccines are urgently needed to provide broader protection against
ever-changing respiratory viruses, such as influenza, that are major pandemic
threats.
A 2022 study in mice and
ferrets showed that
a universal flu vaccine NIH plans to support has promise. However, multiple
studies of potential universal
flu vaccines based on mRNA technology show even more potential. Such
vaccines could induce broader immunity than whole-virus vaccines by eliciting
antibody and T-cell responses that target
an even wider range of flu viruses.
It’s hard to square those
benefits with the fact that HHS and NIH have named the planned new universal
vaccine platform “Generation
Gold Standard,” 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.
-The Conversation
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