Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday announced that the government’s emergency preparedness agency will no longer fund work on messenger RNA vaccines, delivering a crippling blow to the country’s capacity to develop vaccines during the next pandemic or public health emergency.
Kennedy said the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, better known as BARDA, was terminating 22 grants supporting development of mRNA vaccines because “data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.” Studies dispute Kennedy’s claim. Kennedy said a few contracts that are in the final stages — he mentioned the companies Arcturus and Amplitude — would be allowed to run their course “to preserve prior taxpayer investment.” But new mRNA-based projects will not be funded in future, he said.
Vaccine experts and people steeped in pandemic preparedness expressed horror at the news, which they suggested would leave the United States without substantial supplies of vaccines for months longer than peer countries at the start of the next pandemic.“This isn’t prudent oversight, it’s self‑inflicted vulnerability. We’re weakening critical countermeasures at the very moment that global health risks are intensifying,” said Rick Bright, a former director of BARDA who was forced out of the agency during the first Trump administration.
Bright, who later filed for whistleblower status, said he was penalized for complaining about the administration’s response to the Covid pandemic. He now works as a preparedness consultant.
“This decision will have severe consequences, measured in lost lives, when a rapid vaccine response is needed,” Bright told STAT.
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