The federal government is cutting $500 million in research money for development of mRNA vaccines, which were widely used against the COVID-19 virus.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement Aug. 5 that the multimillion-dollar cuts are being made because “the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”
Research that helped develop mRNA vaccines won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023. Members of the scientific community are criticizing Kennedy for his decision.
Messenger RNA vaccines, or mRNA, differ from traditional ones. Instead of growing a virus and weakening it to allow the body to engage its natural defenses, mRNA vaccines use pieces of genetic code to manufacture a protein, a piece of the virus. That causes the body to create its own antibodies against the virus.
Pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech created mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 during the coronavirus pandemic. This is how those vaccines worked:
