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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRFK Jr wants to kill us"..admin pulls funding for new mRNA vaccines"
Last edited Wed Aug 6, 2025, 12:02 PM - Edit history (2)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that the government is pulling $500 million in funding to develop new mRNA vaccines in order to focus on "safer, broader vaccine platforms."
Why it matters: Among the 22 contracts the Trump administration said it is winding down is a Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority award to Moderna to develop a new line of defense against H5N1 bird flu.
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What they're saying: Kennedy said data showed the vaccines in question "fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu."
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"No vaccine for respiratory viruses COVID, flu, RSV provides durable sterilizing immunity. That was never the standard and shouldn't be the expectation," Stanford associate professor Jake Scott wrote on X.
"Ending BARDA's investment in mRNA technology creates a national security vulnerability," said Chris Meekins, a Raymond James analyst and an HHS strategic preparedness official in the first Trump administration.
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This is madness by a mad man. The COVID virus is still out there
getting people sick, killing them, mutating into new strains and so to
fight against it we must understand that the C-19 viruss genetic material
is mRNA and to stop research dealing with RNA is guaranteeing failure.
Not to mention Avian Influenza (bird flu) is a RNA virus too. (I think Botany =
)
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/05/mrna-vaccine-development-kennedy-funding
mzmolly
(52,639 posts)Now they want to cancel them?
keep_left
(3,161 posts)...by his own MAGA chud audience when he told them to get vaccinated.
By the way, several pharma companies didn't take any money for vaccine development, only for things like distribution or production (Pfizer in particular). Their Covid vaccine was very similar to an earlier one developed for SARS (also a coronavirus). They chose not to take the Trump regime money, as it came with lots of red tape and legal conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed
mzmolly
(52,639 posts)Get vaccinated, let me rip off my mask in front of cameras and so on.
I wish Covid would have been the end of that monster.
keep_left
(3,161 posts)...who was arguably in better shape than he was, died from Covid. That apparently got old Donnie "really shook", as the kids say. Trump was almost finished off by Covid. If it wasn't for the absolutely heroic measures Trump received--including something like 20 courses of Regeneron antibody therapy--he wouldn't have survived.
mzmolly
(52,639 posts)Unfortunately.
MyOwnPeace
(17,445 posts)in Juniors head has destroyed his brain (there was probably a virus for it but he refused it
), but what about the brains of all of those Senators that approved his nomination?
Botany
(76,416 posts)Last edited Wed Aug 6, 2025, 08:38 AM - Edit history (1)
RFK Jr.; "We're shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate," he said.
Pure gibberish. To understand the viral mutations you have to understand that its genetic material is in RNA and if
cut funding for RNA you stop looking for ways to fight the mutations. Sorry my brain cant handle on how to respond
to his idiocy.
Farmer-Rick
(12,482 posts)Because it doesn't have a worm controlling it.
B.See
(7,800 posts)in a maladnístration REPLETE with them... and a dangerous one at that.
homegirl
(1,926 posts)him from the ultimate reprisal of KARMA.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will contract polio and spend the rest of his life in an iron lung, he will be blessed, thanks to the prayers and thoughts of the anti vaxxers to live to the age of 105!
IcyPeas
(24,867 posts)Demovictory9
(37,113 posts)Unhealthy Habits at the Tanning Salon | TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@ctmillaa/video/7517064504811769119
Response to Botany (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
the nelm
(244 posts)Alice B.
(696 posts)I need to go look.
Hornedfrog2000
(866 posts)We are basically on the brink of curing many forms of cancer, and it is due to mrna vaccines.
Botany
(76,416 posts)
qualified individuals or groups. The right wing and republicans got sucked into the misinformation campaign
by the Russians who fed their lies into right wing media, mainstream media outlets, the G.O.P. about the C-19
virus, vaccines, Dr. Fauci and other real experts, and just garbage in order to hurt America, the western
democracies, and the world. Quick Look at RNA. Now, that is the real problem not that Trump had disbanded Obama
and Dr. Faucis Global Pandemic Task Force, fired the CDCs epidemiologist in Wuhan, China, and that he saw
the disease as a chance to make money and get political power.
Btw many years ago I mounted little pieces of fungi on platforms to be looked @ by a scanning electron microscope
and under 5,000 magnification you could see little things and those were viruses.
JCMach1
(29,094 posts)Nanjeanne
(6,508 posts)IronLionZion
(50,829 posts)Remember all last year when MAGA wanted to make egg prices great again? It can also help reduce demand through rapid unscheduled disassembly of the US population. They want people to die.
OMGWTF
(5,014 posts)IronLionZion
(50,829 posts)there is a daily thread on it from Orrex.
Johnny2X2X
(23,693 posts)This has sped up vaccine development by decades and expanded the possibilities. There will be vaccines for different types of cancer soon because of this technology. We need to go all in on this.
maspaha
(707 posts)
especially since theres research indicating mRNA vaccines could prevent/treat/cure cancer
Its always been the republican plan for health care
suffer for our amusement then HURRY UP AND DIE!
oasis
(53,364 posts)wants everyone to share in his misery.
cbabe
(6,208 posts)looking at you Medicare advantage, united healthcare et al.
MyOwnPeace
(17,445 posts)the only ones that will complain enough to actually make a difference for us common folk
Ray Bruns
(5,985 posts)MontanaMama
(24,616 posts)to give us cures for cancers. But sure, lets shut that down.
milestogo
(22,592 posts)Actually I am anti-medical care that is not based on Science.
LetMyPeopleVote
(175,007 posts)Remember when Donald Trump celebrated mRNA-based vaccines as a modern-day miracle? That was before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got to work.
That an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is behaving like an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is painfully predictable.
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-08-06T14:05:48.038Z
But the fact remains that 52 Senate Republicans were given an opportunity to protect Americans from RFK Jr. â and they failed spectacularly.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/ignoring-scientists-pleas-rfk-jr-slashes-investments-mrna-vaccines-rcna223349
In the weeks and months that followed, Kennedy did exactly what his critics said hed do, gutting key parts of the nations public health infrastructure, while targeting vaccines and public access to them. As NBC News reported, those efforts are ongoing.
The Trump administration is terminating 22 contracts focused on developing mRNA vaccines and winding down additional federal investments in mRNA technology, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday. Many scientists and infectious disease experts swiftly denounced the move as a broadside on an area of research seen as particularly promising after its use in rapidly developing Covid vaccines.
NBC News report went on to note that the targeted projects were funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), an HHS program that works with the pharmaceutical industry to develop vaccines and other countermeasures for public health emergencies......
A related Times report published in May added, To scientists who study it, mRNA is a miracle molecule. The vaccines that harnessed it against Covid saved an estimated 20 million lives, a rapid development that was recognized with a Nobel Prize. Clinical trials show mRNA-based vaccines increasing survival in patients with pancreatic and other deadly cancers. Biotechnology companies are investing in the promise of mRNA therapies to treat and even cure a host of genetic and chronic diseases, including Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.....
But as unsettling as these developments are, none of whats transpired at HHS in recent months is surprising. Kennedys anti-science reputation was well established long before Trump nominated him. That an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is behaving like an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is painfully predictable.
The fact remains, however, that 52 Senate Republicans were given an opportunity to protect Americans from Kennedy and they failed spectacularly. The more steps that Kennedy takes to put people at risk, the more GOP senators bear responsibility for his radical and dangerous decisions.
Botany
(76,416 posts)and Bill Clintons human genome project helped in the rapidity of the development of the different C-19 vaccines too.
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The COVID 19 virus is still out there living inside millions of Americans and others around the world getting people
sick,* killing thousands, and mutating into new strains and to develop new vaccines against new strains we need to
understand mRNA, the spike protein, and the microbiology of it and the hosts of the virus. Russian disinformation
has overwhelmed the critical thinking skills of millions of Americans.
C-19 almost killed me when I was in a nursing home from the fall of 23 to February of 24 fortunately I had had
the vaccines so it didnt kill me.
misanthrope
(9,380 posts)Within the last couple of years, I have heard about a goal of working out a mRNA vaccine that would target the crown helix in coronaviruses rather than the spikes, which is the current method. The advantage there is that while the genetic code in the spikes change as a form of adaptation in the immune system wars, the crown helixes do not. Such a vaccine would protect recipients against numerous corona viruses without having to readjust the vaccine. It would be a complete game changer in immunology, a breakthrough as relevant as the Salk vaccine.
And now RFK is killing it.
Botany
(76,416 posts)You know like the one that made Heller Keller deaf and blind.
I read someplace that RFK Jr. has made millions from a law firm that sues makers of vaccines. Too bad
he didnt get a hot dose of heroin.