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Scientists comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr cancelling funding for mRNA vaccines.
Prof Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics, University of Bristol, said:
“mRNA vaccines are one of a number of important vaccine platforms available to us to combat future pandemics and develop new vaccines against existing infectious diseases against which we either have no vaccines or vaccines which could be improved.
“They were used with vast success in the recent COVID19 pandemic.
“They have the singular advantage that they can be designed and manufactured at scale extremely rapidly – making them very suitable to tackle new infections or rapidly mutating and evolving pathogens.
“However much remains to be learned and understood about how best to design and use this platform to maximise its effectiveness and its safety, so that investment in further research is vital.
“While mRNA vaccines are not the only type of vaccines we need and should use, we definitely should not be turned our back on them, given what we already know about them and given that we know beyond doubt that another pandemic is coming – sometime.”
Prof Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine, Imperial College London, said:
“mRNA vaccine technology was vital during the COVID pandemic, leading to dramatic declines in mortality and saving many lives. A reliable analysis by Airfinity [1] of the lives saved by vaccines between the 8th of December 2020 and the 8th of December 2021 estimated that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine prevented about 6 million deaths, and the Moderna vaccine about 1.7m deaths. This is an extraordinary achievement for vaccines that were developed at speed in the face of the pandemic.
“Vaccines were one of the main reasons that mortality from COVID declined; in Switzerland, [example 2] , the death rate of 13.82 per 100,000 people fell to 0.67 per 100,000 in those who were fully vaccinated. The impact of vaccines in beyond question and confirmed by countless independent and meticulous studies [example 3]. By late 2021, intensive care admissions for COVID were virtually confined to those who had not been vaccinated (ICNARC data). mRNA vaccination also reduced the risk of Lond COVID by about 50% [4].
“Some of what RFK Jr reportedly said is technically correct but does not recognise the vast positive impact of RNA vaccines. It is true that immunity can drive mutations, but this is true of both post-infection and vaccine-induced immunity. Vaccine-induced immunity is especially important in protecting from serious disease and death, while post-infection immunity may also drive immune evasion by a slightly longer period of nasal and upper respiratory protection. Prevention of serious disease is the most important goal of vaccination (see John Burn-Murdoch’s post [5]).
“It is irrational and harmful to cut funds in this vital field of research and development. It would not be surprising if US investigators and companies developing vaccines look elsewhere to work, invest and build. I hope the UK can recognise the importance of supporting vaccine development and can provide a safe haven for those considering leaving the USA because of changes in policy and funding.”
2 – https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination
3 – https://x.com/PaulMainwood/status/1452607646570323970
5 – https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1418952126244478977
Prof Penelope (Penny) Ward, Visiting Professor in Pharmaceutical Medicine, Kings College London, said:
“The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is the US centre within the US government administration charged with the development of medical countermeasures for bioterrorism, chemical warfare and infectious disease threats. BARDA funding made the rapid development and deployment of test methods and vaccines against covid available and without this funding the development of vaccines and other measures against a new emerging infectious disease will be much delayed. Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines have been extensively investigated and trialled for respiratory viral disorders (covid, respiratory syncytial virus(RSV) and influenza) as well as other infectious diseases and as treatments for cancer for over a decade. The technology has significant advantages compared to traditional vaccine technologies, not least the speed with which a novel vaccine can be designed and produced once the genetic sequence of a new infectious agent is known. The reasons given are spurious as all vaccines exert selective pressure on infectious organisms with the speed of emergence of a novel subtype being related to the proportion of population vaccinated (or having recovered from an infection) and the ability of a new subtype to evade antibody control and spread effectively among an otherwise immune population. The mRNA vaccines deployed during and following the COVID pandemic saved millions of lives across the world and their safety profile has been generally good, with serious adverse effects being seen in only small numbers of individuals, at rates similar to similar serious adverse events following other ‘traditional’ vaccine technologies. The decision to ignore this technology and rely on traditional technology will significantly impede the USA’s ability to rapidly produce vaccines against emerging pandemics in future years which is detrimental to us all, unless alternative sources of funding can be secured.”
Prof Andrew McMichael, Emeritus Professor of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, said:
“mRNA vaccines were first used on a large scale to combat the threat of the COVID virus infection, with great success. They were given to 50 million people in the UK and reduced infection rates by over 70%. Three doses reduced mortality in the elderly by 93% and in the UK 400,00 lives were saved. Mild side effects were found in about 10%, serious side effects in around 1 in 800; deaths around 1 per million. I personally have taken that risk 7 times.
“mRNA vaccines do not increase the virus mutation rate, that is impossible. When they work, they may help select the appearance variants because the original strain is no longer infecting people. However good mRNA vaccines given more than 2 or 3 times protect against many variants. A major advantage of mRNA vaccines is that they can be made quickly and can be designed to combat new variants effectively
“The funding cuts greatly threaten health research and public health in the USA and beyond, when countries follow US guidelines. They could also impact new cancer therapies where mRNA vaccines are being designed to attack particular cancers.
“RFK and his advisors should tell us on what data he is basing his decision on, so that it can be examined independently and critically. There is a wealth of high-quality data to show mRNA vaccines are safe and effective.”
Prof Stephen Evans, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said:
“Mr Kennedy is mistaken in statements made when ceasing funding for mRNA vaccine development.
“When he says mRNA vaccines “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine”, there are two aspects that are incorrect. Firstly, no vaccine, including mRNA “encourages new mutations”. New mutations of, for example the SAR-Cov-2 virus, occur spontaneously. They occur randomly when a virus replicates. When a virus is replicating easily then new mutations are more likely to occur. When an effective vaccine is available, then suppression of the virus in vaccinated individuals and in the population as a whole, if a substantial proportion of the population is vaccinated, will result in mutations being less likely. So, vaccines in that sense discourage mutations. Secondly, it is true that some mutations may escape the protective effect of a vaccine because the individual’s immune system has not been trained to deal with the new mutation, but the virus does not mutate “to escape the protective effects of the vaccine”. This is a complete misunderstanding of the process. If a virus is to go on replicating and spreading in a population that has been vaccinated, it is an inescapable property of nature that a mutation for which any vaccine is less effective will result in the virus with that mutation spreading more easily. mRNA vaccines have the potential to be targeted at parts of a virus that do not mutate, and ceasing their development is throwing away a major advance in vaccinology for utterly spurious reasons.
“When Mr Kennedy says, “the data shows these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu”, he is again mistaken. Firstly, the mRNA vaccines against SARS-Cov-2 were extremely effective against Covid, preventing deaths, hospitalisations and clinical or sub-clinical infection. This was shown in large randomised trials and in extremely large non-randomised studies. Secondly, as far as I am aware, no mRNA vaccine has been licensed against flu, so there is no large-scale evidence on their efficacy, but no reason to believe they are ineffective. A recent trial showed greater efficacy for an mRNA vaccine than a standard flu vaccine. The main interest however, as noted above, is in finding an mRNA (or other) vaccine which trains the immune system to act against a part of the flu virus that does not mutate rapidly. Influenza viruses have a particularly high mutation rate as does HIV. Coronaviruses tend to have mutation rates that are less than HIV or flu, but higher than many other viruses, especially DNA viruses (such as herpes, smallpox). It is for rapidly mutating viruses that we need the ability to produce vaccines quickly and mRNA vaccines are especially helpful in this regard.
“Overall, this is a very sad move that may well make the impact of the next pandemic, whether influenza or another virus, very much greater. It is irresponsible to have stopped funding based on non-scientific considerations.”
Prof Deborah Dunn-Walters, British Society for Immunology Trustee and Professor of Immunology at the University of Surrey, said:
“The safety and effectiveness assessments of all medicines and vaccines are based on robust and comprehensive analysis of the evidence. These assessments are carried out as standard for all vaccines and medicines licenced in the UK. This is the gold standard of healthcare research and is the high-quality analysis the public deserve to allow them to make evidence-based decisions about their health.
“mRNA vaccines against different diseases will differ from each other, and each will require thier own safety and effectiveness assessment. We already have lots of available evidence on the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, which have now been available for over four years with many millions of doses given to people around the world. Both in the initial clinical trials (before the vaccines were licenced) and throughout the rollout period, many researchers and health agencies have carefully analysed the ongoing effectiveness and safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. In the UK, this includes the MHRA, the independent regulators of medicines who regularly publish reports on the safety of all vaccines, and the JCVI who are an independent expert group who advise UK Government on immunisations. There is now a huge amount of evidence from multiple studies which shows that COVID-19 vaccines, including the mRNA vaccines, are the safest and most effective way to prevent serious illness and death from COVID-19, and the benefits by far outweigh the risks in the people for whom the vaccines are recommended. While the vaccines don’t prevent people from becoming infected, the evidence shows they do reduce the number of people who become very ill and need hospitalisation.
“Research continues into how mRNA vaccines can provide protection against other diseases – in the infectious disease space, this includes flu. This research is an important part of our toolkit so that we are ready and able to protect people against future pandemics. There is no evidence that mRNA vaccines cause respiratory viruses, such as flu and SARS-CoV-2, to mutate at a faster rate. Mutation is a natural process that occurs with these viruses, and the use of any vaccine does not impact it.”
Alex Pym, Director of Infectious Disease at Wellcome, said:
“mRNA vaccine technology has been in development for decades. It has been shown to be safe and effective against infectious diseases. These vaccines can be adapted to different diseases or variants and could be used to protect those in areas where these disease are most prevalent with devastating impacts.
“The US has been a global leader in vaccine R&D and the loss of this funding could be felt worldwide. Continued investment in this area is vital to ensure we fully realise the potential of these promising technologies to existing and emerging diseases.”
Prof Anne Willis, Director of the MRC Toxicology Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
Do mRNA vaccines increase the mutation rate of viruses?
“No, there is no evidence for this as far as we are aware. Viruses which carry RNA (rather than DNA) as their genetic material, like the one which caused the COVID19 pandemic, are known to have high mutation rates [1]. But this is totally unrelated to the vaccine mRNAs used to prevent infection.
What are the impacts of this funding cut be on public health and health research in the US and globally?
“Directly reducing scientific funding will dramatically impact on our ability to improve this technology to make it more effective and reliable both for existing indications and diseases not currently effectively treated. It will drive talented scientists working in this area towards other career options and risks damaging the US scientific infrastructure.
If known, what data might he be referring to and how does it compare with other existing evidence?
“Not aware of any data on this.”
1 – https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000003
Dr James Thaventhiran, MRC Toxicology Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
What do we know about the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines?
“The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines highlighted the transformative potential of this technology. No new therapeutic modality has ever been so widely, cheaply and rapidly delivered. Yet despite the speed and breadth of this vaccine, no concerning safety signals were detected in the post-marketing surveillance.
What are the impacts of this funding cut be on public health and health research in the US and globally?
“Damaging. There are indirect and direct affects that will be damaging. Vaccination is widely regarded as the single most effective public health intervention. A negative intervention like this will impact on the public’s perception of vaccine safety and this will likely affect uptake. Evidence has already accumulated that reduced vaccination rates lead to unnecessary illness and even death.”
Dr David Elliman, Honorary Associate Professor, UCL, said:
“This is a very worrying development. mRNA vaccines were an extremely important tool in saving the lives of people from COVID. There is no reliable published evidence that supports RFK Jr’s assertion that the vaccines encourage new mutations and, in so doing, may prolong pandemics. The evidence to support this should be made public, so that it can be examined, by experts in the field who have not been picked because of their anti-vaccine views.
“While this development is not only a retrograde step for the development of mRNA vaccines, of greater concern, perhaps, is that it reinforces the impression that, in spite of his protestations, RFK Jr is antivaccine. This has implications, not only for vaccination programmes in USA, but around the world. At a time when vaccination rates are falling globally, we need to follow the evidence, not ideologically led beliefs. Such misguided beliefs are likely to cause unnecessary suffering and death, particularly in children.”
Prof Charles Bangham, Professor Emeritus of Immunology, Imperial College London, said:
“mRNA vaccines were responsible for saving millions of lives in the COVID-19 pandemic. They were not developed overnight, but were the culmination of over 10 years of research by several groups. No vaccine has a zero incidence of side-effects, some of which can be serious, but the benefits of both mRNA vaccines and other types of vaccine – lives saved and illness reduced – hugely outweigh the risks.
“RNA viruses, such as flu or the Covid virus SARS-CoV-2, mutate quickly all the time, and the immune system then makes a response to the new mutant (aka variant). This leads to an arms race between the immune system and the virus: this is why the flu vaccine needs to be revised every year. mRNA vaccines have two great advantages over other types of vaccine: a vaccine against a new variant virus can be produced in large quantities very quickly, and they can quickly be adapted to contain a combination of mRNAs, to give protection against several variants simultaneously.
“Few if any anti-viral vaccines will completely prevent the virus from entering the body. What the vaccine does is to lessen the severity of the infection, reducing disease and the risk of death.
“mRNA vaccines should continue to be developed, because new and existing infections will continue to be one of the greatest challenges to health and health systems, and because mRNA vaccines have significant potential to protect against some cancers.”
Prof Christopher Chiu, Professor of Infectious Diseases, Imperial College London, said:
“Hundreds millions of people received mRNA vaccines during the pandemic with no major ill effects, dramatically reducing the risk of severe COVID-19, hospitalisation and death. In this way, they played a critically important part in allowing society to return to normal. Overall, the mRNA vaccines have been shown to be very safe, although like all treatments they can cause side effects, mostly mild but including some rare severe reactions. It is misleading to single out mRNA vaccines for promoting mutations and failing to protect against common cold-like symptoms; this is true for all respiratory virus vaccines that are given by injection and can stimulate a protective immune response. Better protection is needed but until we have next-generation alternatives that can completely block infection in the nose and lung, mRNA vaccines will continue to be important and valuable.”
Prof Robin Shattock, Professor of Mucosal Infection and Immunity, Imperial College London, said:
What do we know about the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines?
“Following their use in millions of individuals during the pandemic and using current technology, we have an extraordinary level of detail on the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines. In the context of COVID-19, these vaccines prevented millions of deaths and hospitalisations. As for mRNA vaccines against other infectious these would need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Do mRNA vaccines increase the mutation rate of viruses?
“No, there is no scientific evidence that this is the case. Different viruses mutate at different rates, for example influenza virus changes on a seasonal basis, SARS-CoV2 continues to vary irrespective of whether individuals have received mRNA vaccines.
What are the impacts of this funding cut on public health and health research in the US and globally?
“This will impoverish American resilience to future pandemics. But more importantly, it will be used by some to legitimise unfounded claims that mRNA vaccines and vaccines in general are unsafe. This is directly opposite to the scientific evidence-based approach to science. This technology offers real benefits not only against infectious diseases, but also in our fight against cancer, autoimmunity, and hereditary diseases.
If known, what data might he be referring to and how does it compare with other existing evidence?
“It is unclear as to what evidence he is referring to, given that these vaccines have been highly scrutinised by regulatory bodies on an ongoing basis (FDA, EMEA, MHRA). He has provided no evidence to show that alternative vaccines are any different to mRNA vaccines concerning claims of safety and the unfounded claim that mRNA vaccines drive the mutation rate of viruses.
Any other considerations you have about the claims being made?
“This is another blow against vaccine uptake in general, where for example, we are seeing the return of Measles outbreaks in the US and unnecessary deaths.”
Declared interests:
Prof Adam Finn “AF advises the U.K. government and the WHO on vaccination policy and undertakes paid consultancy for many vaccine developers and manufacturers including GSK and Merck who make MMR vaccines.”
Prof Peter Openshaw “I was vice-Chair of UK NERVTAG, evaluating the impact of public health measures (including vaccines) during the pandemic. I have provided scientific advice to many companies working on vaccines against respiratory viral infections, including Moderna.”
Prof Deborah Dunn-Waters “I chaired a conference session that was sponsored by Moderna several years ago. I am a trustee of the British Society of Immunology and the Vivensa Foundation and I am employed by the University of Surrey.”
Prof Penelope (Penny) Ward “ I am owner and director of a private consulting company advising clients on the development of novel vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases including covid, influenza and RSV.”
Prof Andrew McMichael “I do have a Gates Foundation grant to work on a mRNA vaccine approach which may lead to a patent in due course.”
Prof Stephen Evans: None
Prof Anne Willis: None
Alex Pym: None
Prof Robin Shattock: “I work on RNA vaccines in an academic setting, but have no associations with any of the work that is being axed by RFK or the companies involved.”
Prof Christopher Chiu: None
Dr David Elliman: None
Prof Charles Bangham: “I collaborated in research on a DNA vaccine 30 years ago; since then I have not worked on any vaccine, and I have not collaborated with industry. I have no conflicts to declare.”
For all other scientists no reply to our request to COI was received.