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SUNDAY SCIENCE: HOW POLITICAL ATTACKS COULD CRUSH THE MRNA VACCINE
REVOLUTION  
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Elie Dolgin
May 9, 2025
Nature [[link removed]]

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_ Drug makers are scrambling to navigate an ‘existential threat’
to a once-celebrated technology. _

, Illustration: Jasiek Krzysztofiak; photographs: CDC, Getty, Rebecca
Noble/Getty

 

The day after Donald Trump moved back into the White House in January,
he celebrated a US$500-billion private-sector investment in artificial
intelligence (AI) with a high-profile announcement in the Roosevelt
Room. The new president looked on as technology billionaire Larry
Ellison highlighted one of the initiative’s most transformative
goals: using messenger RNA vaccines to transform cancer treatments.

By harnessing AI to analyse tumour genetics, Ellison explained,
researchers could rapidly design personalized vaccines tailored to an
individual’s cancer. “This is the promise of AI and the promise of
the future,” he said.

Biotechnology executives were elated. Trump had, just five years
earlier, propelled mRNA medicines into the spotlight through his
signature effort to fast-track the development of a coronavirus
vaccine. Now, just one day into his second term, he was once again
elevating the technology to the national stage.

“Then the bottom fell out,” says Deborah Day Barbara, co-founder
of the Alliance for mRNA Medicines (AMM), a trade group representing
more than 75 companies and academic institutions that are advancing
mRNA research, development and manufacturing.

A prominent vaccine critic who had vilified the mRNA-based COVID-19
jabs, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, was appointed to lead the country’s top
health agency [[link removed]],
and long-time champions of immunization science in the civil-service
sector were shown the door. Research grants tied to HIV prevention
[[link removed]] and pandemic
preparedness
[[link removed]] were abruptly
cancelled, including many involving mRNA. And numerous other projects
that were focused on mRNA vaccine technology were compiled into a
list [[link removed]], potentially
signalling their impending termination.

At the same time, legislators in several states have been pushing to
ban or restrict the use of mRNA-based medicines for infectious
diseases. None of these measures has become law, but the efforts
threaten to destabilize the mRNA industry, creating uncertainty and
potentially limiting patient access to emerging treatments.

The anti-mRNA sentiment — coupled with the sweeping shake-up of
science funding across the United States — has sparked fears that
this once-celebrated technology, widely seen as a major engine
of next-generation vaccines and therapeutics
[[link removed]], could soon find
itself on the chopping block.

For AMM executive director Clay Alspach, a principal at Leavitt
Partners, a health-care consulting firm in Washington DC, the message
has been unmistakable: “This is an existential threat,” he says.

By mid-March, the AMM was holding regular conference calls to
strategize. Members swapped intelligence, compared notes on delayed
grants and tried to anticipate what might come next. Amid the
uncertainty, a few questions loomed large: how far would the clampdown
on mRNA go? Would it stop at COVID-19 jabs? Would it extend to all
vaccines in development for influenza and other infectious threats? Or
reach even into mRNA-based drug therapies in the works for cancer
[[link removed]], autoimmune
disorders, rare genetic diseases and more?

FROM HERO TO ZERO

Five years ago, the US government was spending billions of dollars to
support the development, manufacturing and roll-out of mRNA vaccines,
which played a major part in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pharmaceutical companies were pouring in capital and building
ambitious pipelines centred on mRNA. The technology was feted with a
Nobel prize [[link removed]].
Investor confidence was sky-high.

Now, in the span of just a few months, the mood across the industry
has grown darker — chilled by a newly hostile political climate.

One contract manufacturer of mRNA products has seen a substantial
decline in business as government-backed vaccine programmes have their
funding pulled, according to a senior company executive. Another
biotech executive says that his mRNA-focused company is considering
relocating planned clinical trials for anti-viral vaccines to outside
the United States — or scrapping them entirely, shifting the
firm’s focus to less politically volatile therapeutic areas.
“It’s all just a commercial and regulatory risk now,” he says.

Both executives requested anonymity to avoid drawing political
attention to their companies — but their experiences reflect a broad
upheaval that is now rippling through the industry. In a survey
released this month by the AMM, nearly half of 106 senior biotech and
pharma executives reported direct impacts from US policy shifts this
year — including project downsizing, budget cuts, delayed
investments, terminated partnerships, job losses, hiring freezes and
planned relocation of operations overseas1
[[link removed]] (see
‘An industry at risk’).

Much of the current antipathy towards mRNA vaccines can be traced back
to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the political and cultural backlash it
left in its wake. Critics cite the compressed timelines and emergency
use authorizations as signs that the safety of the vaccines was
compromised. Vaccine mandates — imposed by governments, employers
and schools — further fuelled resentment. Meanwhile, conspiracy
theories about DNA alteration and population control continue to
circulate widely online, deepening public mistrust and giving
political traction to opposition against mRNA technology.

What began as fringe scepticism has increasingly entered the
mainstream consciousness, amplified by partisan media and political
figures who frame the vaccines not as public-health tools but as
symbols of government overreach. Among the most prominent of these is
Kennedy, now secretary of the US Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS), who has long questioned the safety of childhood
immunizations and built his political brand on vaccine resistance.
(HHS officials did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson
for the White House pointed to a public statement that did not address
the questions posed by _Nature_.)

There are some conservative voices who are more supportive of mRNA
technology — for example, a February report2
[[link removed]] from the
Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, a public-policy
organization in Austin, urges policymakers to recognize the
technology’s broad potential in medicine and agriculture. But those
views have been mostly drowned out by more extreme rhetoric.

Even the term ‘mRNA’ has become a political lightning rod; its
charged connotations now influence scientific discourse and health
policy far beyond the vaccine debate. “That paranoia has gotten
wrapped into mRNA as a word,” says Jeff Coller, an RNA biologist at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who is also involved
in several small biotech firms.

Seeking to reframe the narrative, Coller and others are mobilizing
around a strategic communications offensive, emphasizing mRNA’s
potential not just in thwarting infectious threats but also in
treating many of the same chronic conditions targeted by Kennedy’s
‘Make America Healthy Again’ initiative
[[link removed]]. The campaign to
rehabilitate mRNA’s reputation starts at the top: with appeals to
Trump’s legacy as a champion of medical innovation.

LEGACY ON THE LINE

AMM leaders are preparing to publish a series of editorials that make
the case that Trump’s decisive leadership during Operation Warp
Speed — the 2020 programme that delivered COVID-19 vaccines in
record time — marked the beginning of a new chapter in biotechnology
and positioned the United States at the forefront of what many see as
the fourth great wave of pharmaceutical innovation, after
small-molecule drugs, biologics and cell and gene therapies.

Framing it as a chance for Trump to cement his place in medical
history, they are urging the president to build on the foundation that
he helped to lay. In particular, they pointed out that, by supporting
mRNA-based cancer treatments, he could achieve a major unmet goal
that was advanced by his predecessor Joe Biden
[[link removed]], who had made
“ending cancer as we know it” a signature priority. Trump “could
be the president who is a true visionary on cancer”, says Coller, a
leading academic voice at the AMM.

People queue for COVID-19 vaccinations in Washington DC.Credit: Jim
Watson/AFP via Getty

Such messaging just might resonate. Although Trump criticized the
roll-out and mandates surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines in the period
between his two terms, allies say he remains proud of the part he
played in accelerating the technology’s development. “President
Trump believes that Operation Warp Speed was a roaring success, and
that the COVID mRNA vaccines were his great achievements,” says
Robert Malone, a scientist involved in foundational mRNA research
[[link removed]] and a
high-profile voice in conservative-leaning health-policy circles.

But leading the charge against mRNA technology are individuals in the
‘medical freedom movement’ — Kennedy chief among them. They
contend that COVID-19 vaccines were rushed through approval without
adequate long-term testing, alleging that safety corners were cut in
the name of speed, and that the risks of mRNA platforms continue to be
deliberately downplayed.

At his confirmation hearing earlier this year, for example, Kennedy
— who previously described an mRNA-based COVID-19 jab as the
“deadliest vaccine ever made” — persisted in claiming that the
vaccine was recommended for young children “without any scientific
basis”, despite published clinical-trial evidence3
[[link removed]] to the
contrary.

Public-health researchers and vaccine scientists emphasize that mRNA
vaccines have consistently demonstrated robust safety and
effectiveness in preventing severe COVID-19 outcomes, supported by
extensive data from rigorous clinical trials and real-world studies.
Yet, with trust in institutions and in the biomedical establishment
crumbling, some argue that pulling back from mRNA is the only
responsible course of action — not because the science is flawed,
but because the damage to public confidence is too deep.

“If mRNA has a chance to have impact in the future, there needs to
be a restoration of public trust around it,” says David Mansdoerfer,
a political consultant in Fort Worth, Texas, and a former senior HHS
official in the first Trump administration. To that end, he, like many
associated with Kennedy, would support federal regulators withdrawing
approval for all COVID-19 vaccines that initially entered the market
under emergency-use provisions — including the mRNA-based ones that
later won full approval. Mansdoerfer advocates re-evaluating the jabs
under a standard review process.

‘THE BRAND IS DAMAGED’

The problem of mRNA’s reputation isn’t just a communications
challenge — it’s a systemic liability. “I fear the brand is
damaged for most uses,” wrote Vinay Prasad, a
haematologist–oncologist at the University of California, San
Francisco, in a Substack post in March. A vocal critic of COVID-19
vaccine mandates under Biden, Prasad was selected this month to lead
the division of the US Food and Drug Administration that oversees
vaccines and other biological products.

The branding issue for mRNA is not just a problem in the United States
either. An analysis of social-media data across 44 countries,
published last year, found “widespread negative sentiment and a
global lack of confidence in the safety, effectiveness and
trustworthiness of mRNA vaccines and therapeutics”4
[[link removed]].

Nor is the problem confined to the two most prominent mRNA vaccines
— those from the biotechnology company Moderna in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and a collaboration between pharmaceutical firms Pfizer
in New York City and BioNTech in Mainz, Germany — both developed at
record speed in late 2020 and since administered to billions of people
worldwide. New concerns have surfaced regarding next-generation jabs,
including one from Arcturus Therapeutics in San Diego, California.

This ‘self-amplifying’ COVID-19 vaccine, now approved in Japan and
Europe, is designed to replicate itself inside cells
[[link removed]], allowing for
lower doses with fewer side effects. But in Japan, where the vaccine
has been available the longest, misinformation has fuelled fears that
its components could be transmitted from vaccinated individuals to
others, with some rhetoric likening the shot to a ‘third atomic
bomb’.

Notably, however — unlike in the United States, where the pushback
has penetrated policymaking spheres — the leading authorities in
Japan have continued to champion the technology. Earlier this year,
for example, the Japanese government authorized further domestic
manufacturing sites to expand production of the self-amplifying jab
— and Joseph Payne, president and chief executive of Arcturus, says
there is similar support from other governments around the world.

The uniqueness of the US retreat raises an unsettling prospect for the
scientists and entrepreneurs who launched the mRNA revolution from US
laboratories and start-up companies: the future of the technology
might unfold elsewhere. Currently, around two-thirds of the mRNA
industry’s jobs are based in the United States, according to the
AMM. Yet, if current trends persist, a substantial portion of these
positions could be lost or relocated overseas. “I think what we’ll
see in the next few years is that this tech is ceded to international
competitors,” says Alex Wesselhoeft, who directs RNA therapeutics at
the Mass General Brigham Gene and Cell Therapy Institute in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

REWRITING THE SCRIPT

Aiming to retain global leadership, many researchers in the mRNA
sector in the United States are rethinking how to present their
innovations — starting with stepping away from the term
‘vaccine’, particularly when describing mRNA-based cancer
treatments. Although these therapies work like vaccines, delivering
genetic instructions to produce proteins that train the immune system,
they are designed to treat disease, not prevent it — hence the
industry’s pivot towards labels such as ‘immune therapy’.

Ellison, in his January remarks at the White House, still used the
legacy terminology of ‘vaccine’ in this context, but companies,
including Moderna, are shifting their language. Last month, Moderna
— which not only makes one of the world’s leading COVID-19
vaccines but is also a front runner in personalized cancer therapy —
updated the product pipeline on its website, replacing ‘cancer
vaccines and therapeutics’ with the more neutral label
‘oncology’.

Other companies with diversified mRNA portfolios are also
recalibrating their messaging, highlighting opportunities for
delivering therapeutic proteins
[[link removed]] inside the body
or components for gene editing to reprogram cells, while downplaying
associations with vaccines where possible. Arcturus, for example, is
advancing two mRNA-based treatments for rare genetic disorders, with
preliminary data from mid-stage clinical trials expected in the coming
weeks. According to Payne, “We’ll be speaking more toward our
therapeutic programmes, just because those don’t have the same
market-based headwinds that our vaccine enterprise does.”

“But that doesn’t mean we’re stopping the vaccine efforts at
all,” he says. Case in point: earlier this year, Arcturus completed
enrolment for a 200-person trial, funded by the US government, to
evaluate a self-amplifying mRNA candidate to prevent infection with
H5N1 influenza, with results expected later this year. Whether that
support will extend beyond the current study, however, remains
unclear.

Equally unclear — for the entire mRNA sector — are the long-term
financial prospects, regulatory pathways and the willingness of
governments to stand by a platform they once championed. It doesn’t
help that the broader biotech industry is still grappling with a
prolonged funding downturn, marked by sluggish capital markets,
risk-averse investors and waves of layoffs across the sector.

Politics aside, raising money for an early-stage mRNA company to
advance promising therapies through clinical trials was already an
uphill struggle, notes Ipsita Smolinski, the founder and managing
director of Capitol Street, a health-policy consultancy firm in
Washington DC. “It’s ugly out there,” she says.

Still, many people in the field think the long-term prospects for mRNA
technology remain strong — especially as applications in oncology
and other areas begin to bear fruit.

“This is clearly a rough time,” says vaccine scientist Philip
Dormitzer, who helped to develop the mRNA COVID-19 jab at Pfizer and
is now based in Canada, where he consults for vaccine makers. “I
don’t want to underestimate the real damage that’s been done —
it is big.” But between the industry’s coordinated
counteroffensive against misinformation and policy threats, and the
sustained global momentum behind mRNA innovation, he expects science
and public health to prevail.

That long view is key, says Payne. “Politics and policies come and
go,” he says, “but science always will stand true.”

_Nature_ 641, 580-582 (2025)

_doi: [link removed]

References

*
Alliance for mRNA Medicines. _The mRNA Innovation Ecosystem (U.S.) A
National Assessment Of Economic Impact, Therapeutic Potential, And
Policy Implications_ (AMM, 2025).

Google Scholar
[[link removed]] 

*
Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute._ Into the Spotlight:
mRNA Technology, after Decades of Development, Is Poised to Reshape
Medicine_ (TCCRI, 2025).

Google Scholar
[[link removed]] 

*
Walter, E. B. _et al._ _N. Engl. J. Med._ 386, 35–46 (2022).

Article [[link removed]] PubMed
[[link removed]] Google
Scholar
[[link removed].] 

*
Xu, J., Wu, Z., Wass, L., Larson, H. J. & Lin, L. _NPJ Vaccines_ 9,
218 (2024).

Article [[link removed]] PubMed
[[link removed]] Google
Scholar
[[link removed].]

_ELIE DOLGIN is a science journalist who splits his time between rural
Vermont and urban Massachusetts. He holds a bachelor's degree in
biology from McGill University and a PhD in evolutionary genetics from
the University of Edinburgh. A former news editor at STAT, Nature
Medicine and The Scientist, Elie has also written for publications
including the New York Times, Newsweek and Science magazine._

_His 2021 feature article for Nature, "The tangled history of mRNA
vaccines [[link removed]]," gained
significant recognition and was referenced widely in the scientific
literature, in national newspaper stories and by award selection
committees._

_NATURE [[link removed]] is a
weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed
research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its
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that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public
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knowledge, culture and daily life._

__

The Importance of Caring about the Truth
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Ethan Siegel
Big Think (Starts With A Bang)
You don’t need to be a scientist or a philosopher for facts,
reality, and the truth to matter. The alternative is simply known as
bullshit.
April 23, 2025

* Science
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* vaccines
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* Robert F. Kennedy
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* Donald Trump
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