Operation Warp Speed proved that science can move at breathtaking speed, delivering a COVID-19 vaccine in record time using mRNA tools. That speed was a triumph—but speed alone should not determine which technologies become the default or dominate the future.
The decision by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to cancel nearly $500 million in mRNA vaccine grants is a signal that every platform has strengths and limitations and that our public health policies must balance them wisely. It reminds us that mRNA vaccines aren’t the only answer—and that’s a good thing.
Kennedy’s actions are not a rejection of mRNA technology. His decision applies specifically to vaccines—not to mRNA’s role in treating cancer or other serious conditions. We always want our medical interventions to be as safe as possible, but when a person has already been diagnosed with a disease, our tolerance for potential side effects is higher. The risk–benefit equation for vaccines is different, because usually it’s healthy people who get them. During the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of millions of vaccine doses were given in a short period of time. Any rollout of this size, which is mostly made up of a well population, must raise the bar for safety. Even rare side effects become certain outcomes when applied at scale.
Kennedy’s move will allow us to rebalance our vaccine portfolio. The rush to respond to the pandemic crisis made the dominance of mRNA technologies understandable. But that emphasis has crowded out other approaches—from traditional protein subunit vaccines to adenovirus-based platforms to emerging synthetic peptides and DNA-based methods that may give us the best of both worlds, both speed and durability.
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