This month, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was canceling 22 contracts and investments worth nearly $500 million as a part of a “coordinated wind-down” of mRNA vaccine research. Yet some projects that do not involve mRNA or vaccines have been caught up in the purge. At the same time, the administration has quietly endorsed research into mRNA treatments for cancer and genetic disorders.
HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been suspicious of mRNA vaccines, and in May he announced that HHS would no longer recommend mRNA Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. The same month, he canceled a $590 million