RFK Jr. Cancels Promising Work on Cancer Vaccine

Image by Michael M. Santiago via Getty / Futurism

About 10 weeks before his assassination in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy — better known as Bobby, and the father of our current health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — delivered a rousing address at Vanderbilt University that came to be known as one of his greatest speeches.

Quoting his presidential uncle John, who had himself been assassinated less than five years prior, Kennedy told those Vanderbilt students that they were the people who had “the least ties to the present and the greatest ties to the future” — a future that seemed, thanks to the Vietnam War and civil unrest stateside, dangerously close to not happening at all.

Bobby Kennedy’s hopeful promise to the United States’ young voters couldn’t seem further away in 2025, as his son’s anti-scientific turn at the Department of Health and Human Services has led to all manner of hasty research cancellations that put their futures at risk.

Perhaps most damningly, the younger Kennedy has elected to “wind down” the development of mRNA vaccines and cancel $500 million in research contracts because of his vaccine skepticism, particularly as it relates to COVID-19 vaccines.

Along with its incredible efficacy at staving off further death from the coronavirus pandemic, researchers working with mRNA believe they may be close to achieving a monumental milestone: creating a universal cancer vaccine using the promising biotechnology.

Starting in 2016, virologist Rick Bright headed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) — the agency that pioneered mRNA research in the US — until he was illegally ousted by president Donald Trump in May 2020 for a whistleblower complaint about his first administration’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment.

In an alarming piece for the New York Times this past week, Bright likened American supremacy on mRNA research to a military advantage — one that RFK Jr. is throwing away with his ill-advised anti-vax policies.

As with the COVID vaccines, which were primed for success by years of prior research from BARDA, the US has been leading the charge on mRNA cancer vaccines. With the health secretary’s errant and dangerous “skepticism,” Bright wrote, that lead is at great risk of slipping.

“If the United States abandons mRNA, it will not simply be forfeiting a public health advantage. It will be ceding a strategic asset,” Bright wrote. “In national security terms, mRNA is the equivalent of a missile defense system for biology. The ability to rapidly design, produce and deploy medical countermeasures is as vital to our defense as any military capability.

“Adversaries that invest in this technology,” he continued, “will be able to respond faster to outbreaks, protecting their populations sooner than we can.”

The former BARDA head is not alone neither in his concerns nor his view of American mRNA research as a military asset. In an interview with Politico, Johnathan Kagan, the cofounder of a biotech startup called Corner Therapeutics that works with novel mRNA applications, suggested that America could be poised to lose the vaccine war.

“I get the impression that many people in Washington don’t realize we’re in the middle of a new arms race,” Kagan told the magazine. We’re not in the middle of a nuclear arms race anymore. We’re in the middle of a biomedical arms race.”

Kagan named China as our greatest “arms race competitor,” and cited a recent visit to the country where COVID was first detected as proof.

“China is in an incredible position to take advantage of this,” he said. “I was in China for a conference in May, and the enthusiasm for science, the enthusiasm for innovation and for mRNA-based investment could not be higher.”

While our impressive mRNA arsenal is still intact for now, Bright, the BARDA virologist, said it’s only a matter of time before we lose that “decisive advantage.”

“In an era when biological threats can be engineered,” he wrote for the NYT, “losing this competitive edge would leave the United States vulnerable and dependent on others for lifesaving tools.”

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