The move of RFK JR to finance the mRNA vaccine be a huge calculation error?

Arnm vaccines have been announced as a medical wonder that saved lives during the cocovated pandemic, but now the United States is withdrawing from their research.

The Secretary of the United States of Health Robert F Kennedy JR has canceled 22 projects – worth $ 500 million (376 million pounds sterling) in funding – to tackle infections such as Covid and the flu.

Kennedy – Probably – probably the skeptic of the country’s most famous vaccine – does it make a point or makes a monumental calculation error?

Professor Adam Finn, a researcher at vaccination at the University of Bristol, said “it’s a bit of both” but mRNA technology is “stupid” and potentially a “catastrophic error”.

Let’s go beyond why.

Kennedy says he has examined science on mRNA vaccines, concluding that “data show that these vaccines do not effectively protect against higher respiratory infections such as covid and flu”.

Instead, he says, he would move funding to “safer and wider vaccine platforms that remain effective even if the viruses mutate”.

So, are the mRNA vaccines sure? Are they effective? Are other vaccination technologies better?

And another question is where mRNA vaccines should be integrated into the pantheon of other vaccine technologies – because there are many: many:

• Inactivated vaccines Use the original virus or bacteria, kill it and use it to form the immune system-such as the annual flu vaccine
• Attenuated vaccines Do not kill the infectious agent, but weaker appointment so that it causes a light infection – like the mmr vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella)
• Conjugated vaccines Use pieces of protein or sugar from a bug, so it triggers an immune response without causing an infection – as for the types of meningitis
• Arnm vaccines Use a fragment of genetic code that temporarily asks the body to make parts of a virus, and the immune system reacts to this

Each has advantages and disadvantages, but Professor Finn maintains that we have “overloaded” mRNA vaccines during the pandemic to the exclusion of other approaches, and now there is an adjustment process.

“But to swing the pendulum so far that the mRNA is useless and has no value and should not be developed or better understood is just as stupid, it has done remarkable things,” he said.

The assertion that mRNA vaccines do not protect against higher respiratory tract infections like COVID and the flu “is simply not true,” explains Professor Andrew Pollard of the Oxford vaccinations group, who soon withdraws as head of the joint committee on vaccination and immunization (JCVI), which advises the British government.

Vaccines have been shown to offer protection – keep people alive and out of the hospital – in both clinical trials, then during intense surveillance in the way vaccines were carried out when they were deployed worldwide.

During the first year of vaccination during the cocovated pandemic, it was estimated that the pfizer / biontech mRNA vaccine had saved nearly 6 million lives.

Against this, there were a small number of cases of inflammation of heart tissue – called myocarditis – especially in young men.

“The very rare side effects should be balanced with the enormous advantage of technology,” said Professor Pollard.

The pandemic was a time when the world was concentrated resolved on COVID and the deployment of vaccines was intensely monitored. The opinion of the consensus remains that they did extremely well that evil.

But that doesn’t mean they are perfect technology.

Arrnm vaccines hikes lead the immune system to target a single protein from the whole virus. If this protein in the coronavirus changes or mute, body protection is reduced.

We have seen the consequences of this – immunity is going and vaccines must be updated.

A theoretical argument is that a different vaccination approach – such as the use of the whole virus – would offer better protection, because the immune system would have more to target.

However, Professor Pollard claims that mRNA vaccines have performed better than inactivated vaccines when they attack Covid.

He says that is probably due to the way they are manufactured – and the fact that the process of killing the virus “also changes viral proteins, so there is less stimulation of the immune system” compared to mRNA vaccines.

The need to update vaccines is not a failure of mRNA technology which can be easily resolved by pivoting from one technology to another – instead, it is due to the fundamental nature of certain viruses.

The same measles or HPV vaccines (human papillom virus) have been effective for decades and show no sign of failure because the genetic codes of the virus are more stable in each case.

But some viruses live in a perpetual state of flow.

The flu, for example, is not a virus – but rather a constant target. At any time, a strain will be in the ascendant and will be most likely to cause problems in winter.

In the flu, the inactivated influenza injection which is given to adults is updated each year – just like the living vaccine which is given to children as a nasal spray. A future form of influenza vaccine mrnm would work in the same way.

“The aim of following the variants concerns all technologies, not just mRNA,” said Professor Pollard.

There is a legitimate scientific question on vaccine technology used for what disease.

The concern of scientists is that research on mRNA research means that we will not have these vaccines at times when we have to do what no other technology can.

Professor Pollard says: “I don’t think there is the evidence that they are extremely better for protection, but where the Tech RNA is ahead of everything else, it is to respond to epidemics.”

The world is strongly drilled to make new influenza vaccines each year. But even then, there is a six -month process to decide the new influenza strains to target, cultivating the large -scale vaccine in chicken eggs, then distributing it. The new vaccines take even more time.

But with mRNA, you can have the new vaccine in six to eight weeks, then tens or hundreds of millions of doses a few months later.

Some of the projects that had their funding withdrawn from the United States withdrawn from a pandemic of flip-in bird with the United States. This H5N1 virus was devastating bird populations and jumped into a wide range of other animals, including American cattle.

“It does not make sense and if we get a human pandemic of bird flu, it could be considered a catastrophic error,” said Professor Finn.

But the ramifications of the United States turning away from the research of mRNA could be felt more widely.

What impact does this decision have about confidence in current vaccines, mRNA or otherwise? How does this affect the world when the United States is one of the most influential countries of medical research? And will it have an impact on other types of mRNA technology, such as cancer vaccines-or the use of the approach to treat rare genetic diseases?

Professor Pollard poses another question after the decision of RFK JR: “Does that put us in danger if a huge market turns back to RNA?

“It is one of the most important technologies that we will see this century in infectious diseases, biotherapeutic agents of rare diseases and in a critical manner for cancer. This is a message that troubles me.”