Kennedy bans funding for vaccines that show the most promise at stopping cancer
By Brian Moench, Utah News Dispatch
Perched with his brain worm on top of Health and Human Services, Kennedy probably affects your health more than your family doctor. But unlike your doctor, Kennedy has no medical degree, no hospital privileges, never cared for a patient, never discovered a drug, never published a research paper, and wouldn’t know which end of a stethoscope to use if his life or yours depended on it.
Nonetheless he has opinions, and he’s enforcing them on you, on all of us. This makes as much sense as pilots flying airplanes who have never seen a cockpit or placing the future of the United States in the hands of Donald “Windmills Cause Cancer” Trump.
Many actual medical experts believe vaccines have done more good for humanity than any other public health advance in history. COVID vaccines saved nearly 20 million lives globally in their first year alone. They also reduced the risk of severe, debilitating outcomes and long COVID after infection. But Kennedy knows “for sure” that decades of knowledge accumulated by the entire world’s medical community is wrong, and he’s eager to straighten us out.
Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines have been under development for 30 years. Compared to older technologies they are cheaper, can be mass produced faster, and can be changed more quickly to address inevitable virus mutations like with COVID.
This technology also has great promise to treat cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and diabetes. Two American scientists won the Nobel Prize for their mRNA discoveries. To real scientists, mRNA vaccines are not controversial. Without them COVID would probably still be spreading death and disability across the globe.
In May Kennedy yanked $590 million from developing pandemic flu vaccines such as bird flu. Rick Bright, who led Health and Human Services Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority during Trump 1.0, said, "Disinvesting from mRNA strips us of one of the fastest tools we have to contain the next pandemic.”
But the greatest potential of new mRNA vaccines may be as a monumental breakthrough in cancer treatments. The DNA of cancer cells is as variable as the people who are hosts for the disease. Moreover, cancer cells create unique pieces of protein that are not found in healthy cells. A vaccine that produces those pieces can train the immune system to attack those cells.
This technology could offer personalized treatment by training a patient’s immune system to read and then destroy individually unique cancer cells. The vaccines furthest along could treat pancreatic and brain cancers. Over 120 clinical trials on cancer vaccines were underway as of early this year.
But then Kennedy announced he will yank another $500 million from vaccines with mRNA technology. This will also discourage private investment, prompt key scientists to leave the country, and set back cancer research for decades.
One in two women and one in three men will get cancer in their life time. Cancer is the second leading cause of death, claiming 600,000 American lives annually. By the 1970s experts concluded that 80% of cancer is caused by environmental exposures, i.e. carcinogens we eat, smoke, breathe, swallow, or absorb.
The incidence of 14 different cancers is steeply rising among those under 50. And young people are getting more aggressive cancers that are growing more quickly and have a worse prognosis. In young adults symptoms are more likely to be dismissed, resulting in later, less treatable stages when diagnosed. Environmental factors are most likely to blame because the primary remaining culprit, genetics, doesn’t change that much over a generation.
I grew up one of eight children. Five of us, including me, have had cancer, some with multiple types, and some of us are still fighting it. Half of my own children are cancer victims. I’ve just spent weeks tending my delightful three-year-old granddaughter, Lana, because her mother is fighting for her life and will need every cancer treatment available, including perhaps a future mRNA vaccine. The cruel farce of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” is animated in real time, in the faces of the people I love and see every day.
Kennedy is slamming the door on the survival chances of millions of cancer victims, some of them will be the more than 14,000 Utahns diagnosed with cancer every year. While we don’t know yet who they might be, go find your favorite family pictures. Some will likely be in the photos you have in your hand.
Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c (3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com.
