Anyone who was around when seatbelts were mandated will know that dying for a political statement has always been a thing for a sadly large chunk of the population.
Extreme loathing of the mRNA Covid vaccine in particular is a hallmark of the anti-vaxxer community. I personally know two very Liberal ladies in this category, with whom I agree on nearly everything else under the sun. EXCEPT for mRNA vaccines; which to these folks are irredeemably evil, cancer-causing, dementia-causing, DNA-corrupting and utterly despicable in every way.
When I bought my first car in 1997 the salesman still refused to use seatbelts and showed me to defeat the constant beeping sound. Admittedly he was an outlier by that point, which is why the memory stuck with me.
But just goes to show.
You see the same dynamic in every developing country, too. I have no idea why. In Vietnam people will actively get mad at you if you put on a seatbelt when they are driving.
So many people want to be different and individualistic but as we grow up there aren't that many ways to show it, so I guess people look for ways to flex their power in the most ridiculous ways possible?
I commented separately before reading your post. I don't think it delays anything. The US biopharma market is too large for companies not to be pursuing new cancer treatments. Europe already has companies doing mRNA research (BioNTech, one of the pioneers, is German based). China was late to this game and all their Covid vaccines were based on existing technologies and were less effective.
Good points. So the pharma companies may plow ahead and sell their vaccines to non-US countries. Wealthy Americans will still be able to get their cancer vaccines by traveling to a foreign country and paying more for it. However, this will be another example of Trump and RFK screwing their less wealthy supporters.
Could the FDA be reluctant to approve cancer vaccines for political reasons? And if so, would that discourage overseas investment in the technology? The US market is huge because of high prices and high utilization, and accounts for a large fraction of global revenue for the most expensive treatments, even if the product is made by a European company. The FDA can dramatically shrink the global revenue potential of a new cancer treatment if they declare that they don't like the technology categorically.
If an effective mRNA vaccine for any deadly cancer is developed and not approved by the FDA it will probably get licensed in some other country and I’m sure that clinics offering it to Americans in Mexico, Europe or Asia ( I leave out Canada since they probably won’t let Americans get it because of how Trump has treated them ) will pop up and do great business. This would look so bad for the FDA that Congress could impeach RFK for malfeasance and mass manslaughter, but I don’t have much faith in Congress doing anything to rein in the executive branch.
We’re going to have trouble sooner than that Trumps threats of 200% tariffs on drugs, stacked on the 50% tariffs on India — where most of our generics come from, and which now is the only pharmaceutical sector that is cheaper in the US than other countries. And if you have children, when RFKj cancels recommendations for all childhood vaccines, then you need to be prepared for them no longer being covered by insurance.
Exactly this the US is the largest payer on the market and the 3rd biggest population. We frankly can't afford to be ignored. Additionally, all these anti-vax people still show up at the hospital when they get sick. And there are people that will judge others for taking the same GLP-1's that they themselves are on. We are a weird country.
"For the right, the biggest lie was always that climate change isn’t happening, or isn’t caused by humans."
There was the thing about the Earth being six thousand years old. It's out of fashion to talk about it loudly on social media now, but still almost half of the US population believes it, and there was a huge cottage industry of books, movies, museums, fake experts and fake journals to bolster it, and a big legislative push to teach it in public schools.
I remember when tv programs had to add trigger warnings if the following program mentioned evolution or that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor
That’s not what the poll says. It’s a poll on human origins, not Earth origins.
To quote exactly, “Though diminished from the early 2000s, the largest segment of Americans, 37%, are creationist purists, saying God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years.”
This poll did not ask about the age of the Earth. The Pew poll with questions on Young Earth indicated only about 40% of Christians believe in Young Earth.
Again, Christians are only about 62% of Americans.
Believing man was created recently does not require believing the planet was created at the same time. There are some Christians that believe both and some that do not. Here are some quotes from a pretty good article that tried to tease out the difference and figure out underlying beliefs, and came up with probably around 10% fully Young Earth.
“In 2009, Bishop ran a survey that clarifies how many people really think the earth is only 10,000 years old. In survey results published by Reports of NCSE, Bishop found that 18% agreed that “the earth is less than 10,000 years old.” But he also found that 39% agreed “God created the universe, the earth, the sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and the first two people within the past 10,000 years.” Again, question wording and context clearly both matter a lot.”
“For more evidence that the number of true young-earthers is fairly small, consider another question from the survey run by the National Science Board since the early ’80s. In that survey, about 80% consistently agree “The continents on which we live have been moving their locations for millions of years and will continue to move in the future.” Ten percent say they don’t know, leaving only about 10% rejecting continental drift over millions of years. Though young-earth creationists often latch onto continental drift as a sudden process during Noah’s flood (as a way to explain how animals could get from the Ark to separate continents), they certainly don’t think the continents moved over millions of years. This question puts a cap of about 10% on the number of committed young-earth creationists, lower even than what Bishop found. “
I'd argue that climate change denial has its roots in creationism, that at bottom they're the same thing. The core of the belief is that God created the planet for humanity, and humanity is incapable of seriously damaging or altering such a grand creation, because that requires God-like power.
While I like 99% of all Noah's posts, this one I don't. I spent my entire working career in basic research and then regulatory and drug safety in the biopharma industry. RFK, who is unhinged, cannot prevent biopharma companies from pursuing research into new cures. He can stop Federal funding of basic research which is utterly stupid for obvious reasons. Will this delay things? We don't know.
Most of the biopharma companies who are working with mRNA are looking at therapeutic uses. If they come up with a cancer cure, it will be developed and marketed. End of story.
Among the questions I would ask are “does delaying development mean ceding the lead to other companies in other countries” and “will that hamper availability or affordability for americans?” And of course Noah implies that such treatments would face strong headwinds from an FDA run by Trump or his lunatic successor(s) which seems pretty obvious to me. You can’t really separate these from each other. The point is to drive away research from this topic by depriving funding, threatening approvals, and scaring insurers from covering them.
Isn't "will it delay things" the whole question? My assumptions are that (1) there has to be some syngergistic bleed-over between the different research projects (easier question to answer) and (2) $500m is a lot of money. So while I can't answer the question, I'd be inclined to agree with Noah that it's a legitimate concern.
Plus (and I'm less confident on this) but the nature of public vaccine projects is that they often add manufacturing and production requirements, which might not be *instantly* relevant but can advance the state of the art in areas that wouldn't be immediately addressed by laboratory research, speeding up later delivery when a cancer vaccine is developed.
I said this above. The pharma companies may plow ahead and develop and sell their vaccines to non-US countries. But US insurance companies may not cover it. In fact, there might be questions of whether the CDC and FDA would even approve it because they are so politicized.
Wealthy Americans will still be able to get their cancer vaccines by traveling to a foreign country and paying more for it. However, this will be another example of Trump and RFK screwing their less wealthy supporters.
So, while pharma companies may plow ahead, the less wealthy American may not have access.
You’re wrong. If it’s FDA approved, by law Medicare is required to cover it. Private insurance (individual or company paid) may or may not, but that will have more to do with the quality of the data that was presented it.
Maybe before immediately saying "you're wrong" you might think about your response. lol. First of all, it appears you didn't even read what I wrote. I said "there may be questions about whether the CDC/FDA would approve it." That means that not only would Medicare not cover it, but regular insurance companies might not.
Besides, only 19% of Americans are covered by Medicare. My point which you seem to have missed is that if it is not approved, many people may not have it covered by insurance (whatever insurance they have).
But the thing is that you really haven’t read my response either, especially the second part, so I’d prefer you not being so sanctimonious. Private insurance companies will not base their coverage decisions based on the political climate at FDA. They will only cover something if the efficacy-toxicity profile warrants it; and this will mean they believe the data is clinically relevant not necessarily statistically significant.
Sanctimonious? lol. You started this whole thing, and I quote, by saying "You're wrong." Talk about someone having no self-awareness. lol
And you seem to have trouble reading. From the beginning I said "They MAY not cover it." Note the word MAY. They would be compelled to cover it if the FDA did. But they don't have to and can make their own cost/benefit decisions for themselves. And we certainly know insurance companies will always look to help people first.
So, you start with being sanctimonious. You didn't read what I wrote. And you don't seem to understand how insurance companies make decisions.
So what do you think will be the consequences? Would this have stopped the funding that (eventually) allowed Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman to develop the key technology behind mRNA therapies?
From what I have read, it is only applied mRNA vaccine work that is not going to be funded. I doubt that Weissman and Kariko's work would have been halted as it was basic research and the vaccines, and the surrounding controversy only came much later.
It seems to me that the concern shouldn’t be around the short term (mRNA applications to treat cancer), but the medium term of what’s next. That’s the sort of undefined upside that Federal funding is best suited to address.
That last paragraph is key. People won't notice that they're dying from vaccines which weren't developed. That's going to be true of all the things Trump & #MAGA are doing: people won't notice that they're poorer because of tariffs, ending immigration, destroying govt capacity, & ending Pax Americana until it's too late to change course.
Let's say I contend that the cost of going to Disneyland has shot up in price astronomically.
Then someone shows that the average price of food and drinks and toys and such inside the park has stayed the same since 1985 in inflation adjusted terms.
Then they also show that a day ticket was 13 dollars in 1985 (40Usd inflation adjusted to now) and that a day ticket now is 200 dollars.
So the price of spending time in the park has stayed the same.... But the price of getting in the door has increased 5x.
That would still support the "cost is going up astronomically" contention.
I really do hope that Europe’s recent success with Ozempic (well, Denmark’s success) is a signal that it’s still possible to build things and advance science in the regulatory hellhole that is the modern EU where innovation is generally a 4 letter word. I’m hopeful that means “we” will eventually get those mRNA cancer treatments RFK hates, just in a more roundabout and likely expensive-to-us way. But it’s a very circumscribed hope. Having to fly to another continent to get a banned and ruinously expensive lifesaving treatment is hardly the win against cancer we need.
Unfortunately Novo-Nordisk is loosing their future earnings now because they mismanaged their production of Ozempic and Wegovy and lost marketshare to Eli Lily’s Mounjaro and Zepbound that work better and are not in shortage ( and who has a pill form GLP1RA in trials now ) as well as compounding pharmacies who use generic semaglutide from China. There are several online places that describe in detail how you can DIY these for less than $300 a year
The compounding pharmacies will also sell you generic Mounjaro based on Chinese ingredients, don't worry.
Though honestly, the idea that you're going to charge people over $1000/mo for a narrow diabetes drug covered by insurance is one thing, charging that for an obesity drug that's taken by tens of millions is just dumb. They could easily reprice and it wouldn't be such a disaster.
I recall 15+ years of NIH, Fauci specifically, refusing to fund mRNA. And then only because of COVID. Foundations, venture capital and pharma funds the breakthrough work. NIH Funding has little to do with FDA approvals. FDA approvals are done by teams in disease class, not technology. Though Ancel Keys and others have caused FDA to wipe out areas of work for decades. Perhaps to make America Healthy we should reform approvals so that politics does not get in the way.
The mRNA cuts were in BARDA. So this whole thread really has nothing to do with Cancer.
There is no evidence Fauci "refused to fund" mRNA. mRNA was considered risky and unstable for years. The idea of injecting fragile RNA molecules into the body and expecting them to produce proteins reliably was viewed as speculative.
As head of NIAID, Fauci didn’t block mRNA funding, but it wasn’t a central focus of NIH’s vaccine strategy until COVID hit. Traditional platforms like protein subunits and viral vectors were more established and received more attention.
So it is unfair to say he "refused to fund." As with any investment in new technology, there are no unlimited budgets and tradeoffs had to be established. There was no critical use case for mRNA until COVID hit.
But yet the researchers disagreed and pursued mRNA for decades. Eliminating their path to tenure. Venture capital and DARPA saw a path. Now it's obvious? So Fauci saw no reason to prioritize it since the late 80s but now their is reason to prioritize mRNA because RFK wants to prioritize alternate work in chronic disease? COVID was not a surprise. Our failure to have rapid vaccine infrastructure was apparent in swine flu in 2010 time frame. Where we delivered the vaccine a year after it was needed. We could have used Novavax's tech then to speed it up, but NIH stuck with tradition.
It was only dumb luck, and the insights of folks like Langer, mRNA was available for COVID. NIH has been making bad decisions for decades. At least RFK is prioritizing chronic disease which is the dominant health issue. And more likely something NIH can manage.
Their reason to prioritize it after COVID was because: 1. COVID proved it could work. 2. Perhaps more importantly. IT WAS A PANDEMIC. They were scrambling for any solution because hundreds of thousands WERE DYING. They had no solution so created Operation Warp Speed to drive for any solution. It is a Federal bureau with positives and negatives that any Federal bureau has. They have had many successes and yes, they have dropped the ball. But overall, they have been more good than bad.
It was sensible to apply MRNA, but MRNA was not the only vaccine vector developed and approved for covid. It's one of many approaches. Our vaccine needs are more varied. We need to lower spending. Chronic disease kills a lot of people every day. More than COVID. My problem with Faucis focus is he saw no reason to work on this earlier given the obvious threat. We don't have warp speed to thank, we have the people upstream who saw the need and convinced frankly better scientists of the need.
The article above is about cancer. Government is not stopping cancer work in MRNA. No one outside NIH is stopping MRNA work in vaccines. NIH is a minor source of new cures. Their work at times is constructive, but you are unlikely to find the leading work being funded by NIH.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has announced the termination of $500 million in federal funding for 22 mRNA vaccine development projects, including those targeting COVID-19, flu, and bird flu.
- Projects funded through BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority)
- Contracts with companies like Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, and Moderna
- No new mRNA vaccine projects will be initiated
- Some final-stage contracts are allowed to conclude, but the overall direction is a wind-down
The government is not stopping cancer work in mRNA. They are stopping their support of research into mRNA for cancer and any number of things. NIH is the source for no cures. They fund projects that are the source. You were upset that mRNA was not getting enough NIH attention before COVID. Now, RFK Jr has ensured NIH gives no attention. You seem to be saying on the one hand, the government didn't fund mRNA early enough but now you are fine that they are back to where they were before. Not funding it.
The USA has always had some of the leading health research and drugs. Now, we have RFK Jr who refuses to believe actual evidence because it doesn't comport to his opinion. On autism, for example.
I think you are understating the impact of NIH. I did some research:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been one of the most impactful public research institutions in history, with funding that has catalyzed breakthroughs across medicine, public health, and biotechnology. Here's a look at some of its most notable successes:
Landmark Achievements from NIH Funding
1. mRNA Vaccine Technology
• NIH-funded research by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman laid the foundation for mRNA vaccines.
• Their work enabled the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.
• This platform now powers research into cancer vaccines, HIV, and autoimmune diseases.
2. Cancer Moonshot Initiative
• NIH launched this to accelerate cancer research, with billions invested in:
o Genomic profiling of tumors
o Immunotherapy trials
o Early detection technologies
• Led to major advances in melanoma, lung, and pancreatic cancer treatments.
3. Human Genome Project
• NIH co-led the effort to sequence the human genome, completed in 2003.
• Revolutionized medicine by enabling precision diagnostics, gene therapy, and targeted drug development.
4. HIV/AIDS Breakthroughs
• NIH-funded research developed antiretroviral therapies that transformed HIV from a fatal disease to a manageable condition.
We are still spending 49b on research each year at NIH. The world is not ending. NIH productivity has been declining over the last 20 years. Bad decisions were being made before and they seem to be continuing. We have been way to focused on genetics work, not enough on chronic disease. Genetics is interesting work, but 80% of Healthcare spend relates to chronic disease.
Barda is a division of NIH and does not do cancer. The announced cuts have nothing to do with MRNA cancer research. 6% of barda budget was focused on MRNA. Is that the right amount? Given the degree of industry research being spent? Kennedy's comment did not make sense, but cutting this budget is not irrational given landscape of issues. Barda should be funding infectious disease research that industry is not doing. We have many vaccine technologies. Nova a for example had a COVID vaccine with no MRNA, and evidence of some sterilizing immunity.
On your long list of items which are important, how does that performance compare to foundations or industry. Recall Craig Venter beat human genome effort with fraction of spend. Great people came from human genome. Helping us build capacity. I simply not ready to bet on some government official to get this right. Frankly I would pick Bob Langer over Facui to solve near impossible problems. As Langer did in this case and often does. Because he attracts the best people and gets them to think in breakthrough ways.
Spend some time talking to PIs that have been funded by universities, NIH, foundations and corporations.
Read Vinay Prasad substack and other articles. They go deep into the research dollar allocation issues.
"I recall 15+ years of NIH, Fauci specifically, refusing to fund mRNA"
I would want to understand the details of this. In my field (mostly NSF-funded research), the actual funding decisions are made by panels of scientists. The agency head mostly rubber-stamps them. This system isn't perfect, but it's kind of the best you'd hope from a system where "politics does not get in the way."
In any case, this doesn't look anything like what RFK Jr. is doing right now, so other than expressing a fantasy of how politics might work in a different Universe, not sure what this comment is bringing to the table.
Simply follow the researcher's comments. The field had no priority by Fauci's department. Researchers in the field did not get tenure because they could not get federal research dollars. It was a novel area. NIH has a history of funding bland research support by a panel of conventional thinking. This can not be both an important solution and not worthy of research. NIH for decades has pursued uninspired work, while ignoring novel new areas that would reduce health issues. If research is never done because of biased and weak decision making is that somehow superior to another administrator shutting down research?
Again, do you have evidence that "Fauci" did this, or are you saying that "the collection of scientists who staffed NIH's panels did this." Because they're wildly different criticisms. One leaves you with credibility but not much point, the other leaves you full of point but without much credibility.
A lot has been written on the degree Fauci drove NIAID research. In contrast to reader driven selection in other departments. The HIV issue in the late 80s is one of many examples.
The bulk of my perspective is from people that have worked around him on vaccines. And my experience relative to efforts to speed up swine flu. Versus my experience with other federal research. It is frankly rare to have someone in that role for so long because it leads to research rigidity. Incredible contrast to how DARPA does work.
You will find many discussions on line from PIs who have had trouble getting the right research funded out of NIH. This is not. COVID was not a surprise threat. The possibility was well understood as was the need for rapid response. They ran a red team exercise in fall of 2019 to prepare for a COVID Sars like outbreak.
Would we be spending $500M on mRNA if not for COVID? Before 2020, even Fauci didn’t see it as a priority. Most funding came from DARPA and private investors. That $500M is about 6–7% of BARDA’s budget. COVID-scale outbreaks may be once in 50 years. The threats we know are coming, drug-resistant bacteria, climate-driven vector diseases, zoonotic spillover, often need room-temperature vaccines that current mRNA can’t deliver.
BARDA’s job is to be ready for the unknown, not fight the last war. mRNA proved itself for COVID. The private sector will keep pushing it. BARDA should fund what industry won't, other vaccine tech, faster diagnostics, and broad antivirals. Spread the bets.
Well, what else can I say. Red meat eating, cancer, floods, low efficiency diesel engines are all very manly. Much better than living a safe, clean but emasculated modern life.
Yeah, but don’t forget you can also now manhandle a big bowl of Froot Loops without artificial dyes (drenched in unpasteurized milk FTW) and later manguzzle a new retro Coke made with cane sugar.
That begs the obvious questions: If renewables are so cheap, why have rates gone up so much everywhere that they have become the dominant form of generation?
The answer is externalities. Renewables generate at the wrong time and they provide no inertia to the grid. The cost of building a stable power grid with renewables needs to be factored into the price for a real world comparison rather than the fairytale cost that renewable energy only fans want to believe.
Only then can we have a real analysis of cost/benefit of different power types.
(For the record, I’d prefer a mix of nuclear and renewable as the primary generation types).
Inertia is going to be provided by battery peaker plants in the near future, regardless of whether we move to a renewable grid or not. Arguing about it is like trying to go back to fax machines once broadband is starting to roll out.
We are so screwed. The absolute idiocy of this moronic movement baffles me.
I would at some point love an article which ranks the most counter productive political movements in American history. I suspect MAGA only trails the Pro-Slavery movement.
My biggest concerns are less about the pharma companies and more about the availability of vaccines they come up with. It seems like between the CDC, FDA, HHS, they could put barriers into place that prevent Americans from taking advantage of these technologies.
1. Will insurance companies pay for vaccines which the US government has not approved?
2. Can the US government prevent access to vaccines in the USA if they choose to?
3. Will the only way for Americans to get these vaccines be to fly to another country?
I don’t think the main problem with this ban is for cancer vaccines, which I’m sure many pharmaceutical companies are researching without federal funding, because a successful one would be very profitable.
The main problem is that one of the mRNA vaccines whose funding was killed was for H5N1 bird flu which is still spreading at chicken farms, and also now between cattle at dairy farms. If it spreads to humans (I hope no labs are doing GOF research on it) there may be a new pandemic and we won’t be prepared. Since flus and pandemics are not as certain as cancer, drug makers have less incentive to work on these vaccines without an OWS like incentive.
I don’t see any blood cancers (leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, et.al.) on the WHO chart. Survival rates for leukemia & lymphoma have skyrocketed in the past several decades, and they’re now among the most treatable of all forms of cancer - even before mRNA therapies arrived. Again, great post.
Given that mRNA technology is universally recognized as so promising, shouldn't it easily attract investment? If the government is going to subsidize research, shouldn't it be allocating resources to more speculative research that would have difficulty attracting private investment?
When people argue that we shouldn't subsidize solar because it is commercially successful, you point out that there are still national defense reasons to do it. There isn't really a national defense argument for subsidizing mRNA tech.
Anyone who was around when seatbelts were mandated will know that dying for a political statement has always been a thing for a sadly large chunk of the population.
Extreme loathing of the mRNA Covid vaccine in particular is a hallmark of the anti-vaxxer community. I personally know two very Liberal ladies in this category, with whom I agree on nearly everything else under the sun. EXCEPT for mRNA vaccines; which to these folks are irredeemably evil, cancer-causing, dementia-causing, DNA-corrupting and utterly despicable in every way.
Go figure.
When I bought my first car in 1997 the salesman still refused to use seatbelts and showed me to defeat the constant beeping sound. Admittedly he was an outlier by that point, which is why the memory stuck with me.
But just goes to show.
You see the same dynamic in every developing country, too. I have no idea why. In Vietnam people will actively get mad at you if you put on a seatbelt when they are driving.
So many people want to be different and individualistic but as we grow up there aren't that many ways to show it, so I guess people look for ways to flex their power in the most ridiculous ways possible?
Too true. It's 'costly signaling' gone haywire.
This reminds me of a news interview in the 80's where people were reacting to DUI laws....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcQIoh3FQQ
There is some non-insignificant part of the population that will always be contrary just because they can.
Spot on. As a clinical researcher investigating lung and head neck cancers, I imagine pointless suffering resulting from this turn of policy.
I would like to know your thoughts on Europe and potentially China stepping in to fill the void, grab the talent, etc.
I commented separately before reading your post. I don't think it delays anything. The US biopharma market is too large for companies not to be pursuing new cancer treatments. Europe already has companies doing mRNA research (BioNTech, one of the pioneers, is German based). China was late to this game and all their Covid vaccines were based on existing technologies and were less effective.
Good points. So the pharma companies may plow ahead and sell their vaccines to non-US countries. Wealthy Americans will still be able to get their cancer vaccines by traveling to a foreign country and paying more for it. However, this will be another example of Trump and RFK screwing their less wealthy supporters.
Trump and RFK Jr: both merchants of death.
Could the FDA be reluctant to approve cancer vaccines for political reasons? And if so, would that discourage overseas investment in the technology? The US market is huge because of high prices and high utilization, and accounts for a large fraction of global revenue for the most expensive treatments, even if the product is made by a European company. The FDA can dramatically shrink the global revenue potential of a new cancer treatment if they declare that they don't like the technology categorically.
If an effective mRNA vaccine for any deadly cancer is developed and not approved by the FDA it will probably get licensed in some other country and I’m sure that clinics offering it to Americans in Mexico, Europe or Asia ( I leave out Canada since they probably won’t let Americans get it because of how Trump has treated them ) will pop up and do great business. This would look so bad for the FDA that Congress could impeach RFK for malfeasance and mass manslaughter, but I don’t have much faith in Congress doing anything to rein in the executive branch.
We’re going to have trouble sooner than that Trumps threats of 200% tariffs on drugs, stacked on the 50% tariffs on India — where most of our generics come from, and which now is the only pharmaceutical sector that is cheaper in the US than other countries. And if you have children, when RFKj cancels recommendations for all childhood vaccines, then you need to be prepared for them no longer being covered by insurance.
Exactly this the US is the largest payer on the market and the 3rd biggest population. We frankly can't afford to be ignored. Additionally, all these anti-vax people still show up at the hospital when they get sick. And there are people that will judge others for taking the same GLP-1's that they themselves are on. We are a weird country.
"For the right, the biggest lie was always that climate change isn’t happening, or isn’t caused by humans."
There was the thing about the Earth being six thousand years old. It's out of fashion to talk about it loudly on social media now, but still almost half of the US population believes it, and there was a huge cottage industry of books, movies, museums, fake experts and fake journals to bolster it, and a big legislative push to teach it in public schools.
I remember when tv programs had to add trigger warnings if the following program mentioned evolution or that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor
That’s incorrect. It’s about 25%.
40% of Christians believe in young earth. Christians are about 62% of the population.
Here is a recent Gallup poll where 37% think the Earth is less than 10K years old: https://news.gallup.com/poll/647594/majority-credits-god-humankind-not-creationism.aspx
That’s not what the poll says. It’s a poll on human origins, not Earth origins.
To quote exactly, “Though diminished from the early 2000s, the largest segment of Americans, 37%, are creationist purists, saying God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years.”
This poll did not ask about the age of the Earth. The Pew poll with questions on Young Earth indicated only about 40% of Christians believe in Young Earth.
Again, Christians are only about 62% of Americans.
Believing man was created recently does not require believing the planet was created at the same time. There are some Christians that believe both and some that do not. Here are some quotes from a pretty good article that tried to tease out the difference and figure out underlying beliefs, and came up with probably around 10% fully Young Earth.
“In 2009, Bishop ran a survey that clarifies how many people really think the earth is only 10,000 years old. In survey results published by Reports of NCSE, Bishop found that 18% agreed that “the earth is less than 10,000 years old.” But he also found that 39% agreed “God created the universe, the earth, the sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and the first two people within the past 10,000 years.” Again, question wording and context clearly both matter a lot.”
“For more evidence that the number of true young-earthers is fairly small, consider another question from the survey run by the National Science Board since the early ’80s. In that survey, about 80% consistently agree “The continents on which we live have been moving their locations for millions of years and will continue to move in the future.” Ten percent say they don’t know, leaving only about 10% rejecting continental drift over millions of years. Though young-earth creationists often latch onto continental drift as a sudden process during Noah’s flood (as a way to explain how animals could get from the Ark to separate continents), they certainly don’t think the continents moved over millions of years. This question puts a cap of about 10% on the number of committed young-earth creationists, lower even than what Bishop found. “
https://ncse.ngo/just-how-many-young-earth-creationists-are-there-us#:~:text=In%202009%2C%20Bishop%20ran%20a,moved%20over%20millions%20of%20years.
Note that the poll you cite did not reference a 6,000 number at all.
I'd argue that climate change denial has its roots in creationism, that at bottom they're the same thing. The core of the belief is that God created the planet for humanity, and humanity is incapable of seriously damaging or altering such a grand creation, because that requires God-like power.
While I like 99% of all Noah's posts, this one I don't. I spent my entire working career in basic research and then regulatory and drug safety in the biopharma industry. RFK, who is unhinged, cannot prevent biopharma companies from pursuing research into new cures. He can stop Federal funding of basic research which is utterly stupid for obvious reasons. Will this delay things? We don't know.
Most of the biopharma companies who are working with mRNA are looking at therapeutic uses. If they come up with a cancer cure, it will be developed and marketed. End of story.
Among the questions I would ask are “does delaying development mean ceding the lead to other companies in other countries” and “will that hamper availability or affordability for americans?” And of course Noah implies that such treatments would face strong headwinds from an FDA run by Trump or his lunatic successor(s) which seems pretty obvious to me. You can’t really separate these from each other. The point is to drive away research from this topic by depriving funding, threatening approvals, and scaring insurers from covering them.
Isn't "will it delay things" the whole question? My assumptions are that (1) there has to be some syngergistic bleed-over between the different research projects (easier question to answer) and (2) $500m is a lot of money. So while I can't answer the question, I'd be inclined to agree with Noah that it's a legitimate concern.
Plus (and I'm less confident on this) but the nature of public vaccine projects is that they often add manufacturing and production requirements, which might not be *instantly* relevant but can advance the state of the art in areas that wouldn't be immediately addressed by laboratory research, speeding up later delivery when a cancer vaccine is developed.
I said this above. The pharma companies may plow ahead and develop and sell their vaccines to non-US countries. But US insurance companies may not cover it. In fact, there might be questions of whether the CDC and FDA would even approve it because they are so politicized.
Wealthy Americans will still be able to get their cancer vaccines by traveling to a foreign country and paying more for it. However, this will be another example of Trump and RFK screwing their less wealthy supporters.
So, while pharma companies may plow ahead, the less wealthy American may not have access.
You’re wrong. If it’s FDA approved, by law Medicare is required to cover it. Private insurance (individual or company paid) may or may not, but that will have more to do with the quality of the data that was presented it.
Maybe before immediately saying "you're wrong" you might think about your response. lol. First of all, it appears you didn't even read what I wrote. I said "there may be questions about whether the CDC/FDA would approve it." That means that not only would Medicare not cover it, but regular insurance companies might not.
Besides, only 19% of Americans are covered by Medicare. My point which you seem to have missed is that if it is not approved, many people may not have it covered by insurance (whatever insurance they have).
But the thing is that you really haven’t read my response either, especially the second part, so I’d prefer you not being so sanctimonious. Private insurance companies will not base their coverage decisions based on the political climate at FDA. They will only cover something if the efficacy-toxicity profile warrants it; and this will mean they believe the data is clinically relevant not necessarily statistically significant.
Sanctimonious? lol. You started this whole thing, and I quote, by saying "You're wrong." Talk about someone having no self-awareness. lol
And you seem to have trouble reading. From the beginning I said "They MAY not cover it." Note the word MAY. They would be compelled to cover it if the FDA did. But they don't have to and can make their own cost/benefit decisions for themselves. And we certainly know insurance companies will always look to help people first.
So, you start with being sanctimonious. You didn't read what I wrote. And you don't seem to understand how insurance companies make decisions.
I am done wasting my time with you. lol
Valid point from a knowledgeable individual!
So what do you think will be the consequences? Would this have stopped the funding that (eventually) allowed Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman to develop the key technology behind mRNA therapies?
From what I have read, it is only applied mRNA vaccine work that is not going to be funded. I doubt that Weissman and Kariko's work would have been halted as it was basic research and the vaccines, and the surrounding controversy only came much later.
It seems to me that the concern shouldn’t be around the short term (mRNA applications to treat cancer), but the medium term of what’s next. That’s the sort of undefined upside that Federal funding is best suited to address.
That last paragraph is key. People won't notice that they're dying from vaccines which weren't developed. That's going to be true of all the things Trump & #MAGA are doing: people won't notice that they're poorer because of tariffs, ending immigration, destroying govt capacity, & ending Pax Americana until it's too late to change course.
I notice there wasn't a link debunking "Houses have become unaffordable for the middle class".
A basic look in the "growth in income" vs. "growth in house prices" over the past 3 decades would seem to suggest that this the unvarnished truth.
Noahpinion is a huge abundance advocate... But somehow the biggest justification for upzoning just isn't true?
That seems odd.
He retweeted this yesterday, which shows that monthly mortgage payments are pretty much stable as a percentage of income
https://x.com/BenGlasner/status/1953502173188214925
But that is only half the story by its own chart.
Let's say I contend that the cost of going to Disneyland has shot up in price astronomically.
Then someone shows that the average price of food and drinks and toys and such inside the park has stayed the same since 1985 in inflation adjusted terms.
Then they also show that a day ticket was 13 dollars in 1985 (40Usd inflation adjusted to now) and that a day ticket now is 200 dollars.
So the price of spending time in the park has stayed the same.... But the price of getting in the door has increased 5x.
That would still support the "cost is going up astronomically" contention.
That's certainly part of it and "unaffordability" varies from place to place, but it's telling that this is the one "lie" where he neglected citation.
I really do hope that Europe’s recent success with Ozempic (well, Denmark’s success) is a signal that it’s still possible to build things and advance science in the regulatory hellhole that is the modern EU where innovation is generally a 4 letter word. I’m hopeful that means “we” will eventually get those mRNA cancer treatments RFK hates, just in a more roundabout and likely expensive-to-us way. But it’s a very circumscribed hope. Having to fly to another continent to get a banned and ruinously expensive lifesaving treatment is hardly the win against cancer we need.
Unfortunately Novo-Nordisk is loosing their future earnings now because they mismanaged their production of Ozempic and Wegovy and lost marketshare to Eli Lily’s Mounjaro and Zepbound that work better and are not in shortage ( and who has a pill form GLP1RA in trials now ) as well as compounding pharmacies who use generic semaglutide from China. There are several online places that describe in detail how you can DIY these for less than $300 a year
The compounding pharmacies will also sell you generic Mounjaro based on Chinese ingredients, don't worry.
Though honestly, the idea that you're going to charge people over $1000/mo for a narrow diabetes drug covered by insurance is one thing, charging that for an obesity drug that's taken by tens of millions is just dumb. They could easily reprice and it wouldn't be such a disaster.
Seriously, it could be the Model T of drugs if they’d price it sensibly.
I recall 15+ years of NIH, Fauci specifically, refusing to fund mRNA. And then only because of COVID. Foundations, venture capital and pharma funds the breakthrough work. NIH Funding has little to do with FDA approvals. FDA approvals are done by teams in disease class, not technology. Though Ancel Keys and others have caused FDA to wipe out areas of work for decades. Perhaps to make America Healthy we should reform approvals so that politics does not get in the way.
The mRNA cuts were in BARDA. So this whole thread really has nothing to do with Cancer.
There is no evidence Fauci "refused to fund" mRNA. mRNA was considered risky and unstable for years. The idea of injecting fragile RNA molecules into the body and expecting them to produce proteins reliably was viewed as speculative.
As head of NIAID, Fauci didn’t block mRNA funding, but it wasn’t a central focus of NIH’s vaccine strategy until COVID hit. Traditional platforms like protein subunits and viral vectors were more established and received more attention.
So it is unfair to say he "refused to fund." As with any investment in new technology, there are no unlimited budgets and tradeoffs had to be established. There was no critical use case for mRNA until COVID hit.
And yet the post making the weird evidence-free claim has seven likes and you have three, so can you possibly be right? /s
But yet the researchers disagreed and pursued mRNA for decades. Eliminating their path to tenure. Venture capital and DARPA saw a path. Now it's obvious? So Fauci saw no reason to prioritize it since the late 80s but now their is reason to prioritize mRNA because RFK wants to prioritize alternate work in chronic disease? COVID was not a surprise. Our failure to have rapid vaccine infrastructure was apparent in swine flu in 2010 time frame. Where we delivered the vaccine a year after it was needed. We could have used Novavax's tech then to speed it up, but NIH stuck with tradition.
It was only dumb luck, and the insights of folks like Langer, mRNA was available for COVID. NIH has been making bad decisions for decades. At least RFK is prioritizing chronic disease which is the dominant health issue. And more likely something NIH can manage.
Their reason to prioritize it after COVID was because: 1. COVID proved it could work. 2. Perhaps more importantly. IT WAS A PANDEMIC. They were scrambling for any solution because hundreds of thousands WERE DYING. They had no solution so created Operation Warp Speed to drive for any solution. It is a Federal bureau with positives and negatives that any Federal bureau has. They have had many successes and yes, they have dropped the ball. But overall, they have been more good than bad.
It was sensible to apply MRNA, but MRNA was not the only vaccine vector developed and approved for covid. It's one of many approaches. Our vaccine needs are more varied. We need to lower spending. Chronic disease kills a lot of people every day. More than COVID. My problem with Faucis focus is he saw no reason to work on this earlier given the obvious threat. We don't have warp speed to thank, we have the people upstream who saw the need and convinced frankly better scientists of the need.
The article above is about cancer. Government is not stopping cancer work in MRNA. No one outside NIH is stopping MRNA work in vaccines. NIH is a minor source of new cures. Their work at times is constructive, but you are unlikely to find the leading work being funded by NIH.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has announced the termination of $500 million in federal funding for 22 mRNA vaccine development projects, including those targeting COVID-19, flu, and bird flu.
- Projects funded through BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority)
- Contracts with companies like Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, and Moderna
- No new mRNA vaccine projects will be initiated
- Some final-stage contracts are allowed to conclude, but the overall direction is a wind-down
The government is not stopping cancer work in mRNA. They are stopping their support of research into mRNA for cancer and any number of things. NIH is the source for no cures. They fund projects that are the source. You were upset that mRNA was not getting enough NIH attention before COVID. Now, RFK Jr has ensured NIH gives no attention. You seem to be saying on the one hand, the government didn't fund mRNA early enough but now you are fine that they are back to where they were before. Not funding it.
The USA has always had some of the leading health research and drugs. Now, we have RFK Jr who refuses to believe actual evidence because it doesn't comport to his opinion. On autism, for example.
I think you are understating the impact of NIH. I did some research:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been one of the most impactful public research institutions in history, with funding that has catalyzed breakthroughs across medicine, public health, and biotechnology. Here's a look at some of its most notable successes:
Landmark Achievements from NIH Funding
1. mRNA Vaccine Technology
• NIH-funded research by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman laid the foundation for mRNA vaccines.
• Their work enabled the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.
• This platform now powers research into cancer vaccines, HIV, and autoimmune diseases.
2. Cancer Moonshot Initiative
• NIH launched this to accelerate cancer research, with billions invested in:
o Genomic profiling of tumors
o Immunotherapy trials
o Early detection technologies
• Led to major advances in melanoma, lung, and pancreatic cancer treatments.
3. Human Genome Project
• NIH co-led the effort to sequence the human genome, completed in 2003.
• Revolutionized medicine by enabling precision diagnostics, gene therapy, and targeted drug development.
4. HIV/AIDS Breakthroughs
• NIH-funded research developed antiretroviral therapies that transformed HIV from a fatal disease to a manageable condition.
• Supported trials for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), dramatically reducing transmission rates.
5. Alzheimer’s and Mental Health Research
• NIH has invested heavily in understanding neurodegenerative diseases.
• Funded the BRAIN Initiative, which maps neural circuits and supports treatments for depression, PTSD, and schizophrenia.
6. Rare Disease and Pediatric Research
• NIH supports the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, helping families find answers to mysterious conditions.
• Advanced treatments for spinal muscular atrophy, cystic fibrosis, and childhood cancers.
Economic and Global Impact
• NIH funding supports over 300,000 researchers across 2,500 institutions.
• Every $1 of NIH funding is estimated to generate $2.64 in economic activity.
• U.S. leadership in biomedical innovation is largely due to NIH’s sustained investment.
You may find this interesting as more profound work. It is an example of BARDA doing novel work. BARDA should have been working MRNA in the 90s. It should be doing work like this now, which it is. What needs to be done next in mRNA is covered well by industry. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/hhs-nih-launch-next-generation-universal-vaccine-platform-pandemic-prone-viruses?utm_source=chatgpt.com
We are still spending 49b on research each year at NIH. The world is not ending. NIH productivity has been declining over the last 20 years. Bad decisions were being made before and they seem to be continuing. We have been way to focused on genetics work, not enough on chronic disease. Genetics is interesting work, but 80% of Healthcare spend relates to chronic disease.
Barda is a division of NIH and does not do cancer. The announced cuts have nothing to do with MRNA cancer research. 6% of barda budget was focused on MRNA. Is that the right amount? Given the degree of industry research being spent? Kennedy's comment did not make sense, but cutting this budget is not irrational given landscape of issues. Barda should be funding infectious disease research that industry is not doing. We have many vaccine technologies. Nova a for example had a COVID vaccine with no MRNA, and evidence of some sterilizing immunity.
On your long list of items which are important, how does that performance compare to foundations or industry. Recall Craig Venter beat human genome effort with fraction of spend. Great people came from human genome. Helping us build capacity. I simply not ready to bet on some government official to get this right. Frankly I would pick Bob Langer over Facui to solve near impossible problems. As Langer did in this case and often does. Because he attracts the best people and gets them to think in breakthrough ways.
Spend some time talking to PIs that have been funded by universities, NIH, foundations and corporations.
Read Vinay Prasad substack and other articles. They go deep into the research dollar allocation issues.
Well, it’s certain that gain of function research, even outsourced to China was one of the things Fauci definitely did not refuse to fund.
😆 cool story but now back to the plot 😆
"I recall 15+ years of NIH, Fauci specifically, refusing to fund mRNA"
I would want to understand the details of this. In my field (mostly NSF-funded research), the actual funding decisions are made by panels of scientists. The agency head mostly rubber-stamps them. This system isn't perfect, but it's kind of the best you'd hope from a system where "politics does not get in the way."
In any case, this doesn't look anything like what RFK Jr. is doing right now, so other than expressing a fantasy of how politics might work in a different Universe, not sure what this comment is bringing to the table.
Simply follow the researcher's comments. The field had no priority by Fauci's department. Researchers in the field did not get tenure because they could not get federal research dollars. It was a novel area. NIH has a history of funding bland research support by a panel of conventional thinking. This can not be both an important solution and not worthy of research. NIH for decades has pursued uninspired work, while ignoring novel new areas that would reduce health issues. If research is never done because of biased and weak decision making is that somehow superior to another administrator shutting down research?
Again, do you have evidence that "Fauci" did this, or are you saying that "the collection of scientists who staffed NIH's panels did this." Because they're wildly different criticisms. One leaves you with credibility but not much point, the other leaves you full of point but without much credibility.
A lot has been written on the degree Fauci drove NIAID research. In contrast to reader driven selection in other departments. The HIV issue in the late 80s is one of many examples.
By all means send me to it. But primary reliable sources and not Substack rants by people whose brains have been melted by resentment of Fauci.
https://www.villagevoice.com/an-open-letter-to-dr-anthony-fauci/
The bulk of my perspective is from people that have worked around him on vaccines. And my experience relative to efforts to speed up swine flu. Versus my experience with other federal research. It is frankly rare to have someone in that role for so long because it leads to research rigidity. Incredible contrast to how DARPA does work.
You will find many discussions on line from PIs who have had trouble getting the right research funded out of NIH. This is not. COVID was not a surprise threat. The possibility was well understood as was the need for rapid response. They ran a red team exercise in fall of 2019 to prepare for a COVID Sars like outbreak.
Would we be spending $500M on mRNA if not for COVID? Before 2020, even Fauci didn’t see it as a priority. Most funding came from DARPA and private investors. That $500M is about 6–7% of BARDA’s budget. COVID-scale outbreaks may be once in 50 years. The threats we know are coming, drug-resistant bacteria, climate-driven vector diseases, zoonotic spillover, often need room-temperature vaccines that current mRNA can’t deliver.
BARDA’s job is to be ready for the unknown, not fight the last war. mRNA proved itself for COVID. The private sector will keep pushing it. BARDA should fund what industry won't, other vaccine tech, faster diagnostics, and broad antivirals. Spread the bets.
Well, what else can I say. Red meat eating, cancer, floods, low efficiency diesel engines are all very manly. Much better than living a safe, clean but emasculated modern life.
Yeah, but don’t forget you can also now manhandle a big bowl of Froot Loops without artificial dyes (drenched in unpasteurized milk FTW) and later manguzzle a new retro Coke made with cane sugar.
You keep saying that renewables are cheap.
That begs the obvious questions: If renewables are so cheap, why have rates gone up so much everywhere that they have become the dominant form of generation?
The answer is externalities. Renewables generate at the wrong time and they provide no inertia to the grid. The cost of building a stable power grid with renewables needs to be factored into the price for a real world comparison rather than the fairytale cost that renewable energy only fans want to believe.
Only then can we have a real analysis of cost/benefit of different power types.
(For the record, I’d prefer a mix of nuclear and renewable as the primary generation types).
Inertia is going to be provided by battery peaker plants in the near future, regardless of whether we move to a renewable grid or not. Arguing about it is like trying to go back to fax machines once broadband is starting to roll out.
Numerous factors go into rates so you have to be careful with claims like that https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/have-renewables-decreased-electricity?triedRedirect=true
We are so screwed. The absolute idiocy of this moronic movement baffles me.
I would at some point love an article which ranks the most counter productive political movements in American history. I suspect MAGA only trails the Pro-Slavery movement.
My biggest concerns are less about the pharma companies and more about the availability of vaccines they come up with. It seems like between the CDC, FDA, HHS, they could put barriers into place that prevent Americans from taking advantage of these technologies.
1. Will insurance companies pay for vaccines which the US government has not approved?
2. Can the US government prevent access to vaccines in the USA if they choose to?
3. Will the only way for Americans to get these vaccines be to fly to another country?
Of all the screwups this administration is making, this one is way down the list. Morons gonna moron.
I don’t think the main problem with this ban is for cancer vaccines, which I’m sure many pharmaceutical companies are researching without federal funding, because a successful one would be very profitable.
The main problem is that one of the mRNA vaccines whose funding was killed was for H5N1 bird flu which is still spreading at chicken farms, and also now between cattle at dairy farms. If it spreads to humans (I hope no labs are doing GOF research on it) there may be a new pandemic and we won’t be prepared. Since flus and pandemics are not as certain as cancer, drug makers have less incentive to work on these vaccines without an OWS like incentive.
I don’t see any blood cancers (leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, et.al.) on the WHO chart. Survival rates for leukemia & lymphoma have skyrocketed in the past several decades, and they’re now among the most treatable of all forms of cancer - even before mRNA therapies arrived. Again, great post.
Given that mRNA technology is universally recognized as so promising, shouldn't it easily attract investment? If the government is going to subsidize research, shouldn't it be allocating resources to more speculative research that would have difficulty attracting private investment?
When people argue that we shouldn't subsidize solar because it is commercially successful, you point out that there are still national defense reasons to do it. There isn't really a national defense argument for subsidizing mRNA tech.
"There isn't really a national defense argument for subsidizing mRNA tech."
Are you absolutely sure?
It's not solar that is important for national security, it's batteries.
And Trump isn't really creating attractive investment climate for biotech by repeating that he's going to reduce drug prices by 1200%