The first thing to understand is that mRNA vaccines work differently from traditional ones. The latter generally introduce a weakened or inactivated part of a virus to train the immune system to recognise and fight it in the future; whereas mRNA vaccines use a molecule that tells our cells how to make a viral protein, which triggers the body’s immune responses.
This technology is a scientific gamechanger, to the extent the researchers behind it won the Nobel prize in 2023. But since rising to prominence during the Covid pandemic, mRNA vaccines have been dogged by misinformation (this analysis by my colleague Nicola Davis is well worth a read.)
Michael Head tells me that mRNA technology offers a very effective and adaptable approach to developing vaccines. “It’s often described as plug-and-play because you can adapt constituents of the vaccine with, for example, the latest Covid variant.”
For something like a flu vaccine, researchers need to incubate the virus and grow it, which takes weeks, Head explains. “That’s fine to an extent when it comes to producing an annual vaccine like we do for seasonal influenza, but the advantage to mRNA technology is that it can be updated so quickly that it allows us to produce new vaccines or update existing vaccines quicker, which can hopefully then reduce the threat of whatever infectious disease is present.”
This is crucial during a pandemic such as Covid. “The mRNA vaccines saved about 20 million lives globally in the first year of their rollout,” Head says.
Why is Kennedy doing this?
Kennedy once described mRNA Covid vaccines as “the deadliest vaccine ever made”. On Wednesday, he justified the health agency’s decision to terminate research by claiming that data shows mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like Covid and flu”.
Kennedy offered no scientific evidence to support this – and Head said Kennedy has been spreading vaccine misinformation for years. “He has on at least one or two occasions compared vaccines to being like the Holocaust, a common anti-vaccine trope.”
He has also recently falsely claimed vaccines such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab contain “aborted foetus debris”; ordered a sweeping new study on the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism; and dismissed a panel of government vaccine experts, replacing them with his own appointees – who then voted to ban a longstanding vaccine preservative that has been a frequent target of the anti-vaccine movement despite its strong safety record.
Kennedy claims he is shutting down research on mRNA vaccines and instead shifting funding to “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”, and that mRNA vaccines “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics”.
It’s just not true, though. Head says variants actually tend to emerge in the absence of vaccinations, and in people with long-term infections – often those who are immunocompromised and can’t get over the virus quickly. That gives the virus more chances to multiply and mutate.
“Vaccines reduce the risk of transmission and infection,” Head says, which means fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate. “So vaccines will have a protective effect against new variants emerging, rather than as Kennedy suggests.”
What impact will this have?
The question of the next pandemic is not if, but when. History shows pandemics happen, Head says, pointing to the 1918 flu pandemic, swine flu, Sars, and of course Covid.
Head says this is especially true in our era of globalisation and human encroachment into new environments. “If you create enough opportunities, a new virus will enter human beings. There might be a scenario where it runs out of control like we saw with Covid. Or, it might be a bit more like Sars, where we were able to get it under control within a couple of months.
“But again, globalisation and the mixing of people and animals makes things more challenging. And so a pandemic will happen at some point. We just don’t know when.”
Technologies like mRNA vaccines, then, are vital. Head added that the potential applications go far beyond infectious disease.
“There’s quite promising research on skin cancer and the potential for this technology to be applied across different areas of health,” Head says. That is another reason Kennedy’s decision is so damaging, he adds.
One of Head’s research areas focuses on how funding decisions impact science such as cancer research. “It’s very early days, but we are starting to see a slightly alarming picture. It’ll be very hard for the rest of the world to fill the cancer research gaps that the US is likely to leave.”
Is this a worrying time for the scientific community?
There is no way to sugarcoat it; this is a particularly alarming moment for scientists. The World Health Organization coined the term “infodemic” during the pandemic to describe the overwhelming amount of misinformation that spreads during a public health crisis, Head says. Even before Covid, in 2019 the WHO listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats.
“I have huge concerns that if a pandemic happened again tomorrow, whether populations in the UK, US, and around the world would trust public health decision making that would be vital to mitigate the impacts of any new pandemic. So the role of misinformation is significant and it can be very severe,” Head warned.
“It does not help that some of the most powerful people, like US president Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr, are making poor quality comments on vaccination because that does have an impact on population level decision making.”
Some of Head’s research has looked into vaccine uptake in Ghana during the pandemic. The study found that political views played a big role in whether someone agreed to receive a Covid vaccine.
“The government was saying, go and get vaccinated, please, but there was a fair amount of anti-government sentiment at the time. And hesitancy was greater if you voted for the opposition and therefore trusted the government messaging less. So there are lessons to be learned on who delivers the messaging to get your vaccine, and how to address that lack of trust in governance,” Head said.
For now, the world holds its breath … and hopes no one sneezes.
