U.S. more vulnerable to bioterror attack after Kennedy’s mRNA decision

John Locher/AP

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to discontinue funding of the development of messenger RNA vaccines is not just alarming for the country’s ability to combat future pandemics. It’s also a threat to national security.

Kennedy announced Tuesday that the division responsible for developing medical countermeasures for natural and bioterror threats would cease funding work on mRNA vaccines. If the United States were ever to be targeted in a bioterrorism attack, it would now be less prepared for that emergency, security experts say. As the development of Covid-19 shots in 2020 illustrated, mRNA technology can shave crucial months off the timeline of vaccine deliveries.

“We’re unilaterally disarming ourselves in a period in which the bio threats are continuing to proliferate,” said Stephen Morrison, director for global health policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “It’s reckless. It’s putting Americans at risk.”

Read more from Helen Branswell.

“WASTE”

The cost of a terminated grant

Harvard researchers had spent five years and some $3.8 million from the National Institutes of Health trying to answer whether an air purifier improved chronic obstructive pulmonary disease beyond the placebo. Only to learn in May, amid a feud with the university, the Trump administration had abruptly terminated the grant that was funding it with one year and some $734,000 still to go.

Without that time and money, pulmonologist Mary Berlik Rice and her team couldn’t collect the final bits of data or analyze what they’d found. A clinical trial needs outcomes from a minimum number of participants in order to be able to conclude anything with any statistical significance. The starkest irony of all? Healthier people cost less. This sort of study might in fact curb future waste. The same waste that President Donald Trump has decried in his crusade against “fraud, waste, and abuse.”

STAT’s Eric Boodman with a deeply reported story about how federal research is littered with studies that pay for themselves many times over — and what we, as a society, lose when those grants are inexplicably ended without warning.

DISABILITY

Trump targets Navajo disability watchdogs

Benita McKerry logs serious miles checking in on Native people with disabilities in group homes and correctional facilities in and around the Navajo Nation. But if the Trump administration has its way, McKerry’s job — and, potentially, the safety of thousands — will be jeopardized.

The Native American Disability Law Center acts as a watchdog in the Four Corners region to ensure that Native people are not being mistreated or abused. So when the administration released a budget proposal in June for a new health agency that dramatically decreased funding for protection and advocacy programs for individuals with mental illness, it felt like a death sentence to the center and an ominous sign for the thousands of people under their protection. It would be another blow to American Indian health in recent months, despite health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s insistence that he will ensure adequate care for these populations.

Read my story about the center and how the ongoing funding uncertainty could worsen care for people in the region.

TRANS CARE

CMS takes aim at hospitals providing gender-affirming care

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid are pursuing a rule that would limit hospital participation in Medicare and Medicaid if the facility provides gender-affirming care to minors. The rule was submitted yesterday to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which must perform a review before CMS can publish the proposed rule for public comment. Only the rule’s title is currently available on OMB’s website: “Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Hospital Condition of Participation: Limiting Participation Based on the Performance of Sex Trait Modification Procedures on Children.”

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has tried to enact a de facto ban of this care by withholding federal funds. A similar condition was included in the budget reconciliation bill passed by House Republicans this spring, but was ultimately removed from the final bill. Several hospitals around the country have already stopped providing the care due to the threat, despite no existing federal laws against it.

For a better understanding of how these moves are affecting real trans kids and their families, may I suggest spending a few moments with this New Yorker piece from yesterday, which explores why a mother and her trans teen decided to move from Maine to Mexico City. — Theresa Gaffney

VACCINES

Finally, a vaccine recommendation

CDC Director Susan Monarez has approved a recommendation from the agency’s vaccine advisory panel, her first since being sworn in on July 31. Monarez approved a recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that Merck’s monoclonal antibody Enflonsia should be one of the tools used to protect young infants from RSV. The advice is that babies under the age of 8 months whose mothers were not vaccinated with an RSV vaccine during the late stages of their pregnancies should receive one of two monoclonal antibody shots — Merck’s or Beyfortus, made by Sanofi and AstraZeneca — to protect them from the virus in their first RSV season.

The CDC did not issue a press release signaling that Monarez had approved the ACIP recommendation, as would have been the norm in previous administrations. Instead, a page on the CDC’s website featured the news. It also revealed that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. approved a recommendation that everyone 6 months and older get a flu shot this fall, unless they have a medical reason for not doing so. Kennedy apparently approved the recommendation before Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, on the same day he signed off on a trio of controversial ACIP recommendations calling for the removal of the preservative thimerosal from all flu shots provided to the U.S. market. — Helen Branswell

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