Osterholm shocked by canceling of vaccine funding: "I cannot recall a more dangerous decision that was made than this one"

Plenty of concern and criticism from one of the country's top infectious disease experts over Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to pull a $500 billion worth of funding for the development of COVID and influenza vaccines, among others.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, has never been one to mince words. And he's not doing it now.

"Well, I've been in this business 50 years now, and I cannot recall a more dangerous decision that was made than this one," Osterholm started with.

He says the mRNA technology is what allowed scientists to develop the COVID vaccine at warp speed, during President Donald Trump's first administration.

While Osterholm admits it wasn't perfect, he does say it significantly reduced serious illness, hospitalizations and deaths. He adds without it? Future pandemics will be harder to stop.

"When the next influenza or COVID pandemic begins, I think we're going to be instead, at the front of the line like we were with COVID," Osterholm explains. "We're going to be at the end of the line globally for getting this vaccine, and it'll all be our own making."

Secretary Kennedy says his decision to drop what he calls "troubled" mRNA programs is supported by experts at the National Institutes of Health and FDA. Osterholm says that's not true, and that the decision by Kennedy is based on "ideology, not science."

"He also said that the reason they were going to withdraw the support for this research was in fact because the risk to using this vaccine was greater than the benefits," Osterholm told WCCO. "Well, I'd like to know what the risks are. All my colleagues would like to know what that is. It's just simply not true."

Osterholm says the evidence for the COVID vaccine being effective is "clear and compelling," almost universally with his colleagues across the world. He adds that the U.S. has always been at the forefront for leading health initiatives across the globe, and what he's seeing does not show that is going to continue.

"This one, however, has the implications for really impacting the world in a really very, very substantial way," Osterholm said.

Osterholm says these viruses are like hurricanes and other weather events - they will come, it's just a matter of when, and adds he's deeply concerned.

"They occur. Will one occur this year? I don't know. Will it be a few years from now? I don't know. But I can tell you with certainty, I do know we will have these events. Just like we saw with COVID from 2020 to 2024, we will see potentially much worse situations in the future. These decisions are dangerous."

So-called mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic — and now scientists are using that Nobel Prize-winning technology to try to develop vaccines and treatments against a long list of diseases including cancer and cystic fibrosis.

But this week, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, canceled $500 million in government-funded research projects to create new mRNA vaccines against respiratory illnesses that might trigger another health emergency.

That dismays infectious disease experts who note that mRNA allows faster production of shots than older vaccine-production methods, buying precious time if another pandemic were to emerge.

Using older technology to target a pandemic flu strain would take 18 months to “make enough vaccine to vaccinate only about one-fourth of the world," said Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, an expert on pandemic preparation. But using mRNA technology “could change that dramatically, such that by the end of the first year, we could vaccinate the world.”

Traditionally, making vaccines required growing viruses or pieces of viruses called proteins — often in giant vats of cells or, like most flu shots, in chicken eggs — and then purifying them. Injecting a small dose as a vaccine trains the body how to recognize when a real infection hits so it's ready to fight back.

But that technology takes a long time. Using mRNA is a faster process.

The “m” stands for messenger, meaning mRNA carries instructions for our bodies to make proteins. Scientists figured out how to harness that natural process by making mRNA in a lab.

They take a snippet of that genetic code that carries instructions for making the protein they want the vaccine to target. Injecting that snippet instructs the body to become its own mini-vaccine factory, making enough copies of the protein for the immune system to recognize and react.

Years of research show protection from COVID-19 vaccines — both the types made with mRNA and a type made with traditional technology — does wane over time. The vaccinations provide the strongest protection against severe infection and death, even if people still become infected.

But that's a common feature with both the coronavirus and flu because both viruses continually mutate. That's the reason we're told to get a flu vaccine every year — using vaccines made with traditional methods, not mRNA.

Today's COVID-19 vaccines made with mRNA by Pfizer and Moderna can be updated more quickly each year than traditional types, an advantage that now has multiple companies developing other vaccines using the technology.

Osterholm counts about 15 infectious disease vaccines that could benefit from mRNA technology, but that's not the only potential. Many disease therapies take aim at proteins, making mRNA a potential technique for developing new treatments. Researchers already are testing an mRNA-based therapeutic vaccine for pancreatic cancer. Genetic diseases are another target, such as an experimental inhaled therapy for cystic fibrosis.