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RFK Jr’s health department to halt $500m in mRNA vaccine research
Agency to end 22 federal contracts, questioning safety of technology credited with helping end Covid pandemic
The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it would terminate 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines, questioning the safety of a technology credited with helping end the Covid pandemic and saving millions of lives. Unlike traditional vaccines, which often use weakened or inactivated forms of the target virus or bacteria, mRNA shots deliver genetic instructions into the host’s cells, prompting them to produce a harmless decoy of the pathogen and train the immune system to fight the real thing. The technology’s pioneers, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, were awarded the 2023 Nobel prize in medicine for their work contributing “to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times”.
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