Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that all National Institutes of Health research on mRNA vaccines will be halted. He is wrong, dead wrong.
The NIH, which Kennedy now controls, started in 1887 but really became what it is today due to the insight of a professor from MIT named Vannevar Bush, a major contributor to digital systems and the founder of Raytheon Corp. He was the head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development under FDR and the first to hold the post of presidential scientific adviser. The president saw that science and technology were key to the future of the country and Bush’s leadership set in motion national efforts to support broad investment. Post-war government focus on fundamental science and engineering brought us to where we are today. The NIH is but one of many magnificent examples and has been a world model.
Think about this fact. Science is built brick by brick, and the mRNA vaccines are the result of centuries of fundamental research on the biochemistry and molecular biology of living systems. The NIH is, with its scientists and extramural funding to universities, by far the greatest accomplishment of medical science in history. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we didn’t do this overnight.
As a former National Cancer Institute fellow and also a contributor to research in AIDS — for which there is still no vaccine available — I maintain that this decision is beyond a shadow of a doubt completely unscientific and an idiotic example of what happens when politics dictates scientific strategy.
Andy Branca
Camano Island
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