The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced it will wind down funding for mRNA vaccine development—which could prove to be one of the costliest, deadliest decisions HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will make during his tenure. HHS has already scaled back access to and recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines—a decision experts are deeply concerned about—and Kennedy’s frequently misinformed views on vaccines continue to fan the flames of anti-vaccination attitudes. Now, Kennedy’s failure to fully explore the potential of mRNA vaccines could stagnate research that has the potential to save millions of lives around the world.

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The dark cloud of COVID-19, one of the deadliest infectious disease outbreaks in history, can hardly be thought of as having a silver lining. But the nearest thing to a glimmer of a positive would be that the fast development of COVID-19 vaccines helped prevent many more deaths and led to rapid progress in our understanding and use of mRNA technology. This greater understanding is now being explored as potential preventions or therapies for a wide range of diseases, from H5N1 bird flu and HIV to cancer.

Terminating 22 mRNA projects will not only directly set back research on mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases including flu; it will also arguably have negative knock-on effects for researchers the world over exploring personalized treatments for noncommunicable diseases like cancer. Early research on some novel uses of mRNA is promising. For example, a preliminary trial of an mRNA HIV vaccine found that

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