In this column, distributed by the Elon University Writers Syndicate, Professor of Biology Dave Gammon discusses the science and data of vaccines. The column was published by the "Greensboro News & Record," "The Reflector" and "The Sylvia Herald."
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently terminated $500 million in federal funding for developing mRNA vaccines, but don’t be fooled into thinking these life-saving tools are now obsolete. President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” showed the world that mRNA vaccines, such as the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, represent the future of vaccine technology.
This is not an article to rehash pointless and stale political debates about COVID-19. Been there, done that.
I won’t comment on whether funding for vaccine research should come from the private versus public sector. I also won’t comment on whether anyone should mandate vaccines for their citizens or employees. There is room for legitimate disagreement on these important social topics.
My article will focus instead on the science of vaccines. And in matters of science, the data should take center stage. Legal and political opinions are secondary.
One well-supported conclusion about vaccines is that even though side effects vary, some vaccines have provided fantastic benefits to public health. Smallpox was eradicated globally by 1980. This could never have happened without vaccines.
Vaccines also allowed us to eliminate measles from the United States by 2000. A few years later the virus sneaked its way back into our country, largely because some folks concluded they and their children would be better off unvaccinated. The ongoing measles outbreak of 2025 unfortunately affects primarily these unvaccinated individuals. The data on the benefits of measles vaccination are so clear now that even Kennedy said he would “probably” vaccinate his own children against measles.
mRNA vaccines represent the latest in a long line of vaccination innovations. If you want proof, search the internet for a readable peer-reviewed article titled “safety and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines” in the open-access medical journal “Cureus.” More research is still needed on how to store mRNA vaccines at room temperature and on how to reduce negative side effects, but there is no question about their overall potential.
Traditional vaccines still work, but mRNA vaccines are categorically better. It’s like comparing flip phones to smartphones. Flip phones were amazing for their time, but no serious investor would place their money on flip phone technology today. Similarly, Kennedy is misguided to think that research money would be better spent on traditional vaccines.
Take speed and scale. Traditional vaccines take months and even years to develop. In contrast, mRNA vaccines can be produced an order of magnitude faster. The first step, sequencing the pathogen’s genome, takes just a few hours.
Scientists then synthesize a sequence of genetic material called mRNA that codes for the protein antigens found in the pathogen. After the mRNA is delivered to your body through a vaccine, your cells can then synthesize these antigens, which trains your immune system to target and destroy the pathogen. You can see this process summarized as an infographic by searching the internet for “mRNA vaccine production” at “genome.gov.”
Because sequencing and synthesizing genetic material is easy and cheap, mRNA vaccines are much more adaptable than traditional vaccines. They provide flexible manufacturing options for business. Next time we find ourselves in another rapidly evolving pandemic, mRNA vaccines will help us to remain a step ahead of new pathogen variants.
Just as smart phones facilitated new apps that would never work on flip phones, mRNA vaccines are bringing new applications that move way beyond the COVID-19 virus. For example, scientists are now testing new types of mRNA vaccines that show promise against various cancers, chronic infections like HIV and autoimmune diseases like MS.
As a proud American, I don’t want my country to fall behind the rest of the world when it comes to vaccine technology. And make no mistake, the rest of the world will move forward with or without us in the development of mRNA vaccines.
Let’s not squander the future by losing our faith in mRNA vaccine technology.
Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of Elon University.