Kennedy’s campaign against mRNA vaccines is also a problem for Europe

On 19 August, Merck and Moderna announced a result which, once we are able to examine the figures and verify them, appears exceptional. INTerpath-001, a phase 3 randomised trial involving 1,137 patients with high-risk cutaneous melanoma, achieved its two primary clinical endpoints. The patients had undergone complete tumour resection and were receiving pembrolizumab. Two-thirds of them were also given autogene intismeran, an mRNA therapy tailored individually to the tumour’s mutations.

For each patient, up to 34 tumour neoantigens are selected and an mRNA encoding them is synthesised. The immune system is thus trained to recognise residual tumour cells carrying those mutations. In phase 3, the combination improved both recurrence-free survival and distant metastasis-free survival. Merck and Moderna describe the benefit as clinically significant. The full data are not yet available, so the magnitude of the effect remains to be determined, but the signal already observed in Phase 2 has withstood the test of a large confirmatory study.

The result makes the short-sightedness of the MAHAs and the Trump administration even more apparent: divesting from a platform also means betting against applications that the platform has not yet had time to demonstrate. On 5 August 2025, the US Department of Health announced the federal withdrawal from twenty-two investments in the development of mRNA vaccines, totalling nearly $500 million. The programmes focused primarily on respiratory infections and pandemic preparedness. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the chief liar at the Department of Health under the Trump administration, explained that those platforms had shown limitations in efficacy and that resources would be redirected towards technologies deemed safer.

That decision came after years in which mRNA had become embroiled in the controversy surrounding Covid vaccines, to the point where it had become a rallying cry for a section of the American right. Ron DeSantis’s Florida had paved the way. In January 2024, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo had called for its discontinuation for the entire population, citing the risk that residual DNA fragments might integrate into the genome of those vaccinated; the FDA had responded that such a mechanism was biologically implausible and that the data showed no signs of genotoxicity. In 2025, Kennedy brought some of that same hostility to Washington.

The controversy had by now moved beyond Covid vaccines. In 2025, in Minnesota, an ‘mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act’ proposed classifying all products containing mRNA or modified mRNA as ‘weapons of mass destruction’. In 2026, a similar bill was tabled in Tennessee. Neither became law, but both illustrate the extent to which a field of molecular biology has been drawn into a political battle.

The federal measure concerned a specific aspect of mRNA applications, but a technological platform thrives on the scientific expertise and production capacity that accumulate as it is used. Reducing public investment restricts the scope within which that expertise is maintained and transferred to new applications. It is only private investment that has prevented the withdrawal of public funding from becoming a constraint on the technology as a whole.

There is also a second effect of US policies, which affects us directly. The ‘most-favoured-nation’ clause on drug prices aims to align US prices with the lowest prices charged in other developed countries. It may therefore become a rational decision for a company to delay launches in countries that negotiate lower prices, such as Italy, or to demand less favourable terms from public healthcare systems. Merck is among the companies that have entered into the Trump administration’s MFN agreements. We do not yet know whether Intismeran will be included, but the mechanism is clear: a low price negotiated in Europe can reduce the value of the US market and make it less profitable to bring the drug to us quickly.

The cost of this policy may therefore be borne by Italian patients. mRNA research risks being undermined in US public research and, when it leads to new medicines, may face barriers that delay access to them in Europe.

Thank you, really, you chief liar.