{"id":53971,"date":"2025-09-09T23:26:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T23:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/53971\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T23:26:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T23:26:11","slug":"moderna-ceo-responds-to-rfk-jr-s-crusade-against-the-covid-19-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/53971\/","title":{"rendered":"Moderna CEO Responds to RFK Jr.\u2019s Crusade Against the Covid-19 Vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the WIRED Health summit on Tuesday, Moderna CEO St\u00e9phane Bancel<\/a> said the recent changes to Covid-19<\/a> vaccine policy made by Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are a \u201cstep backward.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Moderna is one of the manufacturers of mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines, and last month the company received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for an updated version of the shot<\/a>. But as part of that approval, the FDA imposed new restrictions on who can receive the vaccine. Previously, Covid vaccines were recommended for anyone 6 months or older. Now, the FDA says they should only be given to individuals at high risk of serious disease, either because they are 65 and older or have other health problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it complicates things for people,\u201d Bancel said. \u201cYou might have somebody in your household\u2014a parent, a spouse, a kid\u2014who is at high risk\u201d that you want to protect, he said. Before, healthy individuals could just go to a pharmacy to receive a Covid shot. Now, several states require a prescription to get a Covid shot because of the FDA\u2019s changes.<\/p>\n

Kennedy has been on a crusade against vaccines<\/a> since he stepped into the role of HHS secretary in February; earlier this week, the Senate Finance Committee grilled him about his actions in office so far.<\/p>\n

In May, Kennedy terminated a $590 million contract with Moderna for the development of an mRNA-based bird flu<\/a> vaccine candidate. The contract was awarded during the final days of the Biden administration in January, just before President Donald Trump\u2019s second term began. Bird flu is widespread in wild birds and has been causing outbreaks in poultry and US dairy cows since March 2024. It has caused sporadic cases in people, most of them farm workers, but poses a pandemic potential if it develops the ability to spread from person to person.<\/p>\n

That same month, Kennedy announced that HHS would no longer recommend mRNA Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. In June, the FDA said it would require new labels on mRNA vaccines to include safety information about the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, rare side effects observed mostly in young men following administration of the shots.<\/p>\n

In August, as a part of a \u201ccoordinated wind-down\u201d of mRNA vaccine research, HHS canceled 22 related contracts and investments worth nearly $500 million. Kennedy incorrectly said in a statement these vaccines \u201cfail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like Covid and flu.\u201d HHS is instead shifting funding to an older vaccine platform known as \u201cwhole-virus\u201d vaccines.<\/p>\n

Despite the administration\u2019s backlash against mRNA vaccines, Bancel said he is \u201cencouraged by the dialog\u201d that the company has had with the FDA. In addition to getting updated Covid shots, albeit with limitations, Moderna also received expanded approval this year for its respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, vaccine to include adults ages 18 to 59 who are at increased risk of disease. The vaccine was initially approved in May 2024 for adults aged 60 years and older.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of people back in January, including my own team, were quite worried that we might not get those approvals,\u201d Bancel said.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s crackdown on mRNA research so far has not extended to the cancer space, and Moderna is developing several mRNA therapies against cancer, including personalized cancer vaccines. The company has 45 cancer-related programs in the pipeline and has said it expects 10 FDA approvals in the next three years. \u201cWe are using exactly the same technology to go from infectious disease to cancer,\u201d Bancel said.<\/p>\n

He also addressed accusations that the Covid vaccines have not been well tested. \u201cI don’t think there’s been a vaccine more studied for efficacy and safety in the history of vaccines,\u201d he said. \u201cIn terms of vaccine efficacy and safety, there’s been studies done in literally millions of people in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the WIRED Health summit on Tuesday, Moderna CEO St\u00e9phane Bancel said the recent changes to Covid-19 vaccine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[160,64,18,19,17,96,2101,14162,82,14160],"class_list":{"0":"post-53971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-coronavirus","9":"tag-covid-19","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-medicine","14":"tag-public-health","15":"tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-vaccines"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}