‘A chill through the entire vaccine industry’: RFK., Jr.’s flip-flop on Moderna’s mRNA vaccine latest setback

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was picked in November 2024 to become the next health secretary, public health experts worried that the longtime vaccine skeptic would wreak havoc on the fragile business of vaccine development.

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“There will be less invention, investment and innovation in vaccines generally, across all the companies,” Dr. Stephen Hoge, the president of Moderna, said in an interview.

Perhaps no vaccine maker has been hit harder by the federal policy changes than Moderna. Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly questioned the safety and effectiveness of the technology around which the company has built its business. The technology, known as messenger RNA, or mRNA, instructs the body to produce a fragment of a virus that then sets off an immune response. It can be more quickly tailored and manufactured compared to traditional approaches.

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Mr. Kennedy has argued that Covid shots using mRNA are not effective because they do not prevent infection. He also once called them “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

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