Word games: How Moderna is selling its newest vaccine without using the “v” word

… Last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, zeroed in on mRNA, unwinding support for dozens of projects—including a $776 million award to Moderna for a bird flu vaccine. By January, the company was warning it might have to stop late-stage programs to develop vaccines against infections altogether.

That raises the stakes for a second area of Moderna’s research. In a partnership with Merck, it’s been using its mRNA technology to destroy tumors through a very, very promising technique known as a cancer vacc—

“It’s not a vaccine,” a spokesperson for Merck jumped in before the V-word could leave my mouth. “It’s an individualized neoantigen therapy.”

Oh, but it is a vaccine. …

Related on the SLP

Viewpoint: Can mRNA research survive the Trump administration? FDA Moderna mRNA review flip-flop: A sledgehammer to vaccine—and a gift to anti-vaccine activists

Viewpoint: RFK Jr. touts AI to guide health care…but searches using the technology he champions expose him as scientifically illiterate

Viewpoint: ‘Bureaucratic and economic obstacles’ to agricultural biotechnology: Europe creeps into the 21st century, but blocks remain

Viewpoint: How the anti-abortion movement twists medical facts and promotes science misinformation

…

The logic of casting it as a therapy is that patients already have cancer—so it’s a treatment as opposed to a preventive measure. But it’s no secret what the other goal is: to distance important innovation from vaccine fearmongering, which has been inflamed by high-ranking US officials. 

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here