Why worries medical experts that Trump’s government removes funds for RNM vaccines

NBC News

The Government of Republican Donald Trump announced this August that will end the funds for scientific development of Type Messenger (RNAm) type vaccines to focus on other inoculation mechanisms, specifically in virus -type vaccines alive through a new platform that has nicknamed The standard gold generation.

Jay Bhattacharya, Trump director for National Health Institutes (NIH), said this platform will prepare the United States “against viral influenza threats using traditional technology, now taken to the 21st century.”

But health specialists, infectious diseases and vaccination say that betting on living virus technology is a bad decision.

“It’s like taking a step back,” says James Campbell, vice president of the Committee on Infectious Diseases of the American Pediatrics Association. “We have already had the virus vaccines for a long time,” he adds; The first of this type was developed at the end of the 19th century by Louis Pasteur (famous for pasteurization) to try to treat anger.

“With that we are not going to innovate at all,” says Angela Rasmussen, virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. “In terms of vaccination standards, this is something very old.”

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Let’s say the immune system is a hound dog in search of invading agents or germs. Then the new vaccination technologies that focus on specific antigens, the parts of a virus that are more likely to generate an immunization reaction, present to the hound with the trail to follow that will help you find the invader.

While living virus vaccines, which preserve almost all components of a germ unlike specific antigens, serve as if the hound is indicated that it must smell all the clothes that someone has had, not necessarily supporting the effort to find only where that person was more recently.

Campbell said having more components of a virus in a vaccine actually does not help much for the immune response to be stronger.

“For example, the hepatitis B vaccine is one antigen and protects almost 100%. It is not necessary to use the entire hepatitis B virus,” says the medical specialist.

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Another example, according to Campbell, are vaccines against COVID-19. “There were virus vaccines alive against COVID, which were not used in the United States but in other countries, and if the resulting protection is studied it was not as good” as RNM vaccines.

He points to studies as an analysis carried out in Singapore that concluded that it was 1.5 times more likely that people immunized against the coronavirus with a virus virus attenuated was infected with Covid-19 that those who were vaccinated with those of RNAs that only focused on the protein outside the Covid virus

“If we thought that the virus vaccines attenuated against COVID were the best available technology when the pandemic was at its peak, we would have used those” and not those of RNM, says Campbell.

Reported damage

Use only attenuated living virus vaccines when they are not necessary It could even be dangerous.

Campbell said this has been seen in the development of the Virus Agrees Synchital Virus (VRS O, in English, RSV), in the 1960s.

“When we use the VRS virus vaccine attenuated many years ago instead of protecting children against the disease, a reaction called ‘disease enhanced by an antibody’,” says Campbell. “The children had more serious cases of VRS than if they had not been vaccinated because they had the traces of the complete virus that was inactivated by formalin.”

The results of the clinical tests of that vaccine meant that the investigation for the VRS vaccine was delayed for several decades, according to specialists.

For a long time then the vaccination against this virus that mostly affects infants was with components that unleashed a weak immune response. That was until 2023, when a new VRS vaccine, which uses messenger RNA technology, was approved by the FDA.

“That protects very well,” says Campbell. “We don’t want

Use attenuated virus vaccines for this disease because that will be worse for people. “

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Some vaccines that are attenuated virus, such as rabies or hepatitis B are still used everyday, as well as some against seasonal influenza or flu,

Campbell points out that it is then possible that a living virus vaccine can be the option for some pathogens, but that depending only on that technology will not be effective.

In search of a unique vaccine against influenza

In particular, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is promoting its “gold standard” supposed platform with the promise that these investigations will lead to the development of a unique vaccine against the flu.

Campbell says that this is the case, because the reason why influenza vaccines are changing year per year is because there are different strains of a virus. If the attenuated virus is used, much cannot be done to include different strains.

“There are many paths of scientific development and if we only choose one, especially one that is an ancient technology that many people have already tried to use in the past with which they have not succeeded to develop a universal vaccine against influenza … It is like betting with all your chips for a single letter and that will not make the research field progress,” says Campbell.

Emily Hilliard, HHS spokeswoman, said in a statement that “the generation of gold standard is a critical step to restore strategic and transparency focus on the preparations that the United States makes before a possible pandemic.”

“With government and industry -free scientists (pharmaceutical), the BPL vaccine platform could provide lasting and comprehensive protection against all viral influenza pathogens, including flu and coronavirus,” Hilliard added. BPL refers to the beta-propioactone sterilizing agent, used to become inactive certain viruses for vaccine purposes.

HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has received money from anti -vacuum groups and has several occasions said that he doubts the effectiveness of immunizations, as well as scattered wrong information about the alleged links of vaccinating with having autism.

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Paul Offit, doctor and director of the Center for Vaccines Education at the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, said that taking backgrounds from ArnM research projects could be counterproductive in case of a future pandemic.

“If something bad happens, such as a pandemic by avian virus, we will be less prepared,” he said, because RNM technology can occur in less time than attenuated living virus vaccines, so RNM inoculations can be available faster for the population.

Rasmussen, from the University of Saskatchewan, explains that RNM type vaccines are also more adaptable. “You only have to manufacture the specific protein, or the related MRNA, which can be done synthetically without needing the virus, so it is easier to make adjustments as needed as new strains come out.”

Campbell says that, after all, it is not convenient that politicians from above rule what scientists may or do if they are restricted to a single development platform.

It is better that there are several platforms for vaccines research, as currently, to test different options at the same time.

“Thus one or up to two turn out to be the best and those are the ones that people continue to develop,” he says. “That’s what vaccination is about: see what works and what not using basic science, according to immunity levels, types of diseases, all before they are presented in humans, and then use clinical analysis to review the levels of efficiency, safety and response. That serves, not just make general statements about why a single platform suits.”