The media and public health industrial complex did more damage to Big Pharma and trust in the government’s public health machinery than we ever could. Sure, we were on the front lines reporting the accumulating lies and publishing contrary evidence just a few days into the lockdowns, but they did this to themselves.
The result is the current Trump Administration with Secretary Kennedy, who is giving the government’s public health colon a much-needed inspection after all the shit it pulled. Part of that bowel cleanse is canceling every mRNA contract or grant until further notice. The Editors at the Wall Street Journal, as complicit as any in the safe and effective fraud, say Kennedy is using Biden-era mistakes to tarnish a promising technology.
One notable benefit of mRNA is that vaccines can be manufactured rapidly in the event of a pandemic. They can also be quickly updated if a virus mutates.
As for mRNA safety, Mr. Kennedy links to a compendium of studies that raise theoretical concerns about potential adverse effects. But those studies don’t find broad-ranging hazards in humans.
In other words, whatever went down in the neighborhood with that COVID mRNA thing, we shouldn’t bail on the platform.
The Wall Street Journal is right and wrong. First, it seems likely that there are potential benefits if the issues can be resolved. The version they used for COVID was better than any of its predecessors, but plagued by hubris and at great cost to life and quality of life.
Speculation that the known risks and downsides were deliberate is not unfounded. Hiding them certainly was.
The WSJ notes that ‘An early-phase trial this year showed that a personalized mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer induced a strong and durable response that could prevent recurrence.’ Pancreatic cancer killed two members of my family, but that doesn’t mean taxpayers need to fund mRNA research or that researchers won’t find a way to make it work in the future.
As an idea, mRNA could engineer a treatment specific to the individual, literally made for them. It seems worth pursuing … with private money.
The industry, venture capital, private equity, and other investors who dump money into biologics and pharmaceutical companies should encourage their boards of directors to provide research grants for initiatives with real potential for any platform that can save lives and improve the quality of life. Colleges are more than happy to dig in, and private money will be more closely supervised by those investing it.
And there’s plenty of it.
In other words, the free market and profit motive will direct resources more adroitly than bureaucrats whose only function should be oversight. The government’s obligation to public health and safety is not to decide what or who to fund but to ensure the products the private sector develops do what they claim, free from bias, and that it is not bought off by the industries they regulate or operate as the marketing team for the manufacturer. Always as free from harm as possible. With all known potential harms reported in advance, and a willingness to “pull it all off the shelf” at the first sign of things going sideways.
Outlets like the WSJ can help by approaching science moving forward, not as a consensus but as the resistance to it.
This, by the way, is an excellent documentary on mRNA and COVID.
