On Aug. 8, 2025, the U.S.Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was winding down nearly two dozen mRNA vaccine development efforts under the Center for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which is responsible for medical countermeasures that can address, among other things, pandemics and emerging diseases like COVID-19.

The decision to cancel almost $500 million dollars in U.S. funding for the development of messenger RNA vaccines is dangerous, shortsighted and tarnishes the legacy of a scientific advancement that saved millions of lives, experts said.

In a statement announcing the decision, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called into question the safety and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines, contradicting an abundance of data that show they are safe and effective and disagreeing with his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which notes that hundreds of millions of people have received one of the vaccines “under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history.”

Discovered decades before the COVID-19 pandemic began, mRNA technology is flexible, cheaper and more conducive to rapid vaccine production compared with other platforms, experts have argued, allowing manufacturers to make more doses in a shorter period of time.

The mRNA vaccines that were deployed within a year of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic were developed in record-setting time under Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government’s multibillion dollar endeavor to accelerate the production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The vaccines were credited with saving tens of millions of lives in the first year of the pandemic alone, and two scientists won a Nobel Prize for their mRNA-related discoveries.