They’re calling all science into question and undermining public trust in the whole endeavor.

Messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines heralded a major breakthrough in battling the Covid pandemic, building on three decades of scientific work and earning a Nobel prize.

They show promise for treating or preventing certain cancers, rare conditions and infectious diseases — including, potentially, the next pandemic.

Yet the Trump administration is turning against mRNA vaccines — and all vaccines, I reported for the Guardian recently.

“I think mRNA vaccines are particularly at risk, although I think all vaccines are at risk,” said Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

“I think that this administration will do everything it can to make vaccines less available, less affordable and more feared.”

–US experts fear all vaccines at risk as Trump officials target mRNA jabs, The Guardian

Anti-vaccine sentiment has been around as long as vaccines have.

“It’s been a perpetual theme in society for 200-plus years,” said John Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College.

“But it has been turbocharged by the Covid pandemic.”

–US experts fear all vaccines at risk as Trump officials target mRNA jabs, The Guardian

Indeed, several top U.S. officials rose to prominence because of the Covid pandemic. Vinay Prasad, for instance, has been an outspoken critic of the pharmaceutical industry — and of his peers in public health, I reported for the Guardian in May.

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In 2021, Prasad had a “heel turn” and began strenuously opposing Covid boosters and other precautions, like wearing face masks, as well, said David Gorski, a professor of surgery and oncology at Wayne State University. Prasad started questioning “how dangerous Covid actually was,” he said.

Perhaps his biggest focus has been on the importance of randomized clinical trials. It’s been a constant refrain of his for years; if an intervention (be it vaccines, masks, whatever) didn’t undergo an RCT, it was worthless.

Now that Prasad is in office, he’s executed another heel turn, saying that randomized trials are not always feasible, possible, or practical.

What’s behind the sudden shift?

It turns out, it was never about the trials themselves.

By criticizing how clinical trials are done, skeptics such as Prasad “cast doubt on the current evidence by implying that whatever you’re criticizing has never been adequately studied and probably doesn’t work,” Gorski said.

–Critic of Covid boosters set to enact tough agenda as top US vaccines official, The Guardian

As Jonathan Howard, an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at NYU Langone Health and author of the book We Want Them Infected, wrote recently:

By repeatedly undermining RCTs — and that’s exactly what he is doing — he is creating a permission structure for the current medical establishment to do whatever they want. They can make drastic changes based on “common sense,” as Dr. Prasad recently put it.

This seems to be the playbook of the Trump administration — undermining the science, the very basis for evaluating whether something works and is safe, in order to sow doubt about all of it. (All of it except for the billion-dollar unregulated supplement industry.)

Got tips or ideas for what I should cover next? Get in touch via email (melodyaschreiber@gmail.com) or Signal (melodyschreiber.06).

Top image: Scientists learn about the mRNA vaccine production process. Photo: NIAID