If there is such a thing as a national achievement so obvious it requires no embellishment, Operation Warp Speed was one of them. Trump’s Manhattan Project for microbes, a fusion of science, industry, and regulatory focus. President Trump called it a “medical miracle” and the superlative fit. It was American healthcare ecosystem being decisive, ingenious, unrivaled—and it left Moscow and Beijing blinking in our national rearview mirror.
Here's how President Trump hailed the cutting-edge mRNA platform Operation Warp Speed unleashed, “These are the kinds of breakthroughs that are possible when we unleash American ingenuity.” He was even blunter in the vernacular that made him famous: “I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful shot for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers!” Trump, not famous for understatement, nonetheless had the measure of it: unequaled, unrivaled, transformative.
How soon we forget.
Enter Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now presiding at Health and Human Services with the zeal of a Luddite armed with a budget axe. He slashed $500 million from mRNA research and recycles anti-vaccine folly as if fact-checks were optional and science a conspiracy.
This is not skepticism; it’s sabotage—of science, of patients, of the very platform that just proved itself on the grandest stage.
Scientists warn the collateral damage will be measured in stalled cancer trials, delayed HIV therapies, and the usual verdict upon the vulnerable: wait. This is purposeful policy malpractice.
If skeptics want more data so they can “do their own research,” the remedy is not defunding technology that just works, it’s running clean, randomized control trials in truly low-risk, healthy populations—where ethical equipoise exists—to answer legitimate questions. That’s how a serious country treats serious science: measure precisely, improve continuously, and keep what works – what saves lives.
Who benefits when America decides that triumph demands penance? China. While we moralize, they mobilize. Beijing approved its first mRNA vaccine in 2023 and has been pouring billions into the sector ever since. The market there is scaling fast—new platforms, new indications, new prestige. Chinese companies you’ve never heard of are building an mRNA ecosystem from shingles to cancer and collecting innovation laurels along the way.
Meanwhile, we debate yesterday’s rumors. This is irony raised to tragedy: a President who relished outcompeting China now watches his own team fumble away the scientific crown jewels. mRNA is not a one-off pandemic fix; it is a platform—a new operating system for medicine. Pair it with AI, better delivery systems, American capital and ingenuity, and you get an engine for ripe for discovery – and an accelerator we should be maximizing. Not defunding.
The bottom-line question: Does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. support or oppose President Trump’s signature scientific achievement? The budget axe to mRNA, the recycled anti-vaccine catechism, the convenient alibi of Biden-era mandates—this is rollback and payback, not stewardship. Sabotage, not reform. Call it what it is: a retreat from American science. A gift to Beijing and a betrayal of the President.
Peter J. Pitts is President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former FDA Associate Commissioner.
Dr. Robert Goldberg is Vice President of Research at the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
