Operation Warp Speed stands as one of President Trump's most transformative achievements—a bold demonstration of American leadership that launched a medical revolution and positioned America as the global leader in the most promising medical field of the 21st century. Yet this extraordinary achievement now faces an existential threat.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has branded the technology President Trump once championed as "dangerous" and has slashed federal funding for future mRNA research. While it’s fair to question how public health authorities handled the rollout of mRNA vaccines, we should not abandon America's leadership in a field that is revolutionizing human health.
The Success of Operation Warp Speed
After declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a national emergency, on May 15, 2020, President Trump announced Operation Warp Speed and set an audacious goal: produce and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with initial doses available by January 2021. This was more than an announcement—it was visionary leadership marshaling America's greatest assets against an invisible enemy. While critics doubted the timeline, President Trump understood that extraordinary times demanded extraordinary measures.
Led by the U.S. Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services (HHS), Operation Warp Speed fundamentally reimagined vaccine development. The president's willingness to assume massive financial risk—funding multiple vaccine candidates while simultaneously building manufacturing capacity—represented private-sector and government collaboration working in unprecedented harmony.
President Trump's audacious bet paid off. While traditional vaccine approaches struggled in clinical trials, by November 2020, two mRNA vaccines became the first to cross the regulatory finish line. The mRNA victory was decisive with 95% efficacy rates (Pfizer and Moderna) that far surpassed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) 50% minimum threshold. The reason why lies in how mRNA works.
mRNA is like a recipe card that gets copied from your DNA cookbook and carried to the kitchen of your cells, where proteins are made. The process happens naturally in every cell of your body millions of times a day. mRNA molecules are constantly shuttling genetic instructions to build the thousands of different proteins essential for life, from enzymes that power chemical reactions to structural proteins that build your tissues. It's one of the most fundamental biological processes in all living organisms.
The history of mRNA research began with its discovery in the 1960s, followed by decades of work on synthetic mRNA stability, delivery mechanisms, and cellular uptake. More than 60 years of research provided the foundation for mRNA vaccines, which essentially rely on the body’s natural cellular system to protect against disease. Researchers crafted a synthetic recipe for the coronavirus spike protein and delivered it in a way that mimics how cells naturally handle mRNA. And critically, mRNAs are used by the body and then destroyed by the body very quickly—most within hours after writing the recipes.
Operation Warp Speed defied every expert prediction and launched a new era in vaccine development. The program delivered exactly what President Trump promised: safe, effective vaccines that saved lives and provided the foundation for the country’s return to normalcy. The mRNA technology behind Operation Warp Speed’s success also offers remarkable potential beyond COVID vaccines.
The Innovation at Stake
Recent pancreatic cancer trials using personalized mRNA vaccines have shown extraordinary promise, with half of patients showing strong immune responses and remaining recurrence-free at three-year follow-up, compared to cancer returning within an average of just over a year in non-responders. These results mirror the early progress against childhood leukemia decades ago—a disease that once carried a 95% mortality rate but now has a 95% survival rate.
In addition to cancer, mRNA technology is advancing treatments for rare genetic disorders, with promising trials for conditions such as methylmalonic acidemia and propionic acidemia. Consider the story of Baby KJ, who was treated this year with a groundbreaking personalized gene therapy that combined mRNA technology with CRISPR gene editing. KJ was born with severe CPS1 deficiency, an ultra-rare genetic disorder that prevented his liver from converting toxic ammonia into harmless urea. mRNA instructions delivered the technology that corrected the mutation in KJ's genes. Now KJ eats more protein, needs less medication, and can fight off illnesses without dangerous ammonia buildup. His case is the first completely personalized genetic cure for a single patient.
These breakthroughs are now possible with the help of decades of research accelerated by Operation Warp Speed. It provided an unprecedented infrastructure to improve formulation and stability, rapidly scale manufacturing, and perfect the lipid nanoparticle technology that safely delivers mRNA into cells. These advances are enabling customized treatments for patients like Baby KJ and many others – advances that took decades to develop but were refined and validated through Operation Warp Speed and under President Trump’s leadership.
The Current Threat
Yet in 2025, we face a dangerous reversal. Skepticism toward mRNA vaccines has grown, stemming from legitimate concerns about pandemic rules and communication. Health authorities initially presented vaccine benefits with more certainty than available data supported, claiming complete safety and prevention of infection and transmission. When real-world performance differed from these promises, public trust suffered. Vaccine mandates compounded these issues.
However, rather than use these lessons to improve public health communication while maintaining scientific leadership, current policies risk abandoning this critical field entirely. Secretary Kennedy's concerns about mRNA technology, while reflecting understandable public sentiment, are not supported by the evidence.
Consider the efficacy of mRNA vaccines. Both vaccines demonstrated 95% efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in rigorous FDA clinical trials involving over 43,000 participants. These results came from double-blind, placebo-controlled studies—the gold standard of medical research—and were thoroughly reviewed by FDA regulators.
Real-world data following vaccine deployment has been equally compelling. During the Delta variant period, unvaccinated individuals experienced 13.9-53.2 times higher risk of death from COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals, with similarly elevated hospitalization rates. During the BA.4/BA.5 Omicron period, unvaccinated persons had 14.1 times higher COVID-19 mortality than those receiving updated boosters.
Similar results point to the safety of mRNA vaccines. The most discussed adverse event, myocarditis in young men, occurred at rates of 62.8-105.9 per million doses in the highest-risk demographic (males 12-17 after second dose)—representing a 0.006-0.011% risk. For perspective, lifetime lightning strike risk is 1 in 15,300 (0.0065%), and fatal car accident risk is 1 in 93-107 (0.9-1.1%). While all medications carry some risk of side effects, statistically, individuals faced higher risk driving to a vaccination site than from vaccine-related myocarditis.
Importantly, COVID-19 infection itself causes myocarditis at rates approximately 10 times higher than vaccine-associated risk. This difference reflects the fact that SARS-CoV-2's spike protein directly targets ACE2 receptors on heart cells—making the virus the primary driver of cardiac risks. Thus, what is often not stated but clear – the spike protein is the culprit of the ultra-rare occurrence of myocarditis, not the mRNA per se.
Preserving OWS’s Legacy and Future mRNA Research
It is estimated that mRNA vaccines saved 3.2 million American lives through 2022. This represents one of the most successful public health interventions in modern history, the direct result of American-led innovation. Yet current policy decisions risk ceding American leadership in mRNA research to international competitors.
Nations worldwide are expanding their biotech sectors with streamlined regulatory processes and increased investment in next-generation therapies. International biotech markets are experiencing unprecedented growth, with countries developing cutting-edge therapies independently of American innovation.
There remains a real possibility that future life-saving medications may bear "Made in China" labels—an outcome inconsistent with goals of strengthening American competitiveness and manufacturing leadership. China is rapidly gaining ground in biological sciences research, with its share rising by over 20% while the United States' share declined by 5.4%, though the US still maintains first place in this field (for now).
President Trump's investment in mRNA technology accelerated a medical revolution with the potential to cure cancer and other chronic disorders, treat rare genetic diseases, and transform how we approach human suffering. Diseases that currently carry death sentences could become as treatable as infections we cure with antibiotics today.
Efforts to distort the reality of mRNA technology and abandon future investments in mRNA represent a fundamental betrayal of President Trump's achievement. Other nations recognize the public health value and national security interests mRNA technology represents, and they are watching to see if America will surrender the very technology our leadership brought to the world.
Operation Warp Speed demonstrated what mRNA technology and American leadership can accomplish against seemingly impossible odds. Abandoning this path means not just losing our competitive edge—it means turning our backs on a revolutionary approach to medicine. The stakes could not be higher.
Jeff Coller, PhD - Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics, Johns Hopkins University. Founder of the Alliance for mRNA Medicines, Co-Founder Tevard Biosciences.
