Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams — who served during the first Trump administration — argued Sunday that “people are going to die” if the U.S. backs away from mRNA vaccine development, after Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. halted around $500 million in research funding.
Kennedy announced last week that the administration was canceling 22 mRNA vaccine development projects, saying the vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.” The projects were funded through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA. Kennedy said the funds would be shifted toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”
Adams, who appeared Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” said Kennedy’s assertions about the efficacy of mRNA vaccines are “simply not true” — citing their effectiveness in the COVID-19 pandemic, during which hundreds of millions of people took Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines.
“We know that by the most conservative estimates, upward of 2 million lives have been saved because of mRNA technology,” Adams said. “It helped us develop COVID-19 vaccines in record time. And it’s, quite frankly, President Trump’s greatest achievement.”
The mRNA technology was central to Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership aimed at quickly developing COVID-19 vaccines at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic near the end of Mr. Trump’s first term. If the U.S. had relied on older vaccine technology, it could have taken an extra 18 to 24 months to develop COVID-19 shots, Adams said.
Asked about Kennedy’s move by CBS News earlier this week, Mr. Trump said, “Operation Warp Speed was, whether you’re Republican or a Democrat, considered one of the most incredible things ever done in this country,” while noting that he had upcoming meetings on the topic.
Adams, who was involved in the Operation Warp Speed effort, said it’s “fascinating” to him that, as Mr. Trump and his allies discuss whether he deserves a Nobel Prize, “the thing that he should be considered for the Nobel Prize for, his health secretary is trying to undermine.”
The former surgeon general explained that mRNA is a type of natural molecule that’s present in the body and operates like a “recipe card that tells your body how to make a protein.”
Beyond COVID-19, Adams said the technology “helps us develop vaccines and new treatments” in other areas — from cancers and HIV to the flu and the Zika virus. The funding cuts could halt progress in one of the “most promising areas of modern medicine,” the former surgeon general said.
“These are advances that are not going to happen now,” Adams said. “People are going to die because we’re cutting short funding for this technology.”
After Atlanta CDC shooting, Adams said “Secretary Kennedy has failed in his first major test”
Adams also criticized Kennedy for his response to a shooting outside Centers for Disease Control and Prevention buildings in Atlanta on Friday. Investigators have been looking into possible motives, including the possibility that the suspect believed he was sick as a result of the COVID vaccine, multiple sources told CBS News.
“How you respond to a crisis defines a leader. Quite frankly, Secretary Kennedy has failed in his first major test in this regard,” Adams said, accusing Kennedy of issuing “tepid response” to the shooting, while adding, “and that’s not even considering how his inflammatory rhetoric in the past have actually contributed to a lot of what’s been going on.”
In a statement Friday, Kennedy said, “No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others.” But Adams argued Kennedy has not “unequivocally condemned the violence.”
“There’s an out there,” Adams said. “If you don’t believe that people are working to protect the public, then that means it’s okay to commit violence, at least in some people’s eyes.”
The former surgeon general said people at the CDC were calling him after the shooting asking him to make a public statement “because they felt under attack.”
“They didn’t know if this was going to continue,” Adams said. “They were scared, and they wanted someone, someone who they felt had a public voice, to go out there and say, ‘This is wrong. Violence is wrong.’”
Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.
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