US government halts mRNA vaccine development projects
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The US Health Secretary has stopped about $500m worth of funding for the development of mRNA vaccines against viruses that cause illnesses such as flu and Covid-19. Robert F. Kennedy - a vaccine sceptic - claims they pose many risks. Newshour hears from vaccinology professor Dr. Paul Offit who says Mr Kennedy's decision is not based on science.
Also in the programme: we hear from a Hiroshima survivor; and the gorilla sisterhood.
(Picture: A nurse prepares a booster dose of the Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, Spikevax, at a vaccination centre in Berlin, Germany, January 1, 2022. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:07.0 | We're coming to you live from London. I'm Krupa Bharty. In a moment, we're going to be taking a look at the US decision to stop funding for MRNA vaccines. |
| 0:16.3 | Now, these are the vaccines which were successfully developed during the COVID pandemic. What are the implications |
| 0:22.0 | of this move? Also, it is the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima. We're going to be hearing from |
| 0:27.3 | survivors of that devastating nuclear bomb. And why female guerrillas value relationships with |
| 0:34.2 | other females? It has often been assumed that females, gorillas, will not invest so much in those relationships |
| 0:40.4 | because why invest in a relationship if you or the other member might just immigrate? |
| 0:45.3 | And here we're showing that dispersal does not have to be the end of the social relationships. |
| 0:51.0 | Actually, they can, you know, maintain old relationship as well as create new |
| 0:55.5 | relationships. More on that story in around 20 minutes time. But first, the COVID-19 pandemic |
| 1:02.3 | brought to light many gaps and many concerns in our global healthcare systems. Among them, |
| 1:08.2 | the need for fast and effective vaccine development during public |
| 1:11.9 | healthcare emergencies. It was the MRNA vaccines developed at speed by scientists and |
| 1:18.1 | pharmaceutical companies that became the main drivers in saving millions of lives and curving |
| 1:23.1 | the spread of COVID-19. Now, the US Department of Health and Human Services has announced plans to |
| 1:29.2 | wind down its MRNA vaccine development activities, which fall under the biomedical |
| 1:34.4 | advanced research and development authority, also known as BADA. Now, put very simply, |
| 1:40.4 | MRNA is a molecule found naturally in human cells. |
| 1:44.8 | And MRNA vaccines give instructions to our bodies to produce the part of the virus that stimulates an immune response. |
| 1:52.7 | US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., however, is not convinced. |
| 1:57.3 | Take a listen to him explaining just yesterday why he'd made that decision to cancel 22 MRNA vaccine development programs. |
| 2:05.6 | Most of these shots are for flu or COVID, but as the pandemic showed us, |
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