Bhattacharya and Kennedy split on mRNA cuts

Politico

a day ago

AROUND THE AGENCIES
National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya is making the case that mRNA vaccine technology is 'promising, but not yet ready for prime time.'
He cites a lack of public trust in the technology as the reason his boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,recently canceled $500 million in mRNA vaccine development projects.
Bhattacharya weighed in on Kennedy's decision in a conversation over the weekend with Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump ally and prominent MAGA figure, on Bannon's 'War Room' podcast:
'The reason that he did that — and I think it's very important for people to understand — as far as public health goes for vaccines, the mRNA platform is no longer viable,' Bhattacharya said.
'You can't have a platform where such a large fraction of the population distrusts the platform, if you're going to use it for vaccines, and expect it to work.'
But, but, but: Kennedy, who has long been suspicious of the mRNA vaccine platform, offered an explanation for the funding cuts that contradicts Bhattacharya's reasoning.
'After reviewing the science and consulting top experts at NIH and FDA, HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses,' Kennedy said in a video posted on social media last week, referring to Covid-19 and flu mRNA vaccines.
Big picture: Scientists and drugmakers worry that Kennedy's skepticism of mRNA could stifle cancer treatment developments, our Lauren Gardner reports.
mRNA technology can instruct the immune system to attack problem proteins, so it holds promise as a customized treatment for rare cancers and diseases. As such, dozens of mRNA therapies are being studied or are in the drug-development pipeline.
Bhattacharya seemed aware of the technology's use beyond flu and Covid vaccines. After telling Bannon that mRNA technology wasn't ready for widespread vaccine use, he added: 'For cancer, maybe it's another story.'
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OPERATING ROOM
A large-scale study of New York's Mount Sinai Health System suggests that artificial intelligence could help emergency departments better handle their patient loads.
In the study, researchers from Mount Sinai trained an AI model on 1.8 million emergency department visits between January 2019 and December 2023. Then they tested the model by comparing it with two months' worth of nurse triage assessments of nearly 50,000 patient visits across the system's urban and suburban hospitals.
The result: Nurse predictions were 81.6 percent accurate, while the AI model's assessments were 85.4 percent accurate.
The study, published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health in July, had a few limitations, the authors noted, including that the research was conducted at a single health system over a short time span. Outcomes might differ in another setting, and longer-term trends could yield different results.
Bird's eye view: 'The strength of this approach is its ability to turn complex data into timely, actionable insights for clinical teams — freeing them up to focus less on logistics and more on delivering the personal, compassionate care that only humans can provide,' Dr. Eyal Klang, study co-author and director of the Generative AI Research Program at Mount Sinai, said in a statement.