(TNND) — The American Academy of Pediatrics issued vaccine recommendations that differ from the government's guidance on the hot-button issue of COVID-19 shots.

And several vaccine experts said Wednesday that they expect pediatricians will listen to the AAP on this one, not the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I expect nearly all pediatricians are going to follow the science-based guidelines, which is what the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of Brown University's Pandemic Center.

---

A primary driver of the monumental endeavour to develop the yellow fever vaccine was a shared sense of responsibility that America, having the means and knowledge, should use its resources for the good of all. That sense of responsibility is now waning.

Max Theiler is the first of 13 South Africans to receive a Nobel Prize (1951, physiology and medicine) for developing what became known as an attenuated vaccine for yellow fever. His discovery changed the course of medicine as it treated, cured and prevented the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people. His Swiss-born father, Sir Arnold Theiler, was the inaugural director of the Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute outside Pretoria.

---

t’s late August, there’s a hurricane coming up the East Coast, schools are starting to open, and no one has any idea who can get an updated Covid-19 shot.

The Covid-19 pandemic is over, but the virus persists. It has killed up to 56,000 people in the U.S. since last October, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and sickened up to 18 million. Pfizer

PFE +1.67% , Moderna MRNA -2.38% , and Novavax NVAX -10.41% all plan to launch new versions of their Covid-19 vaccines this fall, updated to target a family of Covid-19 viruses called JN.1.

---

Dr. Elias Sayour is working on groundbreaking research toward a universal cancer vaccine, and he’s concerned that a recent decision from the Department of Health and Human Services could impede his team's work and the research of others hoping to develop new vaccines for diseases.

Sayour, a pediatric oncologist and professor at the University of Florida,is leading a team that’s using mRNA technology to help create a vaccine that fights cancer.

---

Four and a half years ago, fresh off the success of Operation Warp Speed, mRNA vaccines were widely considered—as President Donald Trump said in December 2020—a “medical miracle.” Last week, the United States government decidedly reversed that stance when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of grants and contracts for mRNA-vaccine research.

With Kennedy leading HHS, this about-face is easy to parse as yet another anti-vaccine move. But the assault on mRNA is also proof of another kind of animus: the COVID-revenge campaign that top officials in this administration have been pursuing for months, attacking the policies, technologies, and people that defined the U.S.’s pandemic response. As the immediacy of the COVID crisis receded, public anger about the American response to it took deeper root—perhaps most prominently among some critics who are now Trump appointees. That acrimony has become an essential tool in Kennedy’s efforts to undermine vaccines. “It is leverage,” Dorit Reiss, a vaccine-law expert at UC Law San Francisco, told me. “It is a way to justify doing things that he wouldn’t be able to get away with otherwise.”

Scientists have discovered the ability to “personalize” cancer treatments using cutting-edge genetic technology - but experts fear that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s, recent funding cuts will have “a profound chilling effect” on U.S. progress in this area of medicine.

The new mRNA vaccines are specifically engineered to address the genetic differences of each patient with stomach cancer, according to Japanese researchers in a study published Tuesday, which makes them more effective than standard treatments.

---

When the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2020, President Donald Trump referred to it as a "medical miracle."

"This is one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in history. It will save millions of lives and soon end the pandemic once and for all," Trump said at the time in a speech delivered from the Oval Office.

---

As of last month, there is no one left in the White House whose sole job is to keep the nation safe from biological threats. The leader of the National Security Council’s biosecurity directorate recently resigned. His staff had been pushed out, and his unit is now defunct. The Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, established by Congress in 2022, has dwindled from a staff of about 20 under President Joe Biden to a staff of zero.

The Trump administration has said that it’s just reorganizing the bureaucracy and is prepared to handle biothreats. But our experience suggests otherwise. Without a leader from the NSC embedded in the White House and ready to coordinate other agencies, more people—including Americans—will get sick and die.

---

This week, President Donald Trump called Operation Warp Speed, a public-private federal program that helped speed up the development and distribution of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines in record time “one of the most incredible things ever done in this country.” It was just a day after US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the federal government was canceling a half-billion dollars in investments into the same technology, saying no new mRNA projects will be initiated under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

Vaccine and preparedness experts said the decision could be disastrous for the United States, rendering another Operation Warp Speed impossible in case of threat from disease or bioweapons.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to cancel $500 million in grants and contracts for mRNA vaccine development jeopardizes the health and safety of Americans — both now and for years to come.

The Nobel Prize-winning technology enabled the first Covid-19 vaccines to be developed with breathtaking speed during the first year of the pandemic, ultimately saving millions of lives. Yet Kennedy spent years undermining confidence in mRNA, a misinformation campaign that he continued after he took office. Now, he’s systematically dismantling the very infrastructure we need to respond to a future pandemic.

---

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision this week to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in mRNA vaccine funding will leave the United States unprepared for the next pandemic and other public health emergencies, public health experts warned.

“I’ve tried to be objective & non-alarmist in response to current HHS actions—but quite frankly this move is going to cost lives,” President Trump’s former surgeon general, Jerome Adams, said in a post on the social platform X.

“mRNA technology has uses that go far beyond vaccines … and the vaccine they helped develop in record time is credited with saving millions.”

---

Doctors are sounding the alarm about potentially deadly consequences of the Trump administration’s decision to slash $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine development, saying the “deeply troubling” move could leave Americans defenseless in the face of a biological attack, or another pandemic.

Leading physicians and vaccine specialists were among the medical and scientific experts who told The Independent that years of progress had been lost, including the lessons learned during Covid.

---