About mRNA vaccines and cancer
(The first two paragraphs of this use information from a paywalled article titled “Your Personalized Cancer Vaccine,” in the December 2025 issue of Scientific American.)
Widespread, effective use of mRNA vaccines in treating and even preventing cancer is still a ways off. But progress has been made, and some human trials are showing promising results.
The Trump administration, though, of course has other ideas, given its collective fear of science and reality among a lot of other things. Nearly $500 million for anti-viral mRNA vaccine development has been canceled. New rules regarding overhead costs are an underhanded way of making ongoing government-funded research all but impossible. And Trumpers in HHS have been putting out the most foul, despicable, and dangerous kinds of anti-vaxx extremist lies.
Of all of Trump’s appalling cabinet picks there is no one more flagrantly crazed and unfit than Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., though Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth are about equally so .And Hegseth has been rumored for a while to be considering quitting and running for Congress, with a likely factor being that he knows what the real leaders in the Pentagon actually think of him. (Plus, I suspect that he’s getting awfully thirsty, if you know what I’m saying.) While ICE Barbie isn’t really in charge of anything. She’s a figurehead, not to mention an apparently uncomprehending target for mockery and ridicule second only to Trump himself. In any case RFK Jr. is arguably doing the most long-term damage to the greatest number of people overall.
RFK Jr. is a narcissist, but not a viciously malignant one like Trump is. He is just so far gone that he honestly believes that what he’s doing is great. In other words, he’s a royally messed-up, pathetic idiot.
And he’s clinically insane. He’s completely irrational and detached from reality. In the vernacular, his head ain’t right. Childhood trauma, plus extended periods of hard drug and steroid abuse, can do that to someone. But the bottom line is that he has no business whatsoever being in a position of substantial power in the federal government. Which is on the person who put him there. And that’s on the people who put another clinically insane person, namely Trump himself, back where he is. Including those who will develop cancer, and/or whose loved ones will. And in many cases will die of it.
Yes, plenty of money for this research should be back starting in 2029. Perhaps sooner in the quite possible event that Trump “kicks it” or becomes completely incapacitated, and J.D. Vance, who is pretty much of a wimp, does what the corporate bosses tell him to do and pulls back on the extremism. Or SCOTUS might actually do its job and order all congressionally approved funding restored, as it’s illegal to have just arbitrarily “cancelled” that in the first place. (I admit that I really thought that the United States Supreme Court would display some measure, however limited, of legitimacy and integrity by now. Obviously when I thought that I was being a perfect damned fool.) But holding up research like this on ridiculously stupid, ignorant ideological grounds is beyond unconscionable. As far as I’m concerned it at least borders on criminal. Or it should.
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