A massive $500 million federal vaccine grant is sparking backlash, as critics warn it's built more on politics than science.
Katherine J. Wu reports for The Atlantic.
In short:
- Matthew Memoli, a previously little-known flu researcher who rose rapidly under the Trump administration, helped pitch a universal vaccine project to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that is to be awarded up to $500 million in federal funds.
- Experts say the vaccine technology isn’t cutting-edge, and the initiative skips normal peer review, concentrating resources on one in-house National Institutes of Health team — an unusual and risky move.
- The money comes at the expense of broader infectious disease efforts, especially COVID-focused programs, raising concerns about cronyism and a lack of scientific transparency.
Key quote:
“It’s very clear it’s all cronyism going forward.”
— NIH official
Why this matters:
When public health dollars are steered by politics instead of science, defenses against future pandemics get weaker. This vaccine project represents a big bet on one horse in a race that touches every human life, and experts are worried the science doesn’t justify the size of the wager. It's also pulling funds from other pressing infectious disease research — like the still-burning crisis of long COVID, among others — at a time when many labs are already stretched thin. Concentrating money on a single, unproven strategy increases risk and undermines trust in science and the institutions meant to protect health.
Read more: 500,000 US COVID-19 deaths and counting—a shameful public health failure
