Experts condemn NIH director’s defense of cut to vaccine research

Critics say Jay Bhattacharya’s comments on so-called failure of mRNA vaccines to ‘earn public trust’ are ‘astounding’

When the director of the National Institutes of Health this week said funding for the development of mRNA vaccines – the backbone of Covid vaccines – was being wound down because they had failed to “earn public trust”, it was met, publicly and privately, with exasperated incredulity.

Critics say few have done more than Jay Bhattacharya and other top health officials in the Trump administration to sow doubts about public health institutions and, by extension, the value of the vaccines that saved millions of lives around the world.