One of the more notable successes of President Donald Trump’s first term was how the administration was able to develop effective COVID-19 vaccines so quickly.

That impressive speed — less than one year compared to the decade or more of research and development that other vaccines have required — likely saved millions of lives worldwide. And what made that Operation Warp Speed feat possible?

That would be Messenger RNA or mRNA. In layman’s terms, laboratory-created mRNA vaccines can teach human cells how to make a specific protein that triggers an immune response inside our bodies.

Yet on Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that his department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is killing nearly $500 million in contracts with university researchers and private companies to develop new uses for the mRNA technology.

That’s the same technology that saved so many lives during COVID. Now, it won’t necessarily be available for the next pandemic. That ought to give Americans considerable pause.

Kennedy has certainly been a vaccine skeptic. But any reasonable, science-based analysis of vaccine development generally, and even mRNA technology specifically, would not support abandoning this lifesaving approach, not when global threats like measles are on the rise.

Kennedy says he supports vaccines developed under more traditional circumstances (with weakened or dead virus cells), but scientists say the newer techniques are not only faster but can be more effective.

What makes this doubly frustrating is that Kennedy and his back-to-the-past approach to public health would be better off directing his ire at quite a different but still-serious threat.

A report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just two days after those 22 research contracts were canceled found that ultra-processed foods account for more than half the calories consumed by Americans, both adults and children. That includes everything from sweetened cereals to frozen pizzas, instant soups and sodas. They are high in fat, salt and sugar and are linked to ailments ranging from obesity to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression and cancer.

While a virus may be more fear-inducing, ultra-processed food can prove just as life-shortening, albeit not quite as suddenly. This is not a new threat, of course. Health authorities have been warning against trans fats, chemical preservatives, excess calories and other ultra-processed food components for years. But the consequences are stunning: To name just one example, a diet high in such ultra-processed food is estimated to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 50%.

Kennedy has promised to crack down on this scourge and regulate additives that are often used merely to extend shelf life or make products a bit sweeter or tastier. What a shame that he has instead chosen to put lives at risk by, instead of turning back the clock to make food healthy, turning it back on vaccine science.

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