MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Last week, the Trump administration canceled approximately $500 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines that protect the nation against future viral threats. The move alarmed public health experts. That was big news. But disregarding the advice of experts is nothing new for this administration, whether it's about health policy or other areas of government work like, say, the economy or foreign aid, just to name two. We want to hear more about the broader implications of that distrust of science and expertise, so for the next few minutes, we're going to turn the microphone over to two NPR reporters who have been following this closely - health policy correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: This decision at HHS canceling all this money for mRNA vaccines is kind of wild to me because it feels like a reversal from Trump's first term. He pushed to develop these vaccines in the first place.
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: Yeah, you know, it is, in some ways, a dramatic U-turn from the first Trump administration, which was in place when the COVID-19 pandemic began. So under Trump, the National Institutes for Health and private pharmaceutical companies collaborated to create vaccines incredibly fast. And you remember that effort was called Operation Warp Speed. And the speed was possible because the vaccines were built using this relatively new mRNA platform. The vaccines weren't perfect. There were a lot of breakthrough infections, but they are credited with saving many, many lives and preventing hospitalizations. And since that success, many scientists have been excited to figure out what else mRNA technology can do.
However, mRNA vaccines have also been a longtime target of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now the U.S. health secretary. He built his reputation and fortune by disparaging vaccines and suing drugmakers and regulators. He once tweeted that the COVID vaccines were, quote, "a crime against humanity." And even though he reassured senators during his confirmation hearing he wasn't going to bring his anti-vaccine activism to this new, very powerful role, that's exactly what he has done, and this is the latest example of that. And President Trump seems to be happy with this development, even though he used to call Operation Warp Speed and the vaccines it produced a miracle.
MONTANARO: Yeah. I mean, he's not going to put his neck out there, you know, to stand up for them anymore as a miracle, as he did describe them. But, you know, the fact is COVID was a huge political problem for Trump. He was trying to find anything that would help solve the problem and help him politically. But his handling overall of that is arguably why he lost in 2020. You know, many in his base turned on the vaccines. So Trump had to wind up walking this very fine line.
There was a huge overlap with RFK Jr.'s base of people who'd long, you know, been seen as on the fringe, and Trump needed them in 2024. But Trump really doesn't have very strongly held beliefs on this topic. You know, remember, he's also expressed his own skepticism about vaccines, so now Trump's allowing RFK Jr. the room to run, regardless of the best science because his movement and that of so many right-wing populist movements around the world, by the way, are dependent on this distrust of expertise.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Yeah. And, you know, Secretary Kennedy has really disparaged the Department of Health and Human Services, which he now oversees. He's laid the blame for American population - the American population's relatively poor health on rank-and-file HHS employees. He says they failed to improve America's health for decades. He's pointed to that as justification for abruptly firing approximately 10,000 workers, shutting down federal labs, canceling billions in funding for public health departments and researchers. And he doesn't just say these experts are ineffective. He told Lara Trump on Fox News that they're deliberately manipulating the truth.
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ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: There's all kinds of biases, and we need to have a system in place that will account for those biases and that will produce the best gold-standard science for Americans and evidence-based medicine.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Kennedy talks about gold-standard science constantly, but he doesn't really define what he means. He said in his confirmation hearings this isn't just a label he uses for research whose results fit with his preconceived beliefs. He says it's more objective than that. But gold-standard science is not a term that's used among scientists, and he seems to be using it as a filter for what research gets funding and credibility and what can be brushed aside.
MONTANARO: Yeah. And Kennedy isn't the only member of this administration with a deep distrust of experts. You know, there's this anti-elitism, anti-intellectualism, this distrust in the experts. It's really something that's fueled Trump's politics. That was made explicit in the October vice presidential debate. Listen to now-Vice President JD Vance then strongly disagreeing with the idea that it's important to listen to the experts - in this case - about health.
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VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: So many of the drugs, the pharmaceuticals that we put in the bodies of our children are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop, and we're not going to stop it by listening to experts. We're going to stop it by listening to common sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.
MONTANARO: Yeah. In other words, don't believe the experts. Believe Donald Trump. And look, they told us. They've been telling us. Think about trade, which was the first part of JD Vance's answer, as well as health care - what we're talking about here. And the strategy here is undermine institutions and experts and believe in that one person, then they can sell you anything.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: You know, it is striking to me how Secretary Kennedy seems to assume bad intent among experts, as if expert consensus is a kind of collusion, and only outsiders without expertise in certain fields have the bravery to see things clearly. You know, think about how he fired the outside panel of vaccine experts and replaced them with his own handpicked roster, including people who have spread misinformation about vaccines.
You know, he points to historical examples of when scientists got things wrong to imply that all science that experts stand behind - especially if it contradicts his ideological beliefs - is also maybe wrong. And that's really a misrepresentation of how science works and a dark view of what motivates the experts in health and science. You know, he's leading from a place of distrust. And even though the public doesn't have high trust in public health experts or federal agencies like CDC and FDA, Kennedy has extreme views on things like vaccines that don't reflect popular opinion.
MONTANARO: And they used to have very high opinions of those institutions but...
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Yeah.
MONTANARO: ...Leadership matters. And this is what happens when leaders undermine expertise. And that's, frankly, one of the biggest problems in our society, that we can't agree on a shared set of facts and then be able to argue about which policies are the right ones to lead the country. It makes it extraordinarily hard to find any degree of unity when everything is viewed through a partisan political lens.
KELLY: NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro in conversation there with our health policy correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin.
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