Vaccine Makers Curtail Research and Cut Jobs : Shared by John Gilmartin

This trend will impact Unicef’s largest supply category for years to come.

 
For anyone over 65 reading, the flu vaccine should be considered differently than just a vaccine which might prevent a flu infection. There’s now good data showing that receiving a dose flu vaccine reduces the incidence of FATAL heart attack during the coming year. What hadn’t been studied in the past was that a significant number of of influenza patients die from from fatal heart attacks. Receiving the flu vaccine man not prevent someone from catching a mild form of the disease, but it clearly has an impact on reducing the incidence of fatal heart attack. (I need to get you the reference if you don’t already have it).

Developing, making and marketing vaccines was always a lousy business. When I was working at Merck in vaccine manufacture the head of the division told me the company only stayed in the vaccine business because a substantial share of the thousands of GP’s that the company visited to sell highly profitable pharmaceutical drugs for things like hypertension, would only talk to Merck sales reps because they wanted to know more about some of the vaccines the company was then innovating.

John Gilmartin

Title: Vaccine Makers Curtail Research and Cut Jobs

Author: Rebecca Robbins

Publication: The New York Times

Date: February 16, 2026

URL: Click here for the article

Summary:

Vaccine manufacturers across the United States are scaling back research, cutting jobs, and canceling facility construction in response to federal policies under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Moderna has been particularly hard hit, laying off over 800 workers (10% of its workforce), losing more than $700 million in bird flu vaccine contracts canceled by the Trump administration, and seeing its stock plummet 90% since August 2021. Last week, the FDA refused to review Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine. Federal health officials overhauled the childhood vaccination schedule last month, reducing recommended immunizations from 17 to 11 vaccines. Industry-wide impacts include declining vaccine sales across major manufacturers and venture capital investment in mRNA vaccine companies dropping from $510 million in 2023 to $174 million last year.

Quotes:

"There will be less invention, investment and innovation in vaccines generally, across all the companies." — Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna

"The changes sent a chill through the entire industry." — Jeff Coller, scientist at Johns Hopkins University who advises mRNA companies