In 2004, California chose science over politics.
After President George W. Bush halted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, Californians voted to create the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The institute, technically a state agency, attracted top scientific talent — including a Nobel Laureate — and has helped launch more than 100 clinical trials for devastating conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and lymphoma.
Today, a similar crisis is unfolding. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has abruptly halted roughly $500 billion of federal funding for ongoing research into mRNA vaccines, citing vague concerns about safety.
Let’s be absolutely clear: Halting mRNA research today is like banning ChatGPT during the AI revolution or blocking Nvidia from developing GPUs. This is not just scientific negligence. It is strategic self-sabotage.
California can again choose science over politics by creating an institute to fund research across disciplines: the California Institute for Scientific Research. State Sen. Scott Wiener has introduced legislation to do just that. This is a great idea on many levels: The institute would advance scientific innovation, develop vaccines to defend against future pandemics, and generate economic benefits by creating jobs and intellectual property.
Messenger RNA is the foundation for next-generation medicine, including personalized cancer vaccines, gene therapies, and treatments for diseases long considered incurable. Early trials in melanoma and pancreatic cancer show significant reductions in tumor recurrence and the development of long-term immune memory — huge steps in the fight against these cruel diseases.
While mRNA vaccines were pioneered on the East Coast during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Bay Area is poised to become an innovation hub. At Gladstone Institutes, we’re working on the next iterations of the technology to cure HIV and cancer and to build better vaccines that protect against diseases such as Covid for longer, without boosters. This research would stop without federal funding.
Kennedy portrays himself as a cautious guardian of public health. In reality, his actions threaten to dismantle the very tools that ensure vaccine agility, pandemic resilience, and biomedical leadership.
This move is not an isolated decision; it aligns with a broader rollback of evidence-based public health: dismantling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s expert vaccine advisory panel, withdrawing vaccine guidance for pregnant women and children, and displaying a conspicuous lack of leadership amid a resurgent measles outbreak.
The science is unequivocal: mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives, earned Nobel Prizes, and remain one of our most powerful tools in fighting infectious diseases. They’ve been administered globally in the tens of millions, with well-documented safety. Rare adverse events — such as the heart condition known as myocarditis — are typically mild and are vastly outweighed by the benefits of protection against severe disease and death.
To walk away from mRNA technology is not caution. It’s capitulation.
The technology is not controversial because of the science but because of a dangerous brew of misinformation, polarization, and fear. The speed and novelty of mRNA-based vaccines developed during the Covid pandemic made them a lightning rod. Conspiracy theories spread rapidly, claiming that mRNA could alter DNA (it can’t) and that vaccines contained microchips, caused infertility, or were part of a global control scheme.
The truth is more mundane: mRNA does not enter the nucleus, does not integrate into DNA, and degrades quickly after delivering its message.
Yet the performance of mRNA vaccines is anything but ordinary. They’re faster and more affordable to produce than traditional vaccines (essential for pandemic response), safe to deliver, and more adaptable to various viruses than older technologies.
While the U.S. retreats from this space, China — whose Covid response relied on traditional whole-virus vaccines — is investing billions in mRNA innovation, aiming to surpass American leadership in this field. Indeed, some U.S. companies, such as Moderna, are expanding their operations in China. Ironically, the “gold standard” approach that Kennedy promotes — growing live virus, inactivating it, and injecting it — is the same outdated method that is slowly being replaced in China by mRNA boosters.
While the specific funding mechanism details for a proposed California Institute for Scientific Research are still being explored, Wiener’s bill establishes the legal framework necessary for a state-level research funding entity. The bill’s provisions for supporting research that has lost federal funding could protect critical mRNA vaccine work that is threatened by federal defunding.
A more focused solution would be to create CIRM2, a California Institute for RNA Medicine, that would position our state squarely at the forefront of mRNA research and vaccine development. The original CIRM, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, is technically a state agency but doesn’t have a centralized physical research facility. Instead, it drives innovation by funding cutting-edge research at existing California research institutions.
Like CIRM, CIRM2 could adopt a virtual research model to launch and scale rapidly. It could be funded by a bond measure and overseen by an independent committee of scientific experts, healthcare advocates, industry leaders, and representatives from California’s premier research institutions. This structure would ensure both scientific rigor and public accountability while maintaining the necessary independence to pursue long-term scientific goals regardless of federal politics.
Our nation is at a moment of crisis. When science is under siege, and when public health is dictated by ideology, not evidence, it’s time for California to lead again.
Dr. Melanie Ott, MD, Ph.D., is an infectious disease expert and director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology, part of San Francisco-based Gladstone Institutes.