Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Sally C. Pipes

Lawmakers in Iowa, Idaho, Texas and Kentucky have introduced bills that would ban or restrict vaccines that use messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology — despite its immense potential for treating and even preventing some of the most vexing diseases known to man.

These legislative efforts are massive missteps. The science behind mRNA is sound. Rejecting groundbreaking mRNA therapies would be devastating for patients — and would damage America’s standing as the unquestioned global leader in biotechnology.

The way these vaccines work is simple. As the word “messenger” suggests, mRNA sends a message to the immune system, showing it how to recognize a protein associated with a harmful virus. That teaches the immune system to create defenses against the virus. The mRNA itself quickly disappears, but the defenses it helped create remain.

Unlike other types of vaccines, mRNA vaccines don’t actually contain the virus they’re meant to protect against. That means patients aren’t in danger of contracting the virus from the vaccine. Nor do mRNA vaccines carry any risk of changing their recipients’ DNA. They lack the key enzyme that would enable them to do so.

The antipathy toward mRNA vaccines is in large part a function of the ongoing culture war over COVID-19. Banning mRNA technology in response to the many missteps of public health officials during the pandemic is a textbook example of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

The latest science indicates that mRNA vaccines have unique characteristics that can help us overcome some of the most difficult-to-treat diseases.

Take pancreatic cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of about 13%. Because pancreatic cancer spreads quickly throughout the body and is prone to mutating, common treatment strategies like surgery often fail to prevent the disease from recurring.

A team of scientists recently published a study in Nature demonstrating that mRNA vaccines can be personalized to combat specific mutations in pancreatic cancer tumors, dramatically decreasing the chance of recurrence. Most of the patients in the clinical trial who responded strongly to the vaccines remained cancer-free even after roughly three years.

Pancreatic cancer is far from the only disease that mRNA technology is showing promise against. Researchers are developing mRNA vaccines against other cancers like melanoma, infectious diseases like malaria and genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis.

mRNA technology may also speed up drug development timelines. It’s possible to devise the genetic code for an mRNA vaccine within days or weeks, compared to the years that developing a traditional vaccine can take. Think back to Operation Warp Speed during President Trump’s first term, which delivered the first COVID-19 vaccines in record time.

Finally, mRNA is an area where the United States has opened up a huge scientific lead over the rest of the world. Banning or severely restricting use of the technology could allow other countries, including adversaries like China, to catch up or even surpass the United States.

The potential negative consequences would be not just economic but strategic. In future pandemics or bio-threats, Americans could be left dependent on other nations for life-saving treatments.

Our leaders should be embracing mRNA medicines — not blocking patients from using them.

(Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is The World’s Medicine Chest: How America Achieved Pharmaceutical Supremacy — and How to Keep It (Encounter, 2025). This piece originally ran in the Idaho Statesman.)