Aldred: Don’t Interfere with Medical Breakthroughs

Many will recognize the term messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) in relation to vaccines. The technology burst into the public consciousness during the pandemic, where the nimbleness and speed of the technology platform enabled quick development of effective vaccines during the pandemic.

Because of misunderstanding about the technology, there is a move, through legislation, to limit the use of it in several states, including right here in Texas.

This is unfortunate because the technology is currently being studied to fight pancreatic cancer and melanoma, treat rare genetic diseases, and to prevent other infectious diseases. It also has significant potential to be useful in animals, like livestock.

It’s important to understand more about the potential and also the misperceptions before we resort to moratoria on promising technology that has the potential to save and change lives.

mRNA technology is a prime example of a “platform technology”— a base on which other innovations can be built. Once the technology is in place, it can be applied to various conditions by changing the instructions for which protein the body should build.

First discovered in the 1960s, mRNA is present in all living things and carries instructions from DNA to protein-making machinery that already exists in the body. In a sense, mRNA is instructing our own body to respond or make use of its own defenses.

While mRNA only recently became known to the public, it was in development for decades. Today, not only is mRNA being used in vaccines, but treatments are in development for cancer and rare diseases like cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Understandably, people have a lot of questions about this innovation, especially about safety. Before being used by the public, applications of mRNA technology must pass a rigorous approval test by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – which includes understanding the potential side effects.

Administered mRNA does not stay in a person’s body. In fact, people routinely consume mRNA in eating plants and meat, and the body degrades it very rapidly. And to address one of the biggest misperceptions about mRNA – mRNA administered to humans cannot alter DNA or genes in any way. Nor does it cause Long Covid or cause cancer; in fact, its ability to harness the immune system to fight cancer is being studied.

Despite the enormous potential of mRNA technology, some well-intentioned but ill-conceived efforts are underway to ban it. These efforts are government overreaches. The role of the government regarding a proposed medical treatment should be limited to evaluating its safety and effectiveness based on the evidence. There is little need for meat labeling requirements, for example, because producers that avoid mRNA-vaccinated livestock can easily advertise that fact to any interested consumers— that is exactly what happened with GMO products before the government mandated that they be labeled. For medical treatments administered to people, the guiding principle should be that people, with advice from their doctor, make their own healthcare decisions. People should neither be forced to use mRNA technology, nor prevented from doing so.

mRNA technology has the potential to transform medicine, and scientists throughout the public and private sectors recognize this. If a treatment has satisfied regulatory scrutiny for safety and effectiveness, government should not interfere with people’s freedom to make use of groundbreaking innovations.

The above guest column was penned by Tom Aldred, executive director of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, a 501(c)(3) think tank in Austin. The column appears in the Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the author.

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