mRNA is Being Used to Treat Lung Cancer, But I Fear How RFK’s Minions Will React

I wish science hadn’t become a political battlefield

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

I just want to watch one anti-vaxxer say no to the new MRNA Lung Cancer Vaccine. Just one.

Or maybe make it subject to being up to date on vaccines and let me record the people getting turned away. Is that too much to ask?

A rather apt description of our current situation.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths and survival rates are usually poor with advanced forms of it but it’s going to trial at 34 research sites in 7 different countries. This specific vaccine is made to deal with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is most common.

Apparently it uses messenger RNA to train the body’s cells to recognize the markers for NSCLC tumors to target them.

The idea here is that this can lead to therapy that attacks ONLY cancer cells, so that they no longer have risk making people sick to fight the virus.

As happy as all of this makes me, I can’t help feeling fear at the blowback.

In America, RFK had been polling consistently around 10 points on 538 averages until Biden dropped out and he stayed around 5. RFK is an infamous figure, known for spreading antivaxx ideas and likely only gained ground because of the new Republican proclivity to doubt the existence of Covid AND its vaccine.

I can’t help thinking Republicans might look at this and think it’s a response to RFK leaving the presidential race and endorsing Trump.

That’s not possible given the scope of this project, but logic rarely ever matters with conspiracy theories.

This application of mRNA vaccines is EXACTLY why so many of us were so happy with it and so scared of what the Republicans were doing. Moreover though, mRNA vaccines mean you can have a tailor made vaccine to any virus as long as you know enough about it. You can use it to attack any number of cancers by isolating the proteins at the surface of the cells.

But then antivaxxers always exploit the miraculousness of this kind of work.

Meanwhile, their logic of trickle down economics where you save society by doing EXACTLY which is most convenient to you is somehow more logical.