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U.S. Cancels Contracts Worth $766 Million for Moderna Bird Flu Vaccine After ‘Rigorous Review’

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 29, 2025

The Trump administration cancelled two contracts totaling $766 million with Moderna for the development of its mRNA-1018 vaccine for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, citing safety and efficacy concerns identified during its clinical trials, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has confirmed.

“After a rigorous review, we concluded that continued investment in Moderna’s H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable,” HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon told The Defender.

“This is not simply about efficacy — it’s about safety, integrity and trust. The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested, and we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars repeating the mistakes of the last administration, which concealed legitimate safety concerns from the public,” Nixon said.

Moderna first revealed the cancellation of the two awards in a statement published Wednesday. Moderna also announced “positive interim data” from its Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials for mRNA-1018.

“While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis,” Moderna said in its statement.

Last year, HHS awarded Moderna $176 million for the late-stage development of the mRNA-1018 vaccine. In the final days of the Biden administration in January, HHS granted Moderna $590 million to accelerate the development of its bird flu vaccine and expand clinical studies for vaccines targeting five other flu virus subtypes.

‘A major policy shift away from dangerous mRNA injection programs’

Some scientists criticized the cancellation of the awards. Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told CNN, “The attack on mRNA vaccines is beyond absurd” and that “we will come to regret this” if bird flu starts spreading between humans.

However, epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher called the news “a very positive development” that “marks a major policy shift away from dangerous mRNA injection programs.”

Vermont-based lawyer and farmer John Klar called it a “sensible decision,” noting the seasonal nature of the virus and its waning virulence.

Dr. Clayton Baker, an internal medicine physician, called the contract cancellation “absolutely the right decision.”

“The mRNA gene therapy platform, as demonstrated by the multiple toxicities of the COVID-19 shots, is fundamentally unsafe and should be removed from use altogether,” Baker said.

Baker suggested that the timing of the January 2025 grant, just days before the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, was likely intended to “promote the bird flu panic that was perpetrated by the outgoing administration, in order to derail the new administration.”

HHS told Reuters earlier this year that it would review agreements the Biden administration made for vaccine production. In March, HHS denied rumors that it was considering cancelling funding for mRNA vaccine research.

In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $1 billion plan to combat the spread of bird flu among chickens. The plan included a strategy to develop vaccines for chickens, but not for humans.

According to Reuters, Moderna “has been banking on revenue from newer mRNA shots, including its bird flu vaccine and experimental COVID-flu combination vaccine, to make up for waning post-pandemic demand for its COVID vaccine.” The company “plans to explore alternatives for late-stage development and manufacturing” of its bird flu vaccine.

News of the canceled contracts came just days after Moderna withdrew its application for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of its mRNA-1083 combination flu and COVID-19 vaccine.

Last week, Reuters reported that Moderna’s decision to withdraw its application came amid “increased regulatory scrutiny of the vaccine approval process since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the top U.S. health job earlier this year.”

Markets did not immediately react to news of the grants’ cancellation. Moderna shares remained flat during after-hours trading Wednesday, but were up by over 2.6% by press time Thursday.

No human bird flu cases reported in three months

According to Reuters, bird flu has infected 70 people in the past year, mostly farm workers, but “has spread aggressively among cattle herds and poultry flocks.”

In January, a Louisiana man who was hospitalized with the first severe case of bird flu in the U.S. died — the first bird flu-related death in the U.S. and all of North America. However, the man, who was older than 65, had underlying medical conditions, and it remains unclear whether bird flu directly caused his death.

There have been no new human bird flu cases in three months, The Associated Press (AP) reported May 19.

Dr. Meryl Nass, an expert on biological warfare and founder of Door to Freedom, said, “H5N1 was a dangerous virus if you caught it from a chicken years ago.” But it has never spread person-to-person, and has “mutated to cause extremely mild disease in almost all humans that have caught it over the past five to 10 years.”

Nass said this makes a new bird flu vaccine for humans unnecessary. “There is absolutely no reason why the United States needs another bird flu vaccine, and there is even less reason to develop an mRNA vaccine because the platform itself is dangerous.”

Bird flu scare a ‘propaganda campaign’

Mainstream media outlets and many scientists continue to suggest that bird flu poses an imminent threat to humans, in what Dr. Richard Bartlett, an emergency room director, former Texas Department of Health and Human Services advisory council member, and expert on bird flu, called a “propaganda campaign.”

“The messaging has been that bird flu spread from penguins to sea lions, to a western Minnesota goat, to Texas dairy cattle and finally to a dairy farmer with red eyes. It’s been a two-year marketing campaign,” Bartlett said.

Bartlett said the messaging is intended to “manufacture the perception of a need for new mRNA products — despite the absence of long-term safety data.”

Last year, former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf warned that a potential bird flu pandemic could have a 25% mortality rate. Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D., then the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, warned that bird flu has an “extremely high” mortality rate for humans and could mutate to pass between humans.

In December 2024, Dr. Leana Wen, the former commissioner of the Baltimore City Health Department and a professor of public health at George Washington University, said the outgoing Biden administration had not done enough to address bird flu and criticized the lack of availability of a bird flu vaccine.

After the start of Trump’s second term and the implementation of funding cuts to government health agencies, mainstream media reports suggested the cuts were placing the public at risk of a worsening bird flu outbreak.

In February, Reuters reported the cuts “disrupted the U.S. response to bird flu as the outbreak worsens,” resulting in “anxiety among federal health staff that critical information about bird flu will not be disseminated in a timely manner or at all.”

In April, USA Today reported that cuts affecting the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine “will hamper the FDA’s ability to respond to animal disease outbreaks, including bird flu, and protect public health.”

Also that month, virologists from 40 countries published a report in The Lancet urging the Trump administration to prepare for a bird flu pandemic, according to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

The report was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which in 1999 established Gavi. The Gates Foundation holds one of the four permanent seats on Gavi’s board and continues to heavily fund the organization.

According to the AP, “experts are puzzling over why reports of new human cases have stopped” in the last three months. The report suggests that infections potentially aren’t being detected, that immigrant farm workers may be afraid to be tested, and that efforts to find bird flu cases were “weakened by government cuts.”

Baker said such scenarios are unlikely to account for the lack of recent bird flu cases. “What does this say about the severity of the illness in humans? It says that the illness is either mild or entirely asymptomatic and that there’s no need for a vaccine for an asymptomatic condition.”

U.S. ‘poured a king’s ransom’ into bird flu vaccine development

Nass said that the FDA has already licensed three vaccines for H5N1 and that “there have been dozens of experimental bird flu vaccines that were never taken to licensure. The U.S. government “has already poured a king’s ransom” into funding these vaccines, even though bird flu has never spread between humans.

Baker said that instead of funding new bird flu vaccines, the U.S. government should “stop the gain-of-function style manipulation of bird flu into a bioweapon, which takes place at the Kawaoka lab at the University of Wisconsin and the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia, as well as at other labs.”

Gain-of-function research increases the transmissibility or virulence of viruses and is often used in vaccine development. Earlier this month, Trump issued an executive order pausing gain-of-function research in the U.S. for 120 days while a new regulatory framework is developed. The order also ended U.S. funding for such research in some countries.

“Gain-of-function research produces human pathogens, the process is driven by fear in the media, and then proprietary vaccines are presented as the solution,” Baker said. “It needs to end.”

Recently, there have been growing calls among scientists for a moratorium or ban on mRNA vaccines, including a petition pending before the FDA.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

May 29, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Gates Foundation, HHS, United States