Vaccine makers sanguine amid threat from US health nominees RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz

One-time independent presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Jr. is an infamous conspiracy theorist. While he has denied he is anti-vaccination per se (and admits his children are vaccinated), he has spread various myths about vaccines, including the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism and a host of troubling misinformation surrounding COVID-19. He has also quickly flipped his longstanding opinions that the incoming president is a “threat to democracy” and a “bully” surrounded by “belligerent idiots” and some “outright Nazis,” to reap the reward of Donald Trump’s nomination for the next US secretary of health and human services.

Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and to work alongside – presumably – RFK Jr. is Mehmet Oz. The TV celebrity physician has shared numerous controversial positions on alternative medicine, including pushing “magic weight loss” coffee beans. Oz also promoted the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment against COVID while acting as an unofficial health advisor during Trump’s first term. Researchers and clinicians have repeatedly found that hydroxychloroquine does not offer effective COVID protection or treatment, and the FDA and WHO both cautioned against using the drug.

The concept of such a pair heading up the US top healthcare jobs has already sent drug company stocks tumbling, but vaccine makers at the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference last week were relatively upbeat regarding the future administration.

Pfizer, which has pulled in over $80 billion in total sales from messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty, has had a long history of dealing with different administrations. “We've had a really good relationship with the outgoing administration, and we actually had a very good relationship with President Trump's prior administration, as well as his transition team at the moment,” CFO Dave Denton assured investors.

However, he suggested changes in healthcare policy are likely. “Some of this will be positive. Some of this will be negative.”

The positive, he said, focuses on talks from the incoming administration about making the healthcare infrastructure in the US more efficient. – “To get drugs to market more quickly, I think, will be a benefit to pharma,.” Denton said.

However, most of the questions Pfizer is receiving reflect that “not everybody is a complete believer in vaccines,” he conceded. “I would say if you look at the actual comments from the incoming administration, they've not been as destructive as they might have been, let's say, months ago. I think the rhetoric is a bit more tempered from that perspective.”

Fellow COVID vaccine and mRNA pioneer Moderna also spoke about the incoming team, particularly RFK Jr.’s stance on infant inoculation. “There has been some rhetoric in the past around his stance on vaccines, in particular for children – an area that we are not in right now,” said Lavina Talukdar, head of investor relations.

“However, if you listen to where his stance is on vaccines starting from 2022 and as recently as shortly after the election results, he is a lot more moderate than I would have thought.” She referenced a recent NPR interview with RFK Jr., saying: “What he would like to see is choice on the part of the American people based off of sound scientific data and transparency, which we embrace.”

She further played down concerns by stating the administration and RFK Jr. would like to see “an open dialogue on the benefits of vaccines over the risks associated with them. That's the way the FDA and other agencies under HHS have viewed vaccines.”

RFK Jr. actually stated, without giving detail, that “the science on vaccine safety particularly has huge deficits,” and the administration is “going to make sure those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children’s vaccinations.” Such a concept of “choice” sets a dangerous precedent when it comes to vaccines, as evidence by repeated outbreaks of long since eradicated diseases like measles in developed countries.

Having clocked in $50 billion plus, sales of Moderna’s COVID vaccine Spikevax are now, unsurprisingly, waning. But the firm has a vaccine-heavy pipeline of mRNA products it is developing that target numerous infectious and latent diseases, and even cancer.

Merck & Co., meanwhile, also responded to the incoming administration at Jefferies, reaffirming the company consistently works with governments “irrespective of who's sitting in the seat, and the goal is always straightforward: how do we increase access to our inventions?”

Such an approach worked with both the Biden administration and with the first Trump government and will “continue to do that this time around,” said Joe Romanelli, president, Human Health International for Merck.

“It's been great to see the healthcare community step up and talk about the value of our inventions, particularly vaccines and the value that vaccines have provided to society over the past 50 years,” he told the audience in London.

“There's a lot of stakeholders that want to make sure that we continue to have access and that we continue to make sure we move as quickly as possible to get those inventions to patients. We will continue to work with the current administration until they leave and the new administration when it comes in,” he said. “[We are] confident that science wins the day.”

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Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.