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Moderna (MRNA-3.20%) CEO Stéphane Bancel said that he plans to address any partisan hurdles with the incoming Trump administration’s vaccine and pandemic preparedness policies with “facts and data.”
“As you can imagine, we operate around the world. We operate with any governments that the people elect in office,” Bancel said in response to a question about working with the Trump administration during the Forbes Healthcare Summit in New York City on Wednesday morning. “And so it’s really using facts and data.”
Bancel’s comments follow President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is his choice for U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“I believe most people want to do the right thing. We, like people in government, want to protect Americans. That’s why we’re doing business every day,” Bancel said. “And so I think it’s just getting the facts, getting the right experts to advise those people to understand the consequences of making a decision.”
Bancel’s comments echo remarks made by the FDA’s current head of vaccine safety, Peter Marks, who said that Trump’s embrace of vaccine skeptics could be an opportunity for the science community to teach the public about the value of these life-saving drugs. However, Marks added that if these efforts fail, they could lead to “natural consequences.”
Bancel noted that he had already worked with the previous Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when its Operation Warp Speed helped support the development of Moderna’s COVID vaccine.
His comments also come amid growing global concerns over infectious diseases like bird flu and Mpox, which pose a growing risk of sparking a new pandemic.
Moderna announced this summer that it had received money from the U.S. government to fund a late-stage trial of its mRNA H5N1 bird flu vaccine for humans, as the virus continues to spread rapidly among the nation’s poultry and cattle and has already infected 57 humans in the United States.