Jeffrey S. Barkin, MD, DLFAPA, is a practicing psychiatrist in Portland and the former president of Maine Medical Association. He co-hosts “A Healthy Conversation” on WGAN.

Something’s happening in Washington, and most folks aren’t talking about it. Funding for mRNA vaccine research is being cut. Not a haircut. Not a trim. Cut.

On paper, it might look like just another budget line in a stack of budget lines. But it’s not. It’s a decision that could cost lives — not in some distant, science-fiction future, but in ours.

I know mRNA is a hot button. COVID put it under a microscope, and the country split. Some called it a miracle, others wanted it nowhere near them. I’ve heard the same concerns: It’s too new. It’s untested. What about side effects? Those aren’t foolish questions. New technology has to earn trust.

But mRNA isn’t the villain. The science helped pull us out of the worst pandemic in a century. It’s not magic or alien tech — it’s instructions your body uses to teach your immune system what to fight. Once the lesson’s over, the instructions vanish. They don’t alter your DNA.

And this is far bigger than COVID. Pull the plug now, and we stall work on vaccines for flu, RSV, malaria, HIV — and cancers. More than 250 mRNA cancer vaccine trials are underway worldwide. Early results in melanoma and pancreatic cancer show promising immune responses. If that research dies, it doesn’t just pick up later. Labs close. Scientists — people who’ve spent years mastering this work — move on. In science, momentum is everything.

I think about a patient I met one gray afternoon. She was in her 50s, fighting a rare, aggressive cancer. Surgery had bought her some time, but the tumor was back. She told me about an mRNA trial built for her cancer’s fingerprint. “It could give me a few more years,” she said, “maybe long enough to see my daughter finish college.” That moment made it clear: this isn’t just about research. It’s about whether she’d see her child walk across a graduation stage. Imagine telling her the trial was canceled — not because it failed, but because the money ran out.

It’s not just about individuals. Whole nations are safer when we’re ready. COVID proved a virus can do more damage than any weapon. It shut down schools, emptied grocery shelves and pushed hospitals to the brink.

The mRNA vaccine gave us one of the fastest medical turnarounds in history. Independent estimates suggest it prevented over 14 million deaths worldwide in its first year. Without it, millions more would be gone.

And the next pandemic? It’s not “if,” it’s “when.” The next one might move faster, kill more or come from somewhere we can’t yet imagine. Without mRNA platforms ready to adapt, we’ll be slower and more exposed.

I understand the anger. The pandemic was messy. Mistakes piled up. Trust cracked. Some leaders relied on fear instead of facts. Pharmaceutical companies made billions while families scrambled to pay rent. Those problems are real and need fixing. But dismantling an entire field of science because of past frustrations is like smashing the smoke detector because you didn’t like the last alarm.

And here’s what often gets lost: investment in mRNA wasn’t born in one party’s laboratory. It’s been championed by Republicans and Democrats alike for decades, across multiple administrations, because infectious diseases and cancer don’t check voter registration before they strike.

We’ve been here before. People feared electricity. They thought smallpox and polio vaccines were dangerous or immoral. Almost every breakthrough has had skeptics. Fear is a constant. Progress happens when we move forward anyway — carefully, openly and with our eyes wide open.

The stakes aren’t abstract. They’re the patient who gets more birthdays because of a shot we haven’t invented yet. They’re the parents who want their kids to grow up in a world ready for the next virus.

So what do we tell them if we pull the plug now? That disagreements and mistrust outweighed the urgency of saving lives? That walking away was easier than facing our fears?

We can do better. We can demand safety and transparency without locking this science in the basement. We can fund it like we do highways, water systems and the military — things we all depend on, even if we don’t think about them daily. And we can remember that bipartisan cooperation on public health isn’t the exception in America’s history — it’s the norm when the stakes are this high.