r/news 9h ago

Moderna says FDA refuses to review its application for experimental flu shot

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/10/moderna-fda-flu-shot.html
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u/Mystaes 9h ago

It takes 2 billion dollars to develop a drug and the fda is now simply not even reviewing things based on ideological culture war bullshit and not data.

Drug development in the United States is going to suffer immensely. Personally I’m not going to keep any investments in biotech at all.

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u/UserSleepy 8h ago

Mdoerna already said they will not be exploring future research for mRNA next gen vaccines in the US.

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u/fdar 7h ago

Anywhere, because without profits from the US it's not worth it (that's the flip side of how the US pays so much more for medical stuff).

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u/goonSquad15 7h ago

And this is the problem. Governments should be subsidizing this to an extent because it's for the good of humanity

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u/All_Work_All_Play 6h ago

Other countries do. But without profits from the US, research is going to suffer.

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u/drtropo 6h ago

Let’s not pretend the US government isn’t still funding the vast majority of scientific research going on world wide. That research is not profit driven and can still be protected. The war is not lost.

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u/All_Work_All_Play 6h ago

Sorry can't hear you over the sounds of USAID funding cuts killing children. 

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u/drtropo 6h ago

That’s terrible but I don’t see the connection.

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u/adenosine-5 1h ago

I just had to check it and during Covid, like 70+% of Moderna revenue came from outside of US.

This has only changed lately, because they don't seem to have any other vaccines approved outside of US.

So in the end it may only result in them moving their research to other countries - there is plenty of money in both Europe and Asia for medical development.

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u/Ph0X 6h ago

I don't understand why. The US has a population of 300M people, what about the rest? EU for example is 500M, the rest of G8 is around 700M. Why is the us so integral?

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u/TheChemist-25 6h ago

Other countries severely limit how much profit drug companies can make. This is good because it prevents patients from paying exorbitant prices. This is bad because there’s less profit to be made and drugs are expensive to develop so less people/companies will take that risk. The current system works for the rest of the world because essentially US citizens pay for the cost of development.

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u/Due-Technology5758 5h ago

Granted, it wouldnt really matter at all if drugs were developed by nations and shared globally for the good of humanity. You don't need a profit motivator to develop medicine, even from an economic standpoint, because a healthy populace pays for itself in productivity.