Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it was terminating $500 million in mRNA vaccine research and shifting its focus to other approaches, including a previously announced “whole-virus” vaccine platform dubbed “Generation Gold Standard.”

“Generation Gold Standard is a paradigm shift,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said in a news release in May touting the next research initiative . “It extends vaccine protection beyond strain-specific limits and prepares for flu viral threats — not just today’s, but tomorrow’s as well — using traditional vaccine technology brought into the 21st century.”

Vaccine and infectious disease experts, however, say the approach is misguided.

“It’s somewhat of a step backward,” said Dr. James Campbell,

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