A nurse prepares children for a polia vaccine shot as part of a city-wide testing of the vaccine on elementary school students. Bettmann Archive

As students across the country shoulder backpacks and file into classrooms, another school year is in full swing under the quiet protection of science. Indeed, all of us remain the beneficiaries of decades of evidence-based health research, including vaccine development, which has extended human health and longevity beyond our ancestors' wildest dreams. And it is not luck, it is good science.

Among our greatest public health discoveries in vaccine research was the development of the mRNA vaccine. These “messenger” vaccines were key to saving millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and in staving off even more mortality because their des

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