There's good news and (Trumpy) bad news on a pancreatic cancer vaccine

Pancreatic cancer is a stone-cold killer. Around 67,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with it each year, and more than 51,000 die. It is the tenth most common cancer diagnosis for men and the eighth most common for women – and the third most common cancer death.

This is why it's such amazing news – limited, early, still-in-need-of-testing news – that a small phase 1 clinical trial of an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer is showing very promising results. We have to hedge this with all kinds of qualifications: So far it only applies to people in the small minority of pancreatic cancer patients whose cancer is operable. Only half of the 16 people in the study responded to the vaccine. But given the very poor survival rates for this cancer, any advance is welcome.

There are also promising signs, albeit even earlier and in need of even more testing ones, for mRNA vaccines and glioblastoma, another cancer with very low survival rates.

And under Donald Trump, National Institutes of Health officials are telling scientists not to even mention mRNA vaccines in their grant applications. One of the most promising developments in cancer research, and this administration is moving to squash it. However a funding freeze on mRNA research would or would not affect this specific pancreatic cancer treatment, such a freeze could prevent the next mRNA vaccine and the one after that from ever being discovered.

This research isn't alone – vaccine research and cancer research more generally are under attack by Trump; his anti-vaxxer, animal-carcass-transporting Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and Elon Musk's crack team of post-adolescent racists racing to delete the government and vacuum up our private data. But as we constantly try to balance the need to control the onslaught of information so we don't get overwhelmed and give up and the need to know at least some of what's going on, this is a good case of something small and easily digestible to point to should you be having a conversation with anyone who might need a careful introduction to what's going on: Team Trump is moving against mRNA vaccine-related research at the exact same moment scientists have good news on a possible mRNA cancer vaccine.