# Biotech Sector Biotech is the sector where the right's internal contradictions are most visible. The [[MAHA]] wing wages war on [[mRNA Vaccines]] and the [[FDA]]'s approval machinery while the tech right pours billions into gene editing, brain implants, embryo selection, and longevity — technologies that depend on exactly the biomedical establishment MAHA is dismantling. This sector MOC maps the vault's coverage of both fronts. ## The MAHA squeeze on pharma Under [[Robert F. Kennedy Jr]] at [[Department of Health and Human Services]], the vaccine enterprise has been systematically narrowed. Kennedy fired all 17 members of the [[CDC]]'s vaccine advisory committee ([[ACIP]]) in June 2025 and installed his own panel — actions a federal court found unlawful in March 2026, blocking his appointees and invalidating their votes. HHS/BARDA terminated 22 mRNA vaccine projects worth roughly $500 million in August 2025. The [[FDA]] under [[Marty Makary]] rewrote COVID vaccine policy: no more routine annual shots for healthy under-65s, and placebo-controlled trials required for approvals in healthy groups. [[Moderna]] and [[Pfizer]] now sell COVID vaccines into a deliberately shrunken market — Moderna's Spikevax is the only vaccine still approved down to 6 months, while Pfizer's is limited to 65+ and high-risk 5–64. The countervailing move: Trump's most-favored-nation drug pricing regime (EO May 2025) has signed 17 manufacturer deals covering ~86% of the branded market, backed by an April 2026 pharma-tariff EO and the TrumpRx.gov direct-to-consumer platform. And in the sector's most MAHA-befuddling turn, Kennedy blessed the November 2025 Medicare/Medicaid [[GLP-1 Drugs]] coverage deal with [[Eli Lilly]] and [[Novo Nordisk]] as a "momentous accomplishment" — the wellness movement's champion embracing the pharmaceutical blockbuster of the age. ## The tech-right biotech buildout While MAHA fights the old biomedical order, the tech right is building a new one: - **[[Neuralink]]** — [[Elon Musk]]'s brain-computer interface; $650M Series E at $9B (June 2025), roughly five patients implanted, trials in three countries. - **[[Colossal Biosciences]]** — Ben Lamm's de-extinction company; the April 2025 dire wolf announcement made it Texas's first "decacorn" (~$10.3B), with five de-extinction programs running. - **[[Retro Biosciences]]** — [[Sam Altman]]'s $180M longevity bet, raised at $1.8B (May 2026); first clinical readout (an Alzheimer's pill) expected late 2026. Sits alongside Altos Labs ($3B launch, Bezos-backed) and [[Bryan Johnson]]'s Blueprint in the longevity movement, and connects to [[Transhumanism]] and [[Pronatalism]] currents — embryo-selection startups like Orchid Health (founded by a Thiel Fellow) and Heliospect's IQ screening are the frontier's ethically rawest edge. - **[[23andMe]]** — cautionary tale: bankruptcy, a reopened auction, and final sale (July 2025) to founder Anne Wojcicki's nonprofit TTAM after [[Regeneron]] declined to raise its $256M bid — with 15 million genomes' worth of privacy fallout. CRISPR and the gene-editing stack underlie most of this; [[Peter Thiel]]-linked capital runs through the psychedelics play AtaiBeckley (a large Compass Pathways stake) and much of the enhancement space. ## Why this sector matters to the vault Three throughlines: (1) MAHA as a deregulation weapon — vaccine infrastructure torn down while drug-pricing populism co-opts pharma; (2) the tech right's post-FDA ambitions — longevity, enhancement, and BCI ventures that treat the regulatory state as an obstacle to transcendence; (3) genetic data as a power resource — 23andMe showed how easily it changes hands. See [[Big Pharma]], [[Healthcare Industry Ecosystem]], and [[Operation Warp Speed]] for the pre-history. ## Coverage gaps Now built: [[ACIP]] — the purge-and-court-reversal now has a home page. Still missing: Altos Labs, Orchid Health, AtaiBeckley/Compass Pathways, Illumina (fresh off its CJEU win voiding the €432M Grail fine), Ginkgo Bioworks, Ben Lamm, Anne Wojcicki, Vinay Prasad (the twice-departed FDA CBER director), and BARDA. Highest remaining value: Ben Lamm and Altos Labs. ## See Also - [[Moderna]] · [[Pfizer]] · [[Neuralink]] · [[Colossal Biosciences]] · [[Retro Biosciences]] · [[23andMe]] · [[Regeneron]] - [[Robert F. Kennedy Jr]] · [[MAHA]] · [[FDA]] · [[Marty Makary]] · [[ACIP]] · [[Department of Health and Human Services]] - [[mRNA Vaccines]] · [[GLP-1 Drugs]] · CRISPR · [[Big Pharma]] - [[Healthcare Industry Ecosystem]] — the delivery-side industry map - [[Chipmakers Sector]] — sibling sector MOC