Speaking at a Wall Street Journal event during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla denounced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine views as an ideologically driven belief system rather than a scientific debate. While Bourla praised Kennedy’s constructive input on cancer research and drug pricing, he said that any meaningful progress on immunization policy would require a change at the top of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. When pressed on what must change to move vaccine discussions forward, Bourla gave a blunt answer: “the health secretary,” underlining his view that current leadership is the central obstacle to restoring public trust in vaccines.

Bourla criticized funding reductions to U.S. universities under the previous administration, arguing that cuts have eroded America’s pre-eminence in medical science. He noted that institutions such as Harvard, MIT and Stanford once occupied the majority of top positions in global health research rankings, but today Chinese universities hold roughly 80% of those slots. He attributed China’s rapid ascent to strengthened intellectual property protections, regulatory modernization and sustained investment, which have shifted domestic drugmakers from generics production toward original R&D. Describing China’s pharmaceutical sector as in a “meteoric rise,” Bourla urged Western governments to bolster their own competitiveness—rather than attempting to slow scientific advances abroad—in order to secure the next generation of breakthroughs in areas from cancer immunotherapy to pandemic preparedness.