Few corporate cautionary tales are as vivid as the rise and fall of Moderna Inc. During the pandemic, the company’s mRNA vaccine was approved and distributed in record time, saving millions of lives and turning a once-obscure startup into a $200 billion behemoth. Now Moderna is in a tight spot: Hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for mRNA shots were rescinded last year, one of the company’s newest products is in limbo, and its market value has dwindled to about a 10th of its pandemic-era high. What happened? In large part: politics. As the COVID-19 outbreak eased, demand for vaccines inevitably fell. Yet White House officials also changed their tune. Out went the optimism about mRNA and in came wild theories that this miraculous, Nobel Prize-winning technology wasn’t safe. By way of defending this posture, the country’s top drug official recently said Moderna and its peers “can fund their own research.” This sentiment couldn’t be more self-defeating. Combined with the administration’s erratic regulation and policymaking, it threatens to undo the salutary ecosystem t