It’s Thursday, August 21. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: The new definition of death one medical ethicist says could open the door to organ harvesting. The Israeli dance professor suing Berkeley for discrimination. Why the Broadway smash hit ‘Hamilton’ couldn’t get made in 2025.

But first: The miracle molecule caught in RFK Jr.’s crosshairs.

Our deliverance arrived during the bleakest days of the Covid-19 pandemic: a vaccine developed with a breakthrough technology that would crush the virus and allow normal life to resume. And that wasn’t all. The vaccine delivery system, known as mRNA, had the potential, we were told, to bring us one miracle cure after another.

Infectious diseases would be quickly vanquished. Effective, individualized cancer treatments would be standard fare. All due to the work of scientists—two of whom won the Nobel Prize—who figured out how to harness a molecule essential for life.

Now mRNA is back in the news, and the news is not so good. Recently, Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the federal government was canceling nearly $500 million in government-funded mRNA research projects. Kennedy has long been an mRNA foe, calling the Covid shot “the deadliest vaccine ever made” back in 2001.

Bethany McLean, who with our own Joe Nocera wrote the book The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind, investigates the little molecule that was supposed to change everything. McLean talked to scientists, investors, and policymakers—and sorted through the hype, politics, and demonization to tell us where mRNA technology actually stands.

One conclusion she draws that most of us likely can agree with is that we now live in a world in which “politics and science corrupt each other.”

—Emily Yoffe

The Doctors Trying to Redefine Death

L.S. Dugdale

Three doctors from New York want to expand the definition of death to include what they call “irreversibly comatose patients on life support.” This broader definition, they argue, will save lives by making more organs available to people who desperately need them. But some of these “brain dead” patients have delivered live babies and gone through puberty; one Kentucky man even woke up on the day his organs were due to be harvested. “If we expand the definition of death to include patients who are alive, we might end up killing people who could regain consciousness,” argues medical ethicist L.S. Dugdale. She lays out the case against redefining death—and the grave consequences of the proposal. Read full story

Could ‘Hamilton’ Be Made Today?

Joe Nocera

Ten years after it astounded the theater world with its hip-hop music and multicultural cast, “Hamilton” remains a phenomenon. But could it be made today? Some on the left complain that the Broadway smash hit downplays slavery, while others on the right see it as little more than a “singing and dancing exercise in DEI.” In his latest piece, Joe Nocera tackles “Hamilton” and its politics head-on. Read full story

Why This Israeli Dance Professor Is Suing Berkeley

Jillian Lederman

In the spring of 2022, Yael Nativ taught an Israeli contemporary dance class as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. It went so well, she said, that she was encouraged to come back in the future. Then came October 7, 2023.<br /><br />“My dept cannot host you for a class next fall,” Nativ was told a month later in a WhatsApp message from a Berkeley dance faculty member. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position.” Today, Nativ is suing Berkeley for discrimination. Jillian Lederman has the scoop. Read full story

The Real Threat to Democrats Isn’t Redistricting

Ruy Teixeira

As redistricting spats erupt from Texas to California, our columnist Ruy Teixeira says Democrats are missing the point. “Truly competitive swing districts are going extinct,” writes Teixeira. Read his latest column to find out why—and how unrestrained progressivism “poses a far graver danger to Democrats than aggressive Republican gerrymandering in red states.” Read full story

The Chaotic Glory of Growing Up Larissa Phillips