Literally nowhere in the quote says that. An important step (if he actually was the main discoverer for those) but not "the inventor". He imagined it (in the same way I can imagine a flying car - but not invent it)
And Nature goes on: "But the path to success was not direct. For many years after Malone’s experiments, which themselves had drawn on the work of other researchers, mRNA was seen as too unstable and expensive to be used as a drug or a vaccine. "
Malone is mainly sour grapes https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...
I have almost no respect for media that does attacks on character rather than attacks on ideas.
That information kills children as it may make people disregard the obvious symptoms and fatally delay treatment.
Thanks for providing your opinion on the article, it's a good gauge on how his fans see things.
Also all of those are result of the research directed by Felgner, granted to Vical (his own company), and highly hypothetical at the time. Unsurprisingly, most of those, if not all, have expired without putting a product in the market.
mRNA vaccine development has been incredibly incremental and spanning decades. Anyone claiming they're the inventor because they put a few pieces of the puzzle together is incredibly disingenuous.