Police in Guinea-Bissau raided the offices of Danish researchers on Monday, seizing doses of hepatitis B vaccine intended for a vaccine trial for newborns. International health experts have called the trial “unethical,” but anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has attempted to fund it with US taxpayer dollars.
Under Kennedy, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in December that it had awarded the Danish researchers—led by married couple Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn of Bandim Health Project—an unsolicited $1.6 million grant to run the trial. Aaby and Stabell Benn are controversial vaccine researchers who claim vaccines cause overlooked harms. They have been repeatedly praised by Kennedy but are currently under investigation by Danish authorities for alleged scientific misconduct.
Plans for the trial were halted in January as widespread condemnation erupted over the trial’s design, which would potentially expose thousands of newborns in the country to hepatitis B, risking a lifelong infection that can lead to liver cirrhosis, cancer, and premature death. Outrage flared again after a Rolling Stone story earlier this month claimed the CDC set aside another $1.6 million in funding in late September and planned to move forward with the trial.
For now, the trial is not moving forward; Guinea-Bissau officials have not signed off on the trial. In a press conference last week, the country’s health minister, Quinhin Nantote, confirmed that the government had not yet authorized it.
“Any scientific research initiative involving human beings, particularly children, must strictly comply with applicable national legislation, international ethical principles, competent evaluation and approval mechanisms,” Nantote said, according to Reuters.
In response to media reports that the trial will move forward, Nantote told the Guardian, “This is not even remotely true.”
The vaccinesweusedkilled the babies.“Pro Life”
Hack “scientists” keep trying to prove their failed hypotheses to protect their flimsy egos, rather than admit what the evidence shows, learn and move forward. Don’t double down on vulnerable populations to try to get away with what they want to do. The same bullying and deceitful patterns among scumbags.
Just to clarify why the anti-vax idiot was for this trial, it was going to withhold the known effective and safe vaccine from the control group for six weeks to see what happens, without even checking if any mothers tested positive prenatally. Due to limited resources, Guinea-Bissau has been slow to enforce their new guidance to align with other countries and administer the vaccine to all newborns.
It was basically leveraging the fact that the test subjects lived in a poor country to do something they’d never be allowed to do in a richer country, even MAHA’s America.
Fucking RFK is now Josef Mengele.
Tuskegee all over again.
Yup. The scale and scope of the damage would hopefully have been less, but it strikes me as an incredibly apt analogy.
jfc, they are beyond comic book evil now.
Jesus that’s… something.
There are not a lot of news items lately that give me pause. This one made me do the slow blink.
Just straight lunacy.
Add it to the giant list of WTFs.
