Police in Guinea-Bissau raided the offices of a Danish research group on Monday and seized doses of hepatitis B vaccine meant for a trial in newborns.
The group is the Bandim Health Project, led by married couple Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn. In December, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it had given them an unsolicited $1.6 million grant for the trial. "Unsolicited" means the researchers pitched the work themselves rather than answering a CDC funding call. International health experts have called the trial unethical. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has praised the researchers repeatedly and has tried to fund the work with US taxpayer money.
The objection centers on design. The trial could expose thousands of newborns in Guinea-Bissau to hepatitis B, which can become a lifelong infection and lead to liver cirrhosis, cancer, and premature death. Aaby and Stabell Benn argue that vaccines cause harms that go overlooked. Danish authorities are currently investigating them over alleged scientific misconduct.
Plans for the trial were halted in January after widespread condemnation. Rolling Stone then reported earlier this month that the CDC had set aside another $1.6 million in late September and intended to move ahead. That claim renewed the outrage.
The pieces form an unusual picture: a US health agency funding a study that outside experts consider unethical, run by researchers who are under investigation in their home country, with the health secretary on record as an admirer. A police raid that takes the vaccine supply is a blunt intervention in a project that had already stalled once.
The reason for the raid has not been made public.