Police in Guinea-Bissau raid offices tied to disputed hepatitis B vaccine trial for newborns

Police in Guinea-Bissau raided offices of Danish researchers and seized hepatitis B vaccine doses intended for a newborn trial that international health experts called unethical. The trial was halted in January after criticism, but the article says the CDC under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had awarded an unsolicited $1.6M grant and that Rolling Stone reported another $1.6M was set aside in late September. The researchers, Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn, are also under investigation by Danish authorities for alleged scientific misconduct.

For clinical-trial sponsors and funders, the raid shows that grant support does not remove execution risk when a study design faces ethical objections and local intervention. The trade-off is between testing the researchers’ vaccine-harm claims and potentially exposing newborns to hepatitis B; the article leaves unclear whether CDC funding will proceed or how the Danish misconduct probe will affect approvals.