Politics
Guinea-Bissau suspends Trump-backed hepatitis B vaccine study for ethical review
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Guinea-Bissau is suspending a Trump administration-backed hepatitis B vaccine study on newborns in the West African country, pending an ethical review, the health minister said Thursday.
A six-person ethics committee didn’t meet to review the study during the initial confirmation process, Health Minister Quinhi Nantot said during a news conference held by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study is designed as a randomized controlled trial, with some infants given the hepatitis B vaccine at birth and others not. Children will be tracked for death, illness and long-term developmental outcomes. Some experts have suggested that the research plan is unethical, because it will withhold vaccines that work from newborns at significant risk of infection.
Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said that he fully supports the ethical review and highlighted the agency’s “excellent relationship” with the U.S. government.
“We are led by the interests of our people in Africa,” Kaseya said. “We are not led by the small interests of individual people.”
U.S. health officials said Wednesday that the study is still set to proceed.
“The study is proceeding as planned, and we continue to work with our partners to finalize the study’s protocols,” Andrew Nixon, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement.
The Trump administration awarded a $1.6 million, no-bid contract to a Danish university to study hepatitis B vaccinations in newborns in Guinea-Bissau.
The contract was awarded to scientists who have been cited by anti-vaccine activists and whose work has been questioned by leading public health experts.
Research and widespread medical consensus holds that the hepatitis B vaccine protects newborns, so withholding it from some babies has raised ethical alarms.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded the grant to a research team at the University of Southern Denmark that has been lauded by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. One of the team’s leaders is Christine Stabell Benn, a consultant for a Kennedy-appointed committee that recently voted to stop recommending a dose of hepatitis B vaccine for all American newborns.
The study was set to begin early this year in Guinea-Bissau, an impoverished West African nation where hepatitis B infection is common. The researchers are funded for five years to study 14,000 newborns.
Most of the children will be followed for less than two years to look for side effects, but the first 500 enrolled will be followed for five years to look for behavior and brain development problems. As initially designed, there was no placebo involved.
Nixon didn’t release any other details about the current version of the study design.
___
Mike Stobbe contributed to this report from New York.
Jacqueline Smith, the ombudsman of outlet Stars and Stripes who was ousted in April after she criticized the Pentagon’s new restrictions on the newspaper, is suing the Defense Department. In a complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C., Smith alleges that her firing was retaliatory and violated her First Amendment rights as it happened 10 days after…
Read More
Presented by HealthyWomen {beacon…
Read More
Politics
Trump rips former national security adviser after guilty plea: “Hopefully, he will be dealt with harshly!”
President Trump slammed his former national security adviser after he pleaded guilty on Friday to improperly retaining sensitive materials from his time in the White House. “John Bolton, a very dumb, unbalanced, and unskilled former representative of the United States of America, just pleads guilty!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on late Friday…
Read More
- What Tom Emmer said about Somalis was racist. What’s worse is he doesn’t believe it.
- Harvey Weinstein’s California rape conviction upheld, resentencing ordered
- Haitians with Temporary Protected Status deserved better from the Supreme Court
- Friday’s Mini-Report, 6.26.26
- Lawsuit seeks to uncover information about alleged federal database on protesters
- Former Stars and Stripes ombudsman sues Pentagon over firing
- Planned Parenthood launches new midterm investment
- Trump rips former national security adviser after guilty plea: “Hopefully, he will be dealt with harshly!”
- Federal government permits release of Anthropic’s Mythos model to select companies
- Megyn Kelly after Supreme Court TPS decision: ‘Go back to f—ing Haiti’
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship10 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words