Controversial vaccine researchers who were praised by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), had their offices in Guinea-Bissau raided by judicial police, who seized doses of hepatitis B vaccines, officials said on Facebook.
The researchers have been at the center of an ongoing dispute over research on African newborns, funded by $1.6 million from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and matched by the Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation for a total of $3.2 million.
The police search took place on Monday, involving “investigative procedures aimed at clarifying the circumstances related to said batch of vaccines,” according to the social media post, translated from Portuguese. The announcement noted that the vaccine seizure did not reveal “irregularities in the quality, safety or effectiveness of the vaccines.”
The Bandim Health Project recently released a letter of approval for the trial from the Guinea-Bissau National Ethics Committee of the Ministry of Public Health, dated July 14 and signed by the committee’s chair, Mouhammed Djicó Ould Ahmed. A Danish research ethics committee, which had to change its rules to consider a clinical trial, also approved the study earlier this month.
Quinhin Nantote, health minister in Guinea-Bissau’s transitional government, disputed reports that the trial would move forward.
“It’s not even remotely true,” Nantote told the Guardian in Portuguese on Thursday.
The study was revamped over the summer, but it would still deny the hepatitis B vaccine to 7,000 newborns in the first six weeks of life, in a country where about one in five adults carry the virus. Hepatitis B kills 15-25% of people with chronic infections, causing cancer and liver failure, and newborns are particularly vulnerable – but vaccination within 24 hours of birth is safe and very effective in preventing the disease.
Any study that would deny participants the vaccine was “unethical and exposes newborns to serious and potentially irreversible harm,” said Tarik Jašarević, spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), calling hepatitis B vaccination at birth an “essential public health intervention.”
Through its country office in Guinea-Bissau, WHO and its partners have advised the Ministry of Health on the planned introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine and the potential impact of this study, Jašarević added.
The Bandim Health Project was founded by anthropologist Peter Aaby in 1978 and is now co-directed by his wife, Christine Stabell Benn, an epidemiologist.
Kennedy has repeatedly praised their work, calling them “deities of vaccine research” at a recent anti-vaccine conference. He repeatedly referenced the results of a study they conducted on diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP), which the same researchers then ran again and found completely different results. Despite this, Kennedy called Aaby a “very famous” researcher on Joe Rogan’s 2023 podcast and cited his research when cutting off US funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
Stabell Benn was a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) hepatitis B working group, helping present evidence to the U.S. committee that voted to end the universal birth recommendation before such vaccine decisions were put on hold by a federal judge. Stabell Benn also hosted a podcast with Tracy Beth Høeg, a former senior official at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who has said she wants to end “unnecessary” vaccines.
Aaby, Stabell Benn and Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, the project’s lead researcher, did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the trial and the police search.
The Bandim organization is deeply rooted in Guinea-Bissau, but has done little to improve the country’s health and research capabilities over five decades of activity, according to a report by the nonprofit Stand Up for Science (SUFS). The organization is currently raising funds to help distribute birth vaccines to all newborns nationwide.
“Our investigator found significant distrust of Bandim among citizens of Guinea-Bissau,” said Colette Delawalla, an American health researcher and founder of SUFS. “However, due to the lack of public health infrastructure, Bandim is often the only option in situations where people are desperate to access any medical care. »
The police raid underscores the fact that Guinea-Bissau is a “fragile” nation that experienced a military coup less than a year ago, Delawalla said. The country lacks the stability needed for clinical trials, she added.
“Guinea-Bissau finds itself in the difficult situation of trying to protect its youth, its future, from exploitation by two powerful Western nations and it is using every lever at its disposal to do so,” Delawalla said.
Gn Health
