Outrage has erupted among health experts over news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still eager to fund a widely condemned vaccine trial that would expose newborns in Guinea-Bissau to hepatitis B, putting them at high risk of a lifelong infection, which can lead to liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, and premature death.<\/p>\n
The trial was suspended in January<\/a> after its unethical design came to light and drew international outcry. Although the trial is still halted, staff of the CDC director\u2019s office told the agency\u2019s budget office in late September to set aside $1.6 million to fund the trial, according to a report by Rolling Stone<\/a>. The money was to be pulled from funding for the CDC\u2019s global health security programs, which might otherwise go toward efforts like combating the Ebola outbreak currently raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.<\/p>\n The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, did not respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.<\/p>\n If the trial moves forward, it would be funded by the US but run by Danish researchers, who have separately been accused of misconduct. In December, the CDC announced the award of an unsolicited grant for $1.6 million to a research group at the University of Southern Denmark, led by married couple Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby. The pair have produced numerous studies that have been promoted by anti-vaccine advocates, drawing concern and criticism<\/a> from researchers. Stabell Benn and Aaby are currently under investigation by Danish authorities over allegations of \u201cfalsification\u201d and \u201cscientific misconduct\u201d<\/a> related to previous vaccine research.<\/p>\n In January, amid criticism of the trial, officials in Guinea-Bissau said they had suspended the research, saying ethical and technical reviews of the trial\u2019s design were ongoing. \u201cThere has been no sufficient coordination in order to take a final decision regarding the study,\u201d Quinhin Nantote, the minister of public health for Guinea-Bissau, said at the time. \u201cFaced with this situation, we decided to suspend it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Outrage has erupted among health experts over news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-876842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}