{"id":889282,"date":"2026-10-20T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889282\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T21:32:08","slug":"rfk-jrs-deities-of-vaccine-research-raided-by-police-in-guinea-bissau-guinea-bissau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889282\/","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr\u2019s \u2018deities of vaccine research\u2019 raided by police in Guinea-Bissau | Guinea-Bissau"},"content":{"rendered":"

Controversial vaccine researchers who have been praised by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, had their offices in Guinea-Bissau raided by judicial police, who seized doses of hepatitis B vaccines, officials said<\/a> on Facebook.<\/p>\n

The researchers have been at the heart of an ongoing dispute over research on African newborns, supported by $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and matched by the Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation for a total of $3.2m.<\/p>\n

The police search took place on Monday, involving \u201cinvestigative procedures aimed at clarifying the circumstances related to the said batch of vaccines\u201d, according to the social media post, which was translated from Portuguese. The announcement noted that seizing the immunizations did not point to \u201cirregularities in the quality, safety, or effectiveness of the vaccines\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Bandim Health Project recently posted a letter<\/a> of approval for the trial from Guinea-Bissau\u2019s national ethics committee at the ministry of public health, dated 14 July and signed by the committee\u2019s president, Mouhammed Djic\u00f3 Ould Ahmed. A Danish research ethics committee, which had to change its rules to consider a clinical trial, also approved<\/a> the study earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Quinhin Nantote, the health minister of Guinea-Bissau\u2019s transitional government, disputed<\/a> reports that the trial would move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not even remotely true,\u201d Nantote told the Guardian in Portuguese on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The study was redesigned over the summer, but it would still deny hepatitis B vaccines to 7,000 newborns in the first six weeks of life, in a country where about one in five adults have the virus. Hepatitis B kills 15% to 25% of people with chronic infections, causing cancer and liver failure, and newborns are particularly vulnerable \u2013 but vaccination within 24 hours of birth is safe and highly effective at preventing illness.<\/p>\n

Any study that would deny the vaccine to participants was \u201cunethical and exposes newborns to serious and potentially irreversible harm\u201d, said Tarik Ja\u0161arevi\u0107, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), calling hepatitis B vaccination at birth an \u201cessential public health intervention\u201d.<\/p>\n

Through its country office in Guinea-Bissau<\/a>, the WHO and its partners have been advising the ministry of health on the planned introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine and the potential impact of this study, Ja\u0161arevi\u0107 added.<\/p>\n

The Bandim Health Project was founded by anthropologist Peter Aaby in 1978, and it is now co-led by his wife, Christine Stabell Benn, an epidemiologist.<\/p>\n

Kennedy has repeatedly praised their work, calling<\/a> them \u201cthe deities of vaccine research\u201d at a recent anti-vaccine conference. He has several times referenced<\/a> the results of a study they conducted on the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP), which the same researchers later conducted again and found completely different results. Even so, Kennedy called Aaby a \u201cvery famous\u201d researcher on Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast<\/a> in 2023 and cited his research when he halted US funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.<\/p>\n

Stabell Benn was a member<\/a> of the hepatitis B working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), helping present evidence to the US committee that voted to end the universal birth recommendation before such decisions on vaccines were stayed by a federal judge. Stabell Benn also hosted a podcast with Tracy Beth H\u00f8eg, a former top official with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who said<\/a> she wanted to end \u201cunnecessary\u201d vaccines.<\/p>\n

Aaby, Stabell Benn and Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, the lead researcher on the project, did not respond to the Guardian\u2019s questions about the trial and the police search.<\/p>\n

The Bandim organization is deeply enmeshed in Guinea-Bissau but has done little to improve the country\u2019s health and research capacities in five decades of operation, according to a report<\/a> from the non-profit Stand Up for Science (SUFS). The organization is now fundraising<\/a> to help roll out the vaccines at birth to all newborns in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur investigator encountered significant distrust of Bandim by the citizenry of Guinea-Bissau,\u201d said Colette Delawalla, an American health researcher and founder of SUFS. \u201cHowever, because of the lack of public health infrastructure, Bandim is often the only option in situations where people are desperate to access medical care of any kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The police raid underlines the fact that Guinea-Bissau is a \u201cfragile\u201d nation that experienced a military coup less than a year ago, Delawalla said. The country lacks the stability needed for clinical trials, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuinea-Bissau is in the difficult situation of trying to protect their youth, their future, from exploitation by two powerful western nations and they are using what leverage they have to do so,\u201d Delawalla said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Controversial vaccine researchers who have been praised by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Department of Health and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-889282","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\/889282","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=889282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}