The fact that this was approved by a university ethics board is something I wish I could slam in the face of every asshole here on mastodon who tried to drive me off the platform because I posted an invitation to participate in an anonymized survey once
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/oct/09/vaccine-trial-guinea-bissau-rfk-jr
This is despicable and I'm burning University of Southern Denmark into my memory on this forever.
Uproar HAS been effective at drawing scrutiny to this before. People do not want this and are not ok with this
See old article here, they've restarted this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/15/hepatitis-b-vaccines-study-africa-cancel
@grimalkina So many crimes against humanity being committed by this admin.
@CStamp it's horrific. They are monsters but it's also very devastating to me how many institutions won't stand up to it
Oct 11, 2026, 5:28 PM@grimalkina @CStamp I'm genuinely confused. University ethics boards exist explicitly to stop this kind of research. Like this is a textbook example of problematic research. This isn't a borderline case. This is literally the study design they put on the research design ethics exam to see if you paid attention. I can't understand the possible rationale they could have had to allow this?
Oct 11, 2026, 5:17 PM@grimalkina sounds like the tuskeegee syphilis study all over again
@Ribby RFK Jr is a monster
@grimalkina four members of the ethics committee resigned in protest. Wow.
@Laust what on earth is happening at this institution that they would move forward like this
@grimalkina I don't know, but it kind of smells like racism:
"Yet “I don’t see why you couldn’t do it in Denmark,” Støvring said of the trial. In fact, several conditions make it a better location. The hepatitis B vaccine is not usually given to newborns in Denmark unless the mother is positive for the virus, for which all pregnant people are tested in Denmark."
@grimalkina @Laust It gets weirder. From the article, "The Danish research ethics committee at the University of Southern Denmark had never considered medical studies before, but it changed the rules in order to vote on this one."
Tells me it's really really important to somebody high up in the university that this specific "study" happens.
The whole thing smells of corruption.
@grimalkina Controversial?
I think the headline should read "abhorrent".
Playing with the lives and health of the poor.
@grimalkina My word, that is *evil*.
@grimalkina
Fucking monsters.
Oct 11, 2026, 11:40 PM@grimalkina The article doesn't have much to say about the Guinea-Bissau side of this, except “officials in Guinea-Bissau have also greenlit the project”. Do you understand who did this and why? I feel like a big piece of the story is missing.
@mjd I really do not know, but totally agree
@mjd I mean RFK jr is a very prominent anti vaxxer and presumably people in power in this whole thing are too
Oct 12, 2026, 1:27 PM@grimalkina I can't help but notice that they didn't quote any of the people on the committee who voted in favor of doing the study, or the researchers who planned it. Often news articles have an indication that some people declined to comment, or could not be reached, but this one doesn't. Does that mean that the Guardian didn't try?
And I notice there's no actual criticism of the vaccine science itself. They quote the Danish ethics guy, and they quote Paul Offit from CHOP, who does not address the study, he's only there to criticize RFK. The article leans hard on RFK's approval of the study, but that's a very, very weak argument against it. The article is just using him to taint the study by association. "RFK likes it so it must be bad" is not good reasoning.
I'm not a vaccine scientist at all, I know next to nothing about vaccines. But I can imagine a world in which there was some evidence of real health benefits from delaying a particular vaccine by six weeks. I don't know if that's the world we are in, but if it were then it wouldn't be unethical to conduct the study, since there would be a legitimate reason to think that the experimental group of infants would be getting a better outcome than the control group.
The article does point out that in Denmark, infants don't normally receive a Hep-B vaccine at all, unless the mother tests positive for it. So different policies make sense in different places. Maybe there's something about the epidemiology of Hep-B that makes this a plausible change for Guinea-Bissau. The author of the article doesn't appear to have tried to find out.
Really the article is quite terrible. Something's going on here, but I have no idea what.
@mjd @grimalkina the real argument against the study is that, in the modern era of medical research we do not do studies where a) the medication is known to work; and b) withholding the medication will cause harm. The rationale for that is heavily embedded in human subjects research approvals across the entire landscape of institutions. Usually the rationale is referenced back to past blatantly unethical practices (e.g.-https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/index.html)
Oct 12, 2026, 1:41 PM@wronglang @grimalkina But they aren't withholding it. They're only administering it on a different schedule.
@mjd @wronglang that directly changes risks for infants.
@grimalkina @mjd I mean otherwise they wouldn't have a study, but also Guinea-Bissau has a monstrous prevalence rate (old estimate I found was 18%) so it's clearly bumping risk. It also makes the infants more likely to become carriers.
@mjd @grimalkina so the guardian article just be low quality journalism, and there are studies that are legitimately borderline (e.g.-there was a drug, administered by paramedics on the way to the hospital, that could save people with massive bleeding but the price tag could blow away the hospital budget for a handful of doses) but this study is in the boring + unethical category. Risks lives for no new information.
@mjd please look up what public health researchers are saying about this study design
@mjd this is a very well known topic and very well studied. you could spend the time you spent writing that comment looking into it.
@grimalkina @mjd
FYI, the article was written by a freelancer, Melody Schreiber. Contact info below — it's been my experience that good journalists respond when you reach out:
https://melodyschreiber.com/about/