Bobby's Dangerous Experiment
Learn what "Gold Science Research" RFK Jr is planning in West Africa in our BONUS episode
We are currently between seasons, but this was not a topic that could wait.
We weren’t planning to hop back on the mics before the launch of Season 2 later this spring. Then Bobby decided to bankroll (with US taxpayer dollars!) a trial through the CDC in Guinea-Bissau that reads less like “gold standard science” and more like “what if we did a randomized controlled trial on newborns in a high-risk setting to bolster our anti-vaccine agenda?”
Somehow this news slipped through our attention, which aligns with the approach that this administration was going for….and it worked! We did not become aware of this upcoming “gold science research plan” until several weeks after HHS quietly announced this.
Multiple outlets have reported that the CDC awarded a $1.6 million, five-year grant to a Danish research group (University of Southern Denmark / Bandim Health Project) to study neurological outcomes related to the timing of the hepatitis B birth dose in Guinea-Bissau, enrolling about 14,000 newborns. This study randomizes infants so that about half receive the Hep B vaccine at birth and about half receive it at ~6 weeks.
That timing matters, especially in Guinea-Bissau where hepatitis B is widely prevalent.
Quick refresher: why the Hep B birth dose exists
Hepatitis B is the kind of virus that can quietly wreck a liver for years before anyone realizes what’s happening. The “silent epidemic” label is a well earned given that people may not even know they have the virus until serious liver disease has set in.
A few key facts:
Hepatitis B virus (HBV), a blood-borne illness, can remain infectious on surfaces for at least 7 days.
Infants infected at birth have about a 90% chance of developing chronic infection, and about 25% of those chronically infected will die prematurely from cirrhosis or liver cancer later in life.
WHO recommends the first dose as soon as possible after birth, preferably within 24 hours. The CDC also used to have this recommendation in place but Bobby’s administration decided to roll back the guidelines on Hep B vaccine series starting at birth in December 2025.
The U.S. universal birth-dose policy (in place since 1991) is widely credited with driving huge declines in pediatric hepatitis B infection.
This is why nurses and pediatric clinicians get twitchy when someone waves around “just delay it” like it’s a casual scheduling preference instead of a prevention strategy.
Here’s what makes this proposed trial feel so ethically volatile:
Guinea-Bissau is hyper-endemic for Hepatitis B. Published data from Bissau (the capital) shows disease prevalence around 18.7% and evidence of HBV exposure in 91.9% of adults. In children, a study reported disease prevalence of ~11.2% at 18 months (pre-introduction of the vaccine). And reporting around this new trial notes that the country has been working toward introducing birth-dose vaccination more broadly (with 2027 mentioned as a target for rollout).
So when you randomize newborns into “birth dose now” vs “birth dose later” in a place where a large share of adults have chronic infection… the “later” group isn’t just “delayed.” They are less protected during a high-risk window. This is too great of a risk, and highly unethical. Ethics isn’t optional in human based research! It’s a set of guardrails written in response to real harms.
Two ethics frameworks matter a lot here:
The Belmont Report (Respect for Persons, Beneficence, Justice)
The Declaration of Helsinki (special protections for vulnerable groups; research should be responsive to community needs and not feasible in less-vulnerable groups)
Newborns are about as “vulnerable population” as it gets. Which means the bar isn’t “can we run a randomized trial?” The bar is:
Do we need this information?
Is there a safer way to get it?
Are we minimizing risk?
Are the people taking the risks also the people who will benefit?
“Gold standard science” isn’t automatically good science
Here’s the part that makes us want to scream from the mountain tops:
Calling something a randomized controlled trial doesn’t magically make it virtuous or good science.
If the research question is shaped around a political goal-or if a study is built to amplify doubt rather than answer a clinically meaningful question, you can absolutely create “rigor” that’s ethically hollow. There is also criticism that the award was single-source/noncompetitive and went to a group known for controversial claims about “non-specific effects” of vaccines.
(And yes, we talk about what “investigator bias” can look like when the people steering the ship already know what they want the horizon to be.)
Want to revisit our episode about “gold standard science"?
Further Reading
Federal Register documentation of this trial
CDC funds controversial vaccine trial
University of Washington take on the unethical vaccine trial
The Guardian’s initial reporting
Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
