The US is planning to fund a controversial study in Guinea-Bissau into the effects of the hepatitis B vaccination on newborns.
Washington is sending $1.6 million to a Danish research group “with ties to the US anti-vaccine movement,” reported NOTUS. The move comes days after a US panel of vaccine advisers voted to end the longstanding recommendation for vaccinations against the hepatitis B virus immediately after birth.
Under the proposed five-year randomized controlled trial, the Danish research group will give some infants the vaccine at birth, and others the “standard” immunization in Guinea-Bissau, where the hepatitis B vaccine is first provided later, at six weeks of age. The birth dose is seen as crucial and scientists have raised concerns over the planned trial. “It is unethical to do a randomized controlled trial in which you withhold a proven, life-saving vaccine from newborn babies,” wrote a global health professor on BlueSky.
The study’s researchers said they are not withholding any vaccines. “Half of the participants will receive an additional hepatitis B vaccine dose at birth that they would not otherwise have received,” they wrote.