Judicial police in Guinea-Bissau raided the offices of the Bandim Health Project on Monday, seizing doses of hepatitis B vaccines as part of an investigation into a controversial clinical trial. The Bandim organization, founded by Danish anthropologist Peter Aaby in 1978 and now co-led by his wife Christine Stabell Benn, has been running research operations in the country for nearly five decades. The trial in question, backed by $1.6 million from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and matched by the Pershing Square Foundation and Bluebell Foundation for a total of $3.2 million, would deny hepatitis B vaccines to 7,000 newborns in the first six weeks of life. The arithmetic here is grim. Guinea-Bissau has a roughly 20% adult hepatitis B prevalence rate. The virus kills 15% to 25% of those with chronic infections through cancer and liver failure. Newborns are the most vulnerable population, and vaccination within 24 hours of birth is safe and highly effective. The World Health Organization has called the study "unethical," stating it "exposes newborns to serious and potentially irreversible harm." The study was redesigned over the summer, but the core problem — a control arm that withholds a life-saving vaccine from infants — remains. The political architecture surrounding this trial is where the story sharpens. RFK Jr, now US Health and Human Services secretary, has repeatedly praised Aaby and Stabell Benn, calling them "the deities of vaccine research" at a recent anti-vaccine conference. He cited Aaby's DTP research on Joe Rogan's podcast in 2023 and used it as justification when he halted US funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The same researchers later re-ran their own DTP study and found "completely different results" — a detail Kennedy does not highlight. Stabell Benn's institutional reach extends further. She served on 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 dose recommendation — a decision later stayed by a federal judge. She also hosted a podcast with Tracy Beth Høeg, a former top FDA official who advocated ending "unnecessary" vaccines. The through-line is clear: research conducted in a fragile West African nation is being instrumentalized to reshape US vaccine policy. Guinea-Bissau's health minister, Quinhin Nantote, disputed reports that the trial would proceed, telling the Guardian "this is not even remotely true." The country experienced a military coup less than a year ago. It lacks the institutional stability, regulatory infrastructure, and independent oversight capacity that clinical trial ethics demands. According to the non-profit Stand Up for Science, Bandim has done little to improve the country's health and research capacities in five decades of operation, despite being deeply embedded in the nation. Citizens distrust the organization, yet it is often the only option for medical care. The extraction pattern is textbook. Western institutions provide $3.2 million in funding. Western researchers design a trial that would be illegal in their home countries. The trial is conducted on African newborns in a politically unstable nation with minimal oversight capacity. The data generated is then used to influence vaccine policy in the United States and Europe. The costs — potential hepatitis B infections, chronic liver disease, death — are borne entirely by Guinean families who have no meaningful ability to refuse. The benefits — publications, policy influence, ideological validation — accrue to a small network of researchers and their political allies. The Bandim Health Project has posted a letter of ethical approval from Guinea-Bissau's national ethics committee dated July 14 and a Danish research ethics committee also approved the study. Neither Aaby, Stabell Benn, nor lead researcher Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer responded to Guardian inquiries. Stand Up for Science is now fundraising to help roll out the birth dose to all newborns in the country — the exact intervention the trial was designed to withhold.
