--- title: "Trump Administration Says It’s Not Canceling Tuskegee-Style Medical Study That Will Withhold Hepatitis Vaccine From Newborns" description: "A highly controversial study funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services on infants in West Africa has been halted." date: "2026-01-16" modified: "2026-01-16" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/health-medicine/trump-rfk-africa-vaccines" categories: - "Health & Medicine" - "Studies" --- # Trump Administration Says It’s Not Canceling Tuskegee-Style Medical Study That Will Withhold Hepatitis Vaccine From Newborns ![A highly controversial study funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services on infants in West Africa has been halted.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images* What do you get when you put a vaccine conspiracy theorist in charge of the agency responsible for funding medical research throughout the globe? A recipe for Tuskegee 2.0, it seems. Some bombshell reporting over the last month has revealed a monstrous plan by Robert F Kennedy Jr.'s Department of Health and Human Services to fund a $1.6 million study on hepatitis B vaccines among 14,000 newborns in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau. As protocol documents [obtained by *Inside Medicine*]() show, the study would have been a "randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of neonatal Hepatitis B vaccination on early-life mortality, morbidity, and long-term developmental outcomes." In other words, the study aims to withheld Hep B vaccinations from 7,000 infants in one of the poorest countries on earth — so that western researchers could compare their long-term health to babies that got the vaccine. This is where things get hazy. This week, [the *Guardian* reported]() that the trial had been halted by officials in Guinea-Bissau, after [weeks of]() [outrage]() from health officials and researchers. Instead, the Africa CDC told the *Guardian* the study would be reworked to address the ethics concerns that have become a rallying cry in the medical research community. "The study has been cancelled," Africa CDC official Yap Boum said on Thursday, the newspaper reported. But a spokesperson for the HHS pushed back strongly, saying the study was forging ahead. "To be clear, the trial will proceed as planned," the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs told us in a statement. "Africa CDC, an organization with no affiliation to the US CDC, shared weeks-old communications unrelated to the trial as part of a public-relations campaign aimed to shape public perception rather than engaging with the scientific facts," he said. "This research represents the world’s first, and potentially only, opportunity to rigorously evaluate the overall health effects of HBV0." We've reached out to the HHS and the Africa CDC to try to figure out what's going on, since the two groups seem to be disagreeing on details as basic as whether the study is still happening. Regardless, experts are appalled at the implications of the study. "This is another Tuskegee," one anonymous CDC official told *Inside Medicine*. They were refering to the [Tuskegee syphilis study](), an infamous experiment that ran from 1932 until 1972 in which 600 poor Black men with syphilis were studied to understand the long-term effects of the disease in exchange for "free medical care" from the US government. The catch? Though penicillin was discovered to be an [effective treatment for syphilis]() mid-way through the study in 1943, study subjects were never offered the antibiotic, or even told they had syphilis in the first place — leaving them to suffer the full effects of the debilitating infection, even though it was entirely treatable. It remains one of the most barbaric biomedical research studies in US history, and its cruelty is [still felt to this day](). Continuing, the CDC official told *Inside Medicine* that "we are allowing children, infants, to be exposed to Hepatitis B when we could prevent it, and then follow them for five years to see what happens. That's not long enough to see the long-term benefits, but might be long enough to find some non-specific effects." "Non-specific effects" is a key buzzword swirling around Kennedy's orbit of [vaccine skeptics]() and [holistic wellness influencers](), which essentially means "unintended harms." The HHS's chosen researchers for the Guinea-Bissau study were Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn, a controversial Danish couple who have spent years chasing after [non-specific effects]() in vaccines. Thankfully, "the good guys won," as Paul Offit, an infectious disease physician told the *Guardian*. "This administration did not see people in Africa as valuable... We were able to stand up for them. We were able to convince people about the fact that this was unethical." *Updated to reflect that the HHS is denying the study is canceled.* **More on bioethics:** *[Genetics Startup Advertises App-Based Eugenics Service for Parents to Select “Smartest” Embryos]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()