E&C Democrats Demand Answers from Trump Administration on Unethical Hepatitis B Experiment on Newborns
CDC Awarded Grant Funding to a Study Intending to Withold Hepatitis B Immunization Shots from Newborns in Guinea-Bissau, A Country Where Nearly One in Five Adults Lives with the Disease
“These ethical failures have led experts to characterize this award as ‘RFK Jr.’s Tuskegee Experiment’”
Energy and Commerce Committee Democratic leaders wrote to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Acting Director Jim O’Neill today demanding answers after the agency funded a highly controversial study intending to withhold the hepatitis B birth dose from thousands of newborns in Guinea-Bissau.
The letter was signed by Full Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Diana DeGette (D-CO), and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY).
The five-year, $1.6 million award would support a study purporting to test the “overall health impact” of the hepatitis B birth dose by withholding immunization for a subset of 14,000 newborns in Guinea-Bissau, a country where nearly one in five adults is infected with the disease. About 90 percent of babies exposed to hepatitis B at birth will develop a chronic infection, 25 percent of whom will die of liver cancer or liver failure. The proposed study has been suspended after being met with intense backlash from the medical research community, but Trump Administration officials insist it will continue.
“The agency’s insistence on wasting $1.6 million of taxpayer funding to finance a scientifically meritless and ethically appalling study demonstrates its serious abuse of taxpayer dollars to the potential detriment of children abroad and Americans at home,” the Democrats wrote in their letter to CDC. “This is particularly disturbing given CDC’s repeated attempts to strip funding from proven, effective health care programs.”
The Committee leaders also raised serious concerns over CDC channeling federal funding to long-time associates of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. without public solicitation, transparency into the award process, or evidence of meaningful expert review.
“That CDC announced this award mere days after the agency approved the withdrawal of the hepatitis B birth dose from the national immunization schedule suggests that Secretary Kennedy and the anti-vaccine officials who have been appointed across the agency may be attempting to retroactively find scientific support for their preordained conclusions about the hepatitis B birth dose,” the Democratic Committee Leaders continued. “This would constitute a dangerous politicization of CDC resources by Secretary Kennedy in service of degrading public confidence in vaccines to the detriment of Americans’ health.”
As part of their inquiry, Democrats requested answers to a series of questions, including whether the Trump Administration intends on continuing to support the unethical study, by February 20, 2026.
Read the full letter HERE.
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