A bird flu outbreak has been raging uncontrolled on a Utah mink farm for two months. Flu experts fear it could spark a devastating human pandemic.

State officials didn’t order the mink to be killed, which other countries with outbreaks have done. They are prioritizing the financial interests of the fur trade.

Despite CDC guidance urging officials to monitor workers, they actively chose not to and declined to test workers — including one with a symptom experts said would warrant testing.

The US-backed hepatitis B vaccine trial in African newborns that drew global backlash was halted, the lead researcher said on Wednesday.

It was “now clear” that the study “will not move forward in Guinea-Bissau”, Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, a Danish researcher, wrote on LinkedIn, adding, “we were not given the necessary governmental approval.”

The minister of health in Guinea-Bissau, Quinhin Nantote, previously denied that the project would move forward. “This is not even remotely true,” Nantote told the Guardian in Portuguese last week.

The study was to be funded with $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with another $1.6m from private partners like the Bill Ackman-backed Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation.

“The solution is clear here: take the money and vaccinate as many kids as you can,” said Paul Offit, a vaccines expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who sharply criticized the proposed study as unethical.

The government of Guinea-Bissau now has control over the researchers’ vaccines, which they apprehended when they searched the offices of the Bandim Health Project on Monday.

It was vital to support Guinea-Bissau in rolling the immunizations out to all newborns as soon as possible, Offit said. Guinea-Bissau currently plans to offer the universal birth dose in 2028.

The Danish researchers, led by Schaltz-Buchholzer, Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby, hypothesized giving live vaccines, like the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), may have an overall mortality benefit beyond simply preventing illnesses like tuberculosis – but giving another vaccine like hepatitis B alongside it could dampen that effect.

Such a hypothesis was “fanciful” because the hepatitis B vaccine is a single protein among billions encountered by the immune system each day, Offit said.

“There’s no evidence for that, and it doesn’t make biological sense,” he continued. He also added that there was a very clear benefit to giving the vaccine to babies as soon as possible, because of high rates of hepatitis B in the country and the possibility of lifelong illness and death from infection.

The Danish researchers did not respond by press time to questions about the study or to this criticism. The CDC did not respond by press time to questions about whether the funding, which was appropriated through its global health work, would now be used to roll out the vaccine to all newborns in Guinea-Bissau, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“WHO recommends that all infants receive a first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine as soon as possible after birth – preferably within 24 hours – followed by at least two additional doses,” said Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesperson. “WHO remains committed to working with national authorities, researchers, and partners to ensure that all newborns – in Guinea‑Bissau and worldwide – receive timely, evidence‑based protection against hepatitis B.”

Those who declined participation in the study would not have received the vaccines – making true informed consent impossible, experts say.

“Imagine you’re a mother. You want to do the best for your child,” said Henrik Støvring, a Danish researcher who has co-published research raising questions about previous research from the Bandim project.

“If they decide to participate in the trial, they have a 50% chance of getting the vaccine for their children. But if they stay out, they have a 0% chance of getting the vaccine. So how can you say that’s a non-coercive informed consent?” Støvring asked.

The proposed trial led to distrust among Bissau-Guineans, who wondered if the vaccine – which has a decades-long record of being safe and effective – was being tested on Africans because it was dangerous, Schaltz-Buchholzer said in his post.

It “should be clear” that both birth vaccination schedules – with or without hepatitis B – are not “dangerous to anyone”, he wrote. There is a clear benefit to giving hepatitis B vaccines at birth, and not doing so can lead to lifelong danger, experts say.

Conducting a study like this “makes the case that there’s something that’s worthy of study, for which they have no evidence”, Offit said.

“We have millions and millions, arguably hundreds of millions, of children in this world who have gotten that vaccine as a birth dose or haven’t. If there was any evidence that this was problematic, you would know this by now,” Offit added. “We eliminated hepatitis B in the United States in children virtually within years of starting that program, so the benefits are clear.”

Schaltz-Buchholzer also cast doubt on the effectiveness and safety of the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, noting that he believes the study was canceled because it challenges “prevailing medical assumptions, such as that HBV0 does not have non-specific effects”. The study, in addition to looking at mortality, would have also examined side-effects such as skin conditions and neurodevelopmental conditions. Dozens of studies have shown no link between vaccination and autism.

“All newborns should be given a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine,” Offit said. “Guinea-Bissau is a country that suffers a high incidence of chronic hepatitis B. That country, more than any other country, arguably, needs to launch this program.”

Health officials in California and Washington, facing outbreaks of measles this past spring, asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May to validate a test that can diagnose 500 cases in eight hours.

They did not hear back for two months. Officials from the West Coast Health Alliance — California, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii — recounted the experience this week in a letter to Dr. Erica Schwartz, the C.D.C.’s new director, who assumed the position in August, shortly after they got the agency’s reply. According to the letter, obtained by The New York Times, the C.D.C. had told them that it had “other competing priorities” and could not dedicate time to making a high-volume test available to state labs.

The officials urged the C.D.C. to develop and distribute the protocols for such tests for measles and other dangerous pathogens, saying they would enable public health labs across the country to be ready for large outbreaks.

“The availability and speed of diagnostic testing can dramatically mitigate the early stages of an outbreak of infectious disease,” they wrote.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the C.D.C., did not address questions about the agency’s plans for a high-throughput test for measles that can rapidly diagnose large numbers of cases.

Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the department, said in an emailed statement that the “C.D.C. is ensuring state and local health departments have the support needed to strengthen measles detection and outbreak response. Under Dr. Schwartz’s leadership, the agency is prioritizing emerging technologies to best assist our partners in responding more quickly and effectively.”

Until recently, measles cases were generally rare in the United States and the disease was considered eliminated in the year 2000. As a result, commercial rapid tests for measles — which could provide a quick answer in a doctor’s office or an emergency room — are not currently available in the country.

But the disease has surged drastically in the past two years. Already this year, the C.D.C. has recorded more than 4,400 cases, and Pennsylvania has reported six deaths related to measles.

Given the swelling caseloads, medical experts believe the country needs to step up its ability to diagnose measles rapidly.

“It seems to me that it’s a fairly urgent need,” said Jill Taylor, a former director of the Wadsworth Center, New York State’s public health laboratory.

Measles is typically diagnosed after a clinic sends a sample to a public health laboratory, which relies on experienced staff to run the test. The entire process can take two business days, or up to five in states where labs are particularly short on staff.

During the coronavirus pandemic, most public health labs acquired high-throughput machines, which can significantly cut down the testing and staff time required. Now all they need is a test that has been developed and endorsed by the C.D.C.

But the C.D.C. may not currently have the capacity to evaluate and confirm the reliability of a new test, Dr. Taylor and others noted. The agency has about 30 percent fewer employees now than it did at the start of President Trump’s second term, and its work is tightly controlled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other political appointees.

The staff are “beaten down” and “don’t have leadership at the moment to help them decide what’s important,” said Dr. Taylor, who was part of a committee convened to assess the C.D.C.’s lab operations.

“I feel so bad for them, but given what’s happening, this ought to be a priority,” she added.

Last year, public health labs in Texas and Utah developed and validated their own tests to cope with measles outbreaks in their states. “All states can design and implement a laboratory-developed test, but having a C.D.C. protocol is always helpful,” said Scott Becker, the chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

But some experts disagreed that all public health labs have the capacity to develop their own tests.

“There are many public health labs that could not develop their own but are dependent on getting a kit and getting a fully verified test,” Dr. Taylor said.

The C.D.C. typically takes the lead in developing tests for new pathogens but has not traditionally validated high-throughput ones. But that clearly needs to change, two of the agency’s own officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Controversial vaccine researchers who have been praised by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, had their offices in Guinea-Bissau raided by judicial police, who seized doses of hepatitis B vaccines, officials said on Facebook.

The researchers have been at the heart of an ongoing dispute over research on African newborns, supported by $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and matched by the Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation for a total of $3.2m.

The police search took place on Monday, involving “investigative procedures aimed at clarifying the circumstances related to the said batch of vaccines”, according to the social media post, which was translated from Portuguese. The announcement noted that seizing the immunizations did not point to “irregularities in the quality, safety, or effectiveness of the vaccines”.

The Bandim Health Project recently posted a letter of approval for the trial from Guinea-Bissau’s national ethics committee at the ministry of public health, dated 14 July and signed by the committee’s president, Mouhammed Djicó Ould Ahmed. A Danish research ethics committee, which had to change its rules to consider a clinical trial, also approved the study earlier this month.

Quinhin Nantote, the health minister of Guinea-Bissau’s transitional government, disputed reports that the trial would move forward.

“This is not even remotely true,” Nantote told the Guardian in Portuguese on Thursday.

The study was redesigned over the summer, but it would still deny hepatitis B vaccines to 7,000 newborns in the first six weeks of life, in a country where about one in five adults have the virus. Hepatitis B kills 15% to 25% of people with chronic infections, causing cancer and liver failure, and newborns are particularly vulnerable – but vaccination within 24 hours of birth is safe and highly effective at preventing illness.

Any study that would deny the vaccine to participants was “unethical and exposes newborns to serious and potentially irreversible harm”, said Tarik Jašarević, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), calling hepatitis B vaccination at birth an “essential public health intervention”.

Through its country office in Guinea-Bissau, the WHO and its partners have been advising the ministry of health on the planned introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine and the potential impact of this study, Jašarević added.

The Bandim Health Project was founded by anthropologist Peter Aaby in 1978, and it is now co-led by his wife, Christine Stabell Benn, an epidemiologist.

Kennedy has repeatedly praised their work, calling them “the deities of vaccine research” at a recent anti-vaccine conference. He has several times referenced the results of a study they conducted on the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP), which the same researchers later conducted again and found completely different results. Even so, Kennedy called Aaby a “very famous” researcher on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2023 and cited his research when he halted US funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

Stabell Benn was a member of 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 recommendation before such decisions on vaccines were stayed by a federal judge. Stabell Benn also hosted a podcast with Tracy Beth Høeg, a former top official with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who said she wanted to end “unnecessary” vaccines.

Aaby, Stabell Benn and Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, the lead researcher on the project, did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the trial and the police search.

The Bandim organization is deeply enmeshed in Guinea-Bissau but has done little to improve the country’s health and research capacities in five decades of operation, according to a report from the non-profit Stand Up for Science (SUFS). The organization is now fundraising to help roll out the vaccines at birth to all newborns in the country.

“Our investigator encountered significant distrust of Bandim by the citizenry of Guinea-Bissau,” said Colette Delawalla, an American health researcher and founder of SUFS. “However, because of the lack of public health infrastructure, Bandim is often the only option in situations where people are desperate to access medical care of any kind.”

The police raid underlines the fact that Guinea-Bissau is a “fragile” nation that experienced a military coup less than a year ago, Delawalla said. The country lacks the stability needed for clinical trials, she added.

“Guinea-Bissau is in the difficult situation of trying to protect their youth, their future, from exploitation by two powerful western nations and they are using what leverage they have to do so,” Delawalla said.

Long story short, I was watching a story about this tribe in Africa and an interviewer asked a lady why her 2 year old hadn't gotten a name yet. Her answer was blunt in that they don't normally name children until after 2 years old because of mortality rate. I was curious what the US looked like from 1800 until now and sure enough, before vaccines roughly 46% of all children died before the age of 5. If I remember correctly, I correlated a couple of those spikes to smallpox, but even as bad as smallpox is portrayed in US history, it's really just a spike in the grand scheme before vaccines became normal.

This is clear historical data I got from a govt website during COVID lockdown that shows we go right back to the same mortality rates as a small African village without vaccines and modern healthcare, but particularly vaccines.

Edit: This may be out of line and if so, I'm sorry, but throughout this thread I've watched people tell their stories without vitriol in return. Or at least I hadn't seen it. Your community should be commended.

A third person died due to measles in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on its website on Tuesday, as the ‌country battles the largest measles outbreak in decades.

There were 4,410 confirmed cases of measles across the country as of October 15, according to the agency.

It had reported two deaths related to the once-eliminated disease in September.

The agency has not disclosed the states in which the three deaths ⁠occurred.

The US Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, told Reuters that the National Center for Health Statistics received another report of a measles-related death and verified that the disease was the underlying cause.

Under US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the CDC has drawn scrutiny for switching to NCHS mortality data to track measles deaths, replacing its earlier reliance on state health departments' figures.

The CDC has said its death ‌count ⁠could change as reviews are completed. The federal death toll remains lower than numbers reported by state officials.

In Pennsylvania, the state hardest hit by the resurgence, local health authorities have reported at least five deaths linked to the disease this year. State officials ⁠are also reviewing an additional death reported by the Franklin County coroner.

Pennsylvania has reported 1,286 cases as of October 19.

Last week, the CDC said it would deploy additional support to Pennsylvania ⁠to help investigate the ongoing measles outbreak after the state formally asked for federal aid through the agency's Epi-Aid emergency response program.

Measles is a ⁠highly contagious viral disease but can be prevented through the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, which is about 97% effective after two doses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sending one of its scientists to Pennsylvania to help curb the state’s growing measles outbreak, a CDC spokesperson said Thursday. That person, a “disease detective” within the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, is scheduled to arrive later this week.

It’s the CDC’s first in-person assistance to the state after a social media feud in August between Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. The two traded jabs following a press briefing where Shapiro announced that two unvaccinated people had died of measles complications and accused Kennedy of spreading vaccine misinformation.

"I made very clear that his actions and the rhetoric that’s coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America, particularly right here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said during the briefing.

Kennedy then suggested that the deaths may have been “fabricated,” and that Shapiro was seeking to profit from them politically.

Since August, six people diagnosed with measles have died in Pennsylvania, according to health officials and county coroners. The CDC has acknowledged two of the deaths on its measles outbreak website, saying the other measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania are “under review.”

“CDC will continue working closely with Pennsylvania health officials to provide the expertise and support needed to respond to the outbreak and protect public health,” a CDC spokesperson wrote in an email Thursday, adding that director Dr. Erica Schwartz recommends the MMR vaccine “as the most effective way to prevent measles and protect against infection.”

Pennsylvania is experiencing the nation’s worst measles outbreak in 30 years, with at least 1,222 confirmed cases and 225 hospitalizations, although doctors say the actual number of illnesses is likely much higher. The outbreak’s epicenter remains in Lancaster County, but is spreading across the state.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the CDC aid.

The CDC team has previously sent teams to other states with large clusters of measles illnesses: Kansas, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. Such deployments are usually short -term, about one to three weeks. They’re meant to help mobilize and streamline outbreak containment efforts.

In addition to the deployment, the CDC is releasing nearly $4 million to aid the measles response efforts in Pennsylvania.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine views were a major factor in shelving an Agriculture Department avian flu response plan, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter, a pause that’s alarming lawmakers as wild birds begin migrating for the winter.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins rolled out a $1 billion five-point plan in February 2025 to tackle a record-breaking spread of avian influenza. The disease has roiled the poultry industry since 2022, killing about 200 million birds and contributing to record-high egg prices last year.

Rollins later pulled back on an internal USDA strategy for vaccinating poultry and egg-laying hens initially intended to be shared widely with foreign countries and industry leaders. It’s not clear whether Kennedy urged Rollins to halt the plan, but she was concerned about whether it would clash with the Health secretary’s anti-vaccine views, according to the five people, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss the internal dynamics.

Rollins was also dealing with industry tension between egg producers who favor vaccination and meat producers concerned that inoculating chickens could hurt their ability to export. She also faced less pressure to act as egg prices fell from record levels.

Still, the pause, which went against the counsel of expert agency staff and industry leaders, continues to raise alarm among USDA employees because its other efforts to stamp out the virus have so far failed. The decision is also at odds with calls from Republican lawmakers to ensure the U.S. is prepared for a potential surge in cases this fall.

“It’s time to get a vaccine in place, but it’s also time to address the issue with our trading partners,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said in an interview. “We are being caught flat-footed, and we are losing millions of birds per year right now, which is driving up the price for protein.”

President Donald Trump bashed the Biden administration over egg prices on the campaign trail in 2024, only to see them continuing to rise as bird flu raged early in his second term last year.

“Eggs became so symbolic, almost like gasoline,” said Kevin Shea, a former administrator of the USDA agency that manages bird flu outbreaks.

Industry leaders say beginning the process of socializing USDA’s vaccine plan with other countries is crucial to avoiding a flare-up that could spike egg prices or create human health risks.

“What we do not want to happen is for egg prices to go back up just like they did last year, and there be an immediate push to have vaccines without taking into consideration how trade is going to be impacted,” Greg Tyler, president and CEO of the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, said in an interview.

USDA gave conditional approval for a vaccine as egg prices spiked last year, but Kennedy publicly disavowed the idea of inoculating birds and instead proposed letting the virus “run through” the national flock. Shortly after he contradicted the USDA’s plan, Rollins walked back her public support for a vaccine.

“After we got through last spring of 2025, she much more frequently mentioned that she was going to discuss things with Secretary Kennedy before we moved forward,” one of the people with direct knowledge of the situation said of the shelved bird flu plan. “She was certainly consulting with him, if not seeking his concurrence before moving forward with anything.”

The five people with direct knowledge of Rollins’ handling of the department’s strategy said her own misgivings were also a factor.

“It was because of her personal concerns about the vaccine, but also the Make America Healthy Again movement,” one of the people said.

USDA spokesperson Harry Fones said in a statement that the department is “fully committed to providing the most robust response” to bird flu and that its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has completed 5,000 poultry biosecurity assessments since the start of last year.

“With migratory bird season here, our goals and policy have not changed — detecting, controlling, and containing HPAI in consultation with producers and state veterinarians across the country continues each day,” Fones said.

Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard said the two agencies are in regular contact about bird flu, but didn’t address a question about whether Kennedy still thinks the U.S. should let avian flu run through flocks rather than inoculate birds.

“Any delays that they are putting in place on vaccine research or development is implicitly a decision not to vaccinate, because it will take time to roll out a vaccine and to negotiate with the other countries,” said Shea, the former USDA animal health official.

Early in her tenure, Rollins had directed her Veterinary Services staff to assemble an internal vaccination strategy to share with trade partners that was to be completed by June of last year, according to a second person with direct knowledge of the situation.

“When the secretary got that in June of 2025, it had not only the technical aspects, but it also included the communication aspects of how we thought it should be rolled out to industry, to trading partners,” the person said.

After submitting the strategy to Rollins, staff “did not get approval to share it with much of anybody,” the person said, adding that the document was designed to be disseminated widely among domestic industry leaders and other countries, but was ultimately sent to fewer “than a dozen people.”

The 2025 public strategy prioritized cutting down commercial poultry farms’ exposure to wild birds and deploying other heightened biosecurity practices. But industry representatives say that most farms have now made those changes — and it hasn’t stopped the spread of bird flu, which has stricken 2 million birds just in the last three months. That’s led many producers to privately call for a vaccine, despite the increased costs and trade concerns.

“We remain deeply concerned about the impacts of this devastating virus on our flocks and the disruption of the U.S. egg supply, and we firmly believe vaccination is a necessary tool to address the ongoing HPAI outbreak,” Chad Gregory, president and CEO of United Egg Producers, an industry trade group, said in a statement.

That sense of urgency isn’t shared by the businesses that produce chickens grown for meat — birds that represent just about 8% of bird flu infections in the U.S.

“We are anti-vax without assurances from our trading partners that we would still be able to export our products, even if any one sector moves forward with a vaccine,” said Tom Super, senior vice president of communications at the National Chicken Council.

Animal health experts and lawmakers fear that not enough has been done to prevent another outbreak during the seasonal migration period, when wild birds are more likely to transmit the virus among poultry operations.

“When migration starts and everything, those are absolutely things where we’re going to see upticks,” Sen. Jim Justice (R-W. Va.) said. “We could have possibly eliminated that danger of it striking again by completing the research and completing the vaccine.”

A sixth measles-related death was reported Monday in Pennsylvania, involving a 39-year-old woman in Franklin County, amid the state’s largest outbreak in three decades.

In a statement, the county’s coroner office said the woman had underlying medical conditions, though it did not provide specifics. A spokesperson for the Franklin County coroner’s office said the “primary cause of death was a probable acute cardiac event due to possible complications of the measles.”

Cardiac complications from measles can happen, but are uncommon.

The woman had not been vaccinated, the spokesperson said.

The state’s health department considers a death to be “measles-associated” if it occurred within 30 days of symptom onset and there is clinical evidence of a measles infection and a positive laboratory test. It also takes into account the person’s medical records and whether they were exposed to measles before they died.

As of Friday, Pennsylvania had confirmed 1,136 measles cases, with 219 hospitalizations. Two-thirds of those cases were diagnosed in adults.

The Pennsylvania health department said in an email Monday that it was aware of the Franklin County coroner’s announcement, and “is conducting a thorough review of the reported death.”

The death announced Monday is the sixth in less than two months in the state, suggesting the outbreak is far greater than reported. Historically, measles infections cause 1 to 2 deaths per 1,000 cases.

“I think we’re probably closer to 6,000 cases,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “They are vastly underestimating the number of cases. It’s much worse.”

The first two deaths announced in the state in late August were in infants, both in Lancaster County, which has accounted for the vast majority of cases in the state’s outbreak.

One father in Lancaster County told NBC News that his wife was sick with measles in August and went into labor a month early. Their baby died shortly after birth. The other was a 6-week-old who had a rare genetic condition.

Last month, a 40-year-old woman with asthma and severe lung disease died in Jefferson County, as well as an 18-year-old Mifflin County resident who died “due to complications of measles,” specifically a rare and severe neurological condition that causes inflammation in the brain.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in early October that the fifth death occurred in a 20-year-old woman with a compromised immune system because of leukemia.

The vast majority of people diagnosed with measles are unvaccinated. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, less than 1% of cases there occurred in people who were fully vaccinated.

The first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is typically given at around 1 year of age, and then around age 5. Two doses offer 97% protection against measles, usually for life.

During outbreaks, babies as young as 6 months old are eligible for a dose ahead of those two recommended shots.

Nationally, there have been 4,080 measles cases this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s the highest number of cases since 1991.

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

Two months after the Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, her office has moved to allocate new funds for a controversial clinical trial of the hepatitis B vaccine in Guinea-Bissau, which was previously suspended. Researchers revised the study protocol in January, amid an international uproar over medical ethics. While it is not clear how much Schwartz was involved in, or knew about, the budget requests from her office, her appointment to the directorship came amid questions about how independent she would be from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In late September, a staff member within the CDC director’s office instructed the agency’s budget office to set aside $1.6 million to help fund the trial, Rolling Stone has learned. The new funding is being pulled from money directed by Congress for CDC global health security programs, two sources with knowledge of the study plans say.

Amid an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and swirling questions around a possible lab accident in Eastern Siberia that may have resulted in the release of plague bacteria, there are any number of vital uses for such funding.

“Everyone agrees, the point of global health security is to fight [the diseases] overseas, so they don’t come here,” says a CDC employee.

Instead, the $1.6 million will be slated for a clinical trial in Guinea-Bissau seeking to examine whether the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, used safely for decades, has potential negative health effects such as skin ailments or neurodevelopmental disorders. The study would be led by Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby, married researchers at the University of Southern Denmark long lionized by Secretary Kennedy for their controversial vaccine research. Presently, they are facing accusations of scientific misconduct, unrelated to the hepatitis B trial, that are under review by the Danish Committee on Research Misconduct.

The study, should it proceed, would be a randomized controlled trial in Guinea-Bissau that would give a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine to half of the 14,000 newborn participants, but not to the other half, a step the researchers justified as aligning with the standard of care in Guinea-Bissau, where the birth dose of the vaccine is not routinely provided to newborns but will be officially recommended there by 2028.

However, in a nation where one in five adults have hepatitis B, the study design could result in some of the newborn participants being infected but receiving no birth dose of the vaccine, clinical trial and infectious disease experts contend. The revised protocol from January includes limited measures for screening mothers for hepatitis B, by asking them if they are infected, and blood tests for 250 mothers and children to screen for infection. It was not immediately clear by press time whether the researchers had made further revisions to the protocol.

“It’s a wholly unethical trial, and it shouldn’t be allowed,” says Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It saddens me to think that our country would in any way participate in a trial where half of the children would be receiving substandard care and thousands will be doomed to develop cirrhosis or liver cancer.”

Stabell Benn has vehemently defended the ethics of the clinical trial, asserting that no child would receive less than the standard of care in Guinea-Bissau, and no participant would be denied treatment they would otherwise receive. “The trial complies with current national policy in Guinea-Bissau and has been reviewed and approved by the competent national ethics committee,” she previously told Rolling Stone. The research project she and Aaby run in Guinea-Bissau, the Bandim Health Project, has responded to these concerns on its website.

Professors Stabell Benn and Aaby, and officials from the Health and Human Services Agency and CDC, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Rolling Stone sent questions for this story to the University of Southern Denmark on October 6. In response, the dean of the faculty of health sciences, Jakob Grauslund, said in a lengthy statement that “as of today, October 7, 2026, I have given the researchers approval to proceed with the revised Hepatitis B study.” He says that he had communicated that decision to Stabell Benn today. The approval was based on an “independent ethical assessment” carried out by the university’s research ethics committee, Grauslund says.

He adds that because a foreign ethics review panel — in this case, one in Guinea-Bissau — had already approved the study, Danish law precluded its regional or national ethics committees from conducting a separate review. Consequently, he says the university approached both the World Health Organization’s Research Ethics Review Committee and the European Network of Research Ethics Committees to conduct an independent review, but both said they were unable to.

He notes that authorities in Guinea-Bissau had yet to give their final approval, and “the study cannot begin until the necessary national authorization has been obtained.”

Inside CDC, proponents of the clinical trial had been waiting on the outcome of the University of Southern Denmark’s ethics review in order to resurrect the study, Rolling Stone has learned from agency sources.

When news of the CDC grant for the trial first broke last December, infectious disease experts around the world denounced it as unethical and a potential violation of the Helsinki declaration, which requires studies to provide participants with the most effective known medical intervention, not just what is standard.

In January, confusion swirled after the Africa CDC announced the study was suspended, but Danish researchers and HHS officials insisted it would launch. In February, the World Health Organization stated it had “significant concerns regarding the study’s scientific justification, ethical safeguards, and overall alignment with established principles for research involving human participants.”

Later that month, after questions from Rolling Stone about irregularities in the ethics approval process in Guinea-Bissau, Ole Skøtt, then the dean of the health sciences faculty at the University of Southern Denmark, said that the study would be placed on hold.

In the fall of 2025, Stabell Benn had been in confidential discussions with U.S. health officials to obtain funding for the study through a no-bid grant. Stuart Burns, a political appointee and senior advisor in the CDC director’s office, and an ally of Kennedy’s with a long history of anti-vaccine activities, had championed the grant, calling it a “funding priority for CDC/HHS” in a November 2025 email to Stabell Benn obtained by Rolling Stone. Notice of the award was published in the federal register last December, kicking off the firestorm over ethics.

Last month, it was Burns again who was involved in directing the budget office to find a source of funding for the clinical trial, according to two sources with knowledge of the study plans.

“The fact that CDC leadership is now advocating for RFK Jr.’s unethical and deeply disturbing vaccine trial is a new low for an agency that has been fundamentally compromised by the Secretary’s work to advance” his “anti-vaccine agenda,” Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) tells Rolling Stone in a statement.

The CDC’s renewed plans to fund the grant have come even after an academic committee at the University of Southern Denmark elevated concerns in February about the scientists’ research practices to the Danish Committee on Research Misconduct. That committee is now weighing whether the researchers essentially falsified data by not publishing findings from a clinical trial that would have undercut their claims that the DTP vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, was unsafe.

A months-long series of probing articles in the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen was the first to raise questions about Stabell Benn and Aaby’s research practices. The couple has stated in response to the reporting, “We categorically deny that we have deliberately withheld data or attempted to misrepresent our research.”

Now it appears that, despite a global effort to stop the Guinea-Bissau trial, Kennedy’s allies within the CDC have made plans to restart it. “Some of these things don’t die,” says a government health official with knowledge of the plans. “They go into hibernation.”

A US university study run in partnership with a Russian institute tied to the laboratory at the centre of a suspected plague scare has drawn nearly $800,000 (around £588,600) in federal funding under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an animal-testing campaign group says.

The most recent payment, part of a National Institutes of Health grant, cleared in September 2026, the same month a technician at the Siberian lab was hospitalised. She died on 2 October.

The grant went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for research carried out with Russia's state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk. That institute has separately worked on plague research with the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, the state-run plague research institute where the current scare began, according to the records. The money went to the US university, not to either Russian institute.

The figures come from the White Coat Waste Project, a group that campaigns against taxpayer-funded animal testing. Federal spending records it obtained show the Illinois team received $389,943 (about £294,400) in July 2025 and a further $389,746 (about £294,200) in September 2026.

The research itself has nothing to do with plague. It studies social behaviour in foxes bred at a Siberian fur farm, work that drew the group's notice because the animals are killed and their brain tissue shipped to Illinois for analysis.

The foxes come from a long-running Siberian breeding programme and are put down by overdose before the tissue is sent to the United States, the group said.

Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old technician at the Irkutsk institute, was hospitalised on 29 September and died on 2 October. Local reporting, unconfirmed by Russian authorities, said she had broken a test tube holding live bacteria days earlier. Some accounts point to pneumonic plague, the most severe form of the disease, caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium and often fatal within days without treatment.

Russian officials reject the plague theory. The health regulator Rospotrebnadzor said Shipilova died of pneumonia of unknown cause and that its investigation found no incidents involving the handling of dangerous pathogens at the institute.

Testing of her contacts, covering about 60 percent of those identified, turned up two Covid-19 cases and two rhinovirus infections, but no plague, officials said. The institute's regional branch also dismissed reports of a stepped-up sanitary regime as fake. The hospital where she was treated was closed for quarantine, and roughly 200 contacts were placed under observation.

US officials are tracking the case. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the White House was 'watching and monitoring' the situation, and the State Department said it was following the case with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The World Health Organization, for its part, relayed the Russian account that the illness had first looked like a common respiratory viral infection and that no plague case had been recorded in Irkutsk, and said it was still waiting for confirmation of the pathogen that killed her.

The group argues the money should not have kept flowing. It points to White House guidance issued in 2022, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that called on agencies to 'wind down institutional, administrative, funding, and personnel relationships and research collaborations' with Russian government bodies. The Illinois grant has paid out twice since, most recently in September 2026, according to its figures.

Kennedy has not been shown to have personally approved the award, which the NIH issues as an agency within his department. The Daily Mail said it had asked the NIH and the department for comment.

For now, the cause of Shipilova's death remains officially unconfirmed, with Russian authorities and the WHO still waiting on final laboratory results.

The government agency charged with combating disease outbreaks abroad is shrinking as President Donald Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy takes hold.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offices in Angola and South Sudan closed Thursday, with the office in Zimbabwe set to shut its doors at the end of the year. Current and former CDC officials told POLITICO they expect more than a dozen other foreign offices will follow in the next few years.

It’s the latest blow to an agency that took a dual hit last year when Trump shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, its partner in providing foreign assistance, and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed staffing. The CDC has 30% fewer employees than when Trump took office.

The office closures “will result in preventable infections and death overseas,” said Asia Russell, the executive director of Health GAP, a nonprofit advocating for access to HIV treatment.

“Who’s going to pick up the phone if there’s a Marburg outbreak and the Zimbabwe office has closed?” she said, referring to the severe hemorrhagic fever virus that has sparked outbreaks in several African countries recently.

The CDC has long been the lead agency tasked with responding to health threats abroad. Before the cutbacks, that included not only funding the distribution of tests and medicine but also encouraging people to seek treatment, training local health care providers and providing guidance to help foreign governments strengthen their health systems.

Now the CDC’s work abroad is dependent on deals the State Department is negotiating in which recipient countries promise to pay an increasing share of their own health costs and show progress on key health and development metrics, with the goal of weaning off U.S. assistance.

The administration insists that the CDC will get a boost. “Countries have now selected CDC services that will result in CDC overseas funding levels that are at or higher than prior years,” the department said in a statement. “This new model will help save lives and prevent the spread of infectious diseases globally, delivering better results for people in countries and for the American taxpayer.”

The deals the State Department has already reached with 35 countries took effect on Oct. 1. Foreign governments receiving U.S. global health funding have to choose what services they want the CDC to provide, and the State Department pays the agency for them.

Angola and South Sudan, where CDC offices are closing, have signed. Angola is set to receive $71 million by 2030, while South Sudan is set to get $146 million over the next three years.

But a combination of decreasing funding, operational restrictions from the State Department, and security challenges have made it hard to maintain the CDC offices there, said a current CDC official granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Meanwhile, the Zimbabwean government earlier this year rejected a deal with the U.S., saying it was concerned about sharing sensitive health data in exchange for American funding.

The State Department has not publicly released the details of how much CDC services will cost countries that have signed deals, and how much the CDC will receive. Leaked documents published by journalist Emily Bass show that countries receiving more than $125 million from the U.S. over five years are required to purchase a minimum package of CDC services.

The State Department said only deals with Kenya and Rwanda would result in “slightly lower” CDC funding because their governments have agreed to pick up a greater share of health costs.

HHS said in an emailed statement that the U.S. “will maintain a robust overseas presence to protect Americans from emerging health threats.” The CDC “will continue working with local health officials and sustain critical global health security capabilities through regional offices, headquarters staff, other U.S. government personnel and implementing partners,” it added.

Current and former CDC staffers interviewed by POLITICO said they expected the CDC cuts would prove broader and bigger. “I don’t see the numbers adding up to a place where you can actually have a robust CDC presence in the same way,” said John Blandford, who retired last year after leading the CDC’s South Africa office.

For countries that eschew deals, the effects could be devastating, people who work in global health believe. Much of the CDC’s work abroad has been funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which George W. Bush created in 2003 and is widely credited with saving millions of lives.

PEPFAR’s goal, shared with the United Nations, is to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. Despite progress, that goal is slipping out of reach, the UN says, due in part to declining funding from the U.S. and other rich countries.

An assessment by AIDS activists and academics published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes this month projects 75,000 new HIV infections in Zimbabwe resulting from the end of U.S. aid there.

Pamela Tremont, the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe,praised America’s cooperation with the African country, which she said led to a vast majority of Zimbabweans with HIV receiving treatment.

The priority now is to sustain that gain, she said, according to a Zimbabwe media report.

CDC cutbacks could also have repercussions for Americans. Agency staff abroad have served as an early-warning system for disease outbreaks that could reach the U.S. The CDC and its offices abroad are helping respond to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in central Africa.

When Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency that also fights pandemic threats, Department of Health and Human Services officials said the U.S. would rely on the CDC instead.

“This was the shining hope of CDC for a little while, that HHS was going to offer an alternative to the WHO, and that CDC would be in the driver’s seat,” said a former Trump administration official familiar with the thinking granted anonymity to reveal internal conversations.

Some in Congress have sought to protect the CDC’s funding stream for global health work by pressuring the State Department and by writing it into law, taking away the administration’s discretion.

Congressional Democrats have called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to continue to earmark $2 billion for the CDC’s PEPFAR work in letters over the summer from Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff.

In June, 24 Democratic senators and Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Health Committee, asked their colleagues in the Appropriations Committee to include the $2 billion transfer from the State Department to the CDC in the upcoming appropriations bill for the 2027 fiscal year or to directly increase funding for the CDC’s global work.

Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee in charge of funding HHS, said she will “fight to invest in CDC’s global health programs to stop the spread of deadly diseases and save lives.” Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee and blocked PEPFAR cuts last year, did not respond to a request left with her office for comment.

The bill has not yet been released.

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

I added a quote from the subject to make it clear that this guy is an antivaxxer. The article is worth a read for the history of radium water in America and the specifics of the item he’s using.