House Democrats demand answers from CDC on African hepatitis B study

Top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee demanded answers Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the agency’s funding of a controversial hepatitis B clinical trial in Guinea-Bissau.

The CDC awarded $1.6 million last year to Danish researchers to conduct the study in Guinea-Bissau, a small country in West Africa where nearly 1 in 5 people are infected with the hepatitis B virus. Guinea-Bissau doesn’t vaccinate against hepatitis B at birth, but the country plans to institute the birth dose by 2028.

The trial, which would have tested the long-term effects of receiving the hepatitis B vaccination at birth, is not going forward, according to its lead researcher, because it was “not given the necessary governmental approval” to proceed.

The Danish researchers leading the study planned to randomly assign only half of the 14,000 newborns in the clinical trial to receive the vaccine at birth, a move many other scientists decried as highly unethical and colonialist, since such a trial would not be approved in the U.S.

They also questioned the need for a study in the first place, given how well researched the hepatitis B vaccine is and how successful it has been in practically eliminating the disease since doctors began administering it at birth in the U.S.

In a letter to CDC Director Erica Schwartz, the Democrats decried the CDC’s decision to seemingly rush through funding for the study — and taking money from global health security — while it starts to shutter its global health footprint.

The lawmakers asked for a staff level briefing by Nov. 6.

“This proposed study harms children, and CDC should not have approved using American taxpayer dollars to fund it,” wrote Democratic Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee; Diana DeGette (Colo.), ranking member of the House Commerce subcommittee on health; and Yvette D. Clarke (N.Y.), ranking member of the House Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

The World Health Organization advises giving a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine and — until recently — so did the CDC.

Earlier this year, a federal advisory panel handpicked by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted to stop recommending the shot to all newborns, but that move was halted by a Boston judge as part of an ongoing lawsuit. Kennedy and his allies have cast doubt on the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine.

“CDC appears to have allocated funding to this project even as it continues to withhold essential information from Congress and the public about the study’s design, award process, ethical review, and financing,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote.

The trial was first announced in December 2025 but was met with severe backlash by members of Congress, as well as the international and public health community.

Guinea-Bissau’s foreign minister said the study had been terminated, but the Democrats said, “It appears that CDC was still forging ahead by funding a study that dooms children to needless suffering, organ failure, or even death.”

The lawmakers demanded assurances the Trump administration wouldn’t try again, with either the same study or a similar one.