CDC Sets Aside $1.6 Million for Halted Hepatitis B Vaccine Trial

Staff in the office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director instructed the agency's budget office in late September to set aside $1.6 million for a hepatitis B vaccine trial that remains suspended, according to a report by Rolling Stone cited by Ars Technica on October 9, 2026.

How much money did the CDC set aside, and where did it come from?

The $1.6 million figure, reported by Rolling Stone and relayed in the Ars Technica account, would come out of funding earmarked for the CDC's global health security programs. Those programs currently support the response to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, per the same report. No additional breakdown of the budget line item has been published.

The $1.6 million allocation mirrors the amount the CDC originally awarded in December as an unsolicited grant to a research group at the University of Southern Denmark, led by Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby, according to Ars Technica's account of the funding history.

What would the trial require of newborns in Guinea-Bissau?

The study design calls for enrolling 14,000 newborns in Guinea-Bissau, according to Ars Technica's description of the protocol. Half of the infants would receive a newborn dose of hepatitis B vaccine; the other half would not. The stated aim is to measure alleged harms from the birth dose, even though that dose has been in global use for decades and is documented as safe and effective, Ars Technica reported.

Guinea-Bissau has a high burden of hepatitis B, and newborns who go unvaccinated at birth face elevated risk of chronic, lifelong infection that can progress to liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, and premature death, per the report. Country health authorities have said they intend to begin universal birth-dose vaccination in 2028 but currently lack the resources and infrastructure to do so routinely — a gap the trial's design would exploit by withholding vaccine from half the enrolled newborns.

Why was the trial suspended in January?

Guinea-Bissau officials halted the study in January 2026 after its design drew international criticism, Ars Technica reported. Quinhin Nantote, the country's minister of public health, said at the time that ethical and technical reviews were still underway.

"There has been no sufficient coordination in order to take a final decision regarding the study," Nantote said. "Faced with this situation, we decided to suspend it."

The country had also experienced a coup in November 2025, a period of instability that coincided with the review, according to the Ars Technica account. The trial remains halted as of the October 9 report, even as CDC director's-office staff moved in late September to reserve funding for it.

Who are the researchers behind the study, and what allegations do they face?

The trial, if it proceeds, would be funded by the United States but run by the Danish research team of Stabell Benn and Aaby, a married couple at the University of Southern Denmark, per Ars Technica. The pair have produced studies frequently cited by anti-vaccine advocates, which Ars Technica said has drawn concern and criticism from other researchers in the field.

Danish authorities are currently investigating Stabell Benn and Aaby over allegations of "falsification" and "scientific misconduct" tied to earlier vaccine research, according to the same report. Ars Technica did not report a timeline for that investigation's conclusion.

What happens next, and has HHS responded?

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, did not respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica about the funding move. The trial's status in Guinea-Bissau remains suspended pending the ethical and technical review Minister Nantote described in January, and no public timetable for resuming or canceling the study has been reported.

The September budget directive — setting aside $1.6 million even as the underlying trial stays blocked by the host country — leaves the funding in a holding pattern: reserved, but not yet spent, according to Ars Technica's account of the Rolling Stone report. Whether that money is eventually redirected back to Ebola-response programs, released for the hepatitis B study, or held indefinitely has not been addressed by HHS or the CDC in public statements as of the October 9 report.

For readers tracking the story, Ars Technica's original account is the primary sourcing for the budget figures, the enrollment numbers, and the quoted remarks from Guinea-Bissau's health ministry.