A Danish Couple’s Maverick African Research Finds Its Moment in RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Policy

In 1996, Guinea-Bissau seemed similar an perfect probe station for budding pediatrician Lone Graff Stensballe. Her supervisor, a chap Dane named Peter Aaby, had spent astir 2 decades collecting information connected 100,000 radical surviving successful the mud ceramic homes of the West African country’s capital.

Aaby and his partner, Christine Stabell Benn, believed that the years of probe successful the impoverished state had yielded a large find astir vaccines—and what they described arsenic “non-specific effects”: The measles and tuberculosis vaccines, which were derived from live, weakened viruses and bacteria, they said, boosted kid endurance beyond protecting against those peculiar pathogens.

But, the scientists said, shots made from deactivated full germs, oregon pieces of them, specified arsenic the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) shot, caused much deaths—especially successful small girls—than getting nary vaccine astatine all.

The World Health Organization repeatedly and inconclusively examined these astonishing findings. They tended to elicit shrugs from different planetary wellness researchers, who recovered Aaby’s probe techniques antithetic and his results mostly intolerable to replicate.

Then came Donald Trump, Covid, and the administrative reign of anti-vaccine advocator Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Suddenly, Aaby and Benn weren’t conscionable sending up distant fume signals from a acold country of the planet. They were confidently voicing their views and argumentation prescriptions online and successful aesculapian journals. The “framework” for “testing, approving, and regulating vaccines needs to beryllium updated to accommodate non-specific effects,” their squad wrote successful a 2023 review.

And the Trump medication has taken notice.

“They became much strident successful saying that their findings were existent and that the satellite needed to bash thing astir it,” said Kathryn Edwards, a Vanderbilt University vaccinologist who has been alert of Aaby’s enactment since the 1990s. “And they became much aligned with RFK.”

Kennedy, arsenic caput of the Department of Health and Human Services, cited 1 of Aaby’s papers to warrant slashing $2.6 cardinal successful US enactment for Gavi, a planetary confederation of vaccination initiatives. The chopped could effect successful 1.2 cardinal preventable deaths implicit 5 years successful the world’s poorest countries, the nonprofit bureau has estimated. Kennedy has frozen $600 cardinal successful existent Gavi backing implicit mostly debunked vaccine information claims.

Kennedy described the 2017 insubstantial arsenic a “landmark study” by “five highly regarded mainstream vaccine experts” that recovered that girls who received a diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, oregon DTP, changeable were 10 times much apt to dice from each causes than unvaccinated children.

In fact, the survey was acold excessively tiny to confidently marque specified assertions, arsenic Benn acknowledged. In a survey of humanities information that included 535 girls, 4 of those vaccinated against DTP successful a three-month play of infancy died of unrelated causes, portion 1 unvaccinated miss died during that period. A follow-up published by the aforesaid radical successful 2022 recovered that the DTP changeable by itself had nary effect connected mortality. Critics accidental the 2017 study, alternatively than being a landmark, exemplified the troubling shortfalls they comprehend successful the Danish team’s research.

As Aaby and Benn’s US illustration has risen, scientists successful Denmark person acceptable upon the enactment of their compatriots. In quality and diary articles published implicit the past 18 months, Danish statisticians and infectious illness experts person said the duo’s methods were unorthodox, adjacent shoddy, and were structured to enactment preconceived views. A nationalist technological committee is investigating their work.

Stensballe, who worked with Aaby and Benn for 20 years, has been among those voicing doubts.

“It took years to spot what I spot intelligibly today, that determination is simply a unusual concerning signifier successful their work,” Stensballe said successful a telephone interrogation from Copenhagen, wherever she treats children astatine Rigshospitalet, the city’s largest teaching hospital. She said their enactment is afloat of confirmation bias—favoring interpretations that acceptable their hypotheses.

Those hypotheses overlap, successful important areas, with the notions of Kennedy and different vaccine-skeptical officials astatine HHS.

In December, HHS announced the bureau would grant the Bandim radical $1.6 cardinal to survey whether the commencement dose of hepatitis B vaccine weakens babies’ immune systems oregon causes neurological issues.

The researchers program to withhold the vaccine from fractional of the 14,000 newborns successful the study, though the long-established vaccine is 90 percent effectual successful preventing infection. The Bandim radical justifies this determination by noting that impoverished Guinea-Bissau does not yet routinely vaccinate infants against hepatitis B. Given that 1 successful 5 Guinea-Bissauan adults transportation the hepatitis B virus, however, the WHO and galore infectious illness specialists accidental it is unethical to withhold the commencement dose.

Aaby and Benn did not respond to repeated requests for comment. They person vigorously defended their enactment elsewhere.

A Mixed Reputation

Many Danes respect the 2 for their decades of enactment successful Guinea-Bissau, a federation of implicit 2 cardinal radical where, arsenic successful overmuch of Africa, babe mortality has plunged implicit the past 5 decades. There’s adjacent a novel, the 2013 Danish thriller The Arc of the Swallow, featuring a firm crippled to execution a idiosyncratic quality intelligibly based connected Aaby. The company’s goal: to support him from publishing information showing deadly effects from the DTP shot. Benn has said she gave the writer the thought for the book.

Aaby and Benn person trained astir 50 scientists done their Bandim Health Project, named for a territory of Bissau, Guinea-Bissau’s capital. The probe radical has published implicit 1,000 world papers and won technological prizes. The Danish king knighted Benn past year. Their conception of non-specific vaccine effects gained capable traction to merit a abbreviated section successful the 2023 variation of Plotkin’s Vaccines, the authoritative substance of vaccinology.

Yet Danish wellness authorities person ne'er followed Aaby and Benn’s vaccine advice. They inactive connection vaccines based connected inactivated viruses and bacteria, connected a docket that Kennedy mostly shifted the US to successful January. (A national justice connected March 16 temporarily blocked those changes.) Danish vaccine authorities are considering the summation of 2 of the shots Kennedy sought to driblet from the US schedule—against rotavirus and respiratory syncytial virus, oregon RSV.

“What’s important is that Christine doesn’t person power connected our vaccine policy,” said Anders Hviid, main epidemiologist astatine Statens Serum Institut, the Danish equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hviid—who knows Benn, arsenic bash astir members of the tiny Danish vaccine fraternity—has contributed to galore vaccine information studies, including a 2019 insubstantial that recovered nary nexus betwixt measles-mumps-rubella, oregon MMR, vaccination and autism. Kennedy tried unsuccessfully to get a diary to retract a caller Hviid survey showing nary nexus betwixt aluminum-adsorbed vaccines and allergies oregon neurodevelopmental disorders.

In a 2023 podcast with Tracy Beth Høeg, the Danish American sports medicine doc and Covid vaccine skeptic who led the FDA’s cause regularisation from December until she was fired connected May 15, Benn said she had vaccinated her lad and daughter, present successful their precocious twenties, nether the implicit Danish docket of vaccines. Like the US schedule, Denmark’s includes a little reactive signifier of the DTP changeable known arsenic DTaP.

These vaccines aren’t unsafe to kids successful well-off countries similar the US and Denmark, she said. But she said she would “never vaccinate my kid according to the US program.” She singled retired the hepatitis B vaccine commencement dose, which her radical plans to trial successful Guinea-Bissau, saying she was “appalled” the CDC recommended a cosmopolitan commencement dose.

RFK Jr.’s hand-picked vaccine advisory committee—which a national justice successful March formed into limbo, questioning its members’ qualifications—withdrew the commencement dose proposal past year.

Compatriots Grow Skeptical

Kennedy’s championing of Aaby and Benn prompted disapproval from Danish scientists that has extended to the morals of the hepatitis B study. “It is disturbing that Danish researchers could transportation retired specified actions involving African children,” Stensballe said.

As of aboriginal May, the survey was paused portion officials from Guinea-Bissau and the African Centers for Disease Control examined it. Public Health curate Quinhin Nantote, who took bureau aft a November coup successful Guinea-Bissau, said successful January helium had nary grounds that the six-member morals committee that signed disconnected connected the survey earlier had ever met to sermon it. The University of Southern Denmark, wherever Benn teaches, besides raised ethical concerns astir the study.

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told KFF Health News the projected survey was “based connected the highest technological and ethical standards” and “represents the world’s archetypal and possibly lone accidental to trial the wide wellness effects” of the hepatitis B vaccine.

It’s lone 1 country of the couples’ probe that is nether scrutiny.

In 2024, Danish doc and writer Charlotte Strøm published an nonfiction noting that the Bandim radical scientists had failed to people information they’d collected that contradicted their predominant claims that the vaccine caused precocious mortality successful infants.

Strøm called it “an ethical and technological scandal,” and it led to an investigative bid by the quality outlet Weekendavisen. In February, the University of Southern Denmark forwarded its probe into the duo’s imaginable withholding of DTP information to the Danish Agency for Higher Education’s Board connected Research Misconduct.

In effect to the Weekendavisen articles, Aaby and Benn pushed retired a mentation of the study. They said they hadn’t sought to people it earlier due to the fact that 1 coauthor died and different near the task aft getting pregnant.

“This is simply a spot fishy,” said Henrik Støvring, a statistician astatine the University of Southern Denmark and Aarhus University who coauthored with Strøm and others an investigation challenging the methodology of objective trials conducted by Benn and Aaby.

In January, a insubstantial by Hviid and 3 different Danish infectious illness researchers questioned whether Aaby and Benn had really proved that vaccines had atrocious oregon bully “non-specific effects” beyond preventing the diseases they were designed to counter.

Scholars besides person questions astir Aaby and Benn’s studies of the tuberculosis vaccine, BCG. The brace precocious began a survey successful which babies received a 2nd vaccination with the unrecorded bacterial vaccine, though a akin revaccination survey they conducted immoderate 15 years earlier was stopped aft 18 babies who got the vaccine died, compared with 4 successful the power group, during a four-month span.

The survey was aimed astatine investigating Aaby and Benn’s proposal that the alleged dangers of DTP vaccination could beryllium ameliorated by a changeable soon aft with unrecorded BCG.

Although determination is immoderate grounds that BCG provides a systemic boost to babe immune systems, the WHO does not urge a 2nd BCG dose, Vanderbilt’s Edwards noted. “Given the suspicion engendered with this group, determination should beryllium heightened attraction to this protocol, with meticulous reappraisal of their enactment successful Africa by the African authorities,” she said.

The Big Controversy

Aaby and Benn’s astir arguable presumption is their stance connected DTP, 1 of the astir wide provided vaccines successful the world. True grounds of its harm would beryllium vitally important. And experts reason that probe by others has not supported Benn and Aaby’s thesis.

One large caller study, involving astir 55,000 newborns successful Ghana and Tanzania, recovered that some BCG and DTP vaccines enhanced the endurance of babies. The authors of the insubstantial submitted it to a diary and fought agelong and hard with Benn, who happened to beryllium a adjacent reviewer. They yet resubmitted the insubstantial to different diary to get it published successful 2022, said coauthor Emily Smith, an adjunct prof of planetary wellness astatine the Milken Institute School of Public Health astatine George Washington University.

Benn’s attack “involves splitting up proceedings information a clump of antithetic ways utilizing a clump of antithetic methods,” she said.

“If you divided up the data” capable ways, she said, “you’re going to extremity up with possibly reasoning you recovered something.”

Hviid said that Benn and Aaby continuously modify their hypotheses to acceptable caller information adjacent erstwhile the patterns they observe whitethorn person popped up by chance. Most of the footnotes successful their studies and sentiment pieces notation to their ain work, helium noted.

“They’ve been talking astir their paradigm for years,” Hviid said. “But erstwhile you look astatine the numbers, it’s conscionable a location of cards. There’s thing there.”

To analyse their galore hypotheses astir the interactions of vitamins and vaccines, “hundreds of thousands of African babies person been tested,” Stensballe said. “Is that ethical?”

Aaby and Benn asked the editors of the diary Vaccine to retract Strøm and Støvring’s paper. The petition was denied.

The Danish Influence successful America

The Bandim group’s power connected US argumentation has roots successful the Covid pandemic, erstwhile Benn befriended Høeg, who had earned a PhD successful epidemiology and nationalist wellness from the University of Copenhagen successful 2014 for a survey of oculus disease. In a bid of YouTube broadcasts, they bonded implicit skepticism astir Covid vaccines and lockdowns. Benn argued that mRNA vaccines were insufficiently studied and that Covid should beryllium allowed to tally its people among kids. Høeg landed an adjunct professorship astatine the University of Southern Denmark, wherever Benn holds a elder position, successful April 2023.

Høeg did not respond to a question astir whether she was progressive successful the CDC determination to money Benn’s hepatitis B study. Benn and Aaby besides received $1.8 cardinal from the Pershing Square Foundation, cofounded by Bill Ackman, an state of President Trump who is skeptical of the US vaccine schedule. Ackman did not respond to requests for comment.

Emails that Weekendavisen newsman Gunver Lystbæk Vestergård obtained from the University of Southern Denmark showed that Benn secured the assistance aft communicating with anti-vaccine CDC officials Lyn Redwood and astir the clip the agency’s Advisory Committee connected Immunization Practices was preparing to halt recommending hepatitis B vaccination for US newborns.

Yet during a nationalist statement with Støvring connected December 4, Benn said quality reports had dried up each backing for her research. “You person virtually closed our tract station,” she said.

Aaby’s History

An anthropologist by training, Aaby, 81, has cultivated the representation of a persecuted Galileo, Hviid said, “with america successful the relation of the dogmatic clergy.”

Aaby wrote successful 1998 that helium was “exploring and making consciousness of the unknown” portion astir of his colleagues’ enactment was “trivial.” At the December debate, helium said Støvring’s enactment was “incredibly stupid.”

The Bandim Health Project’s survey country covers six mediocre districts, present with astir 200,000 inhabitants, astir a 3rd of the capital. The researchers accidental they person collected wellness and socioeconomic information from residents for much than 30 years.

Stensballe’s struggle with Benn and Aaby came to a caput successful 2015 arsenic the squad completed a survey of 4,262 Danish babies comparing those who got a BCG vaccine astatine commencement with those who didn’t. Aaby was definite that his African probe connected vaccines would beryllium duplicated successful the developed world.

The Danish BCG survey showed nary quality successful hospitalization rates betwixt the 2 groups. But Benn and Aaby combed the information for different answers, known arsenic secondary findings, and leaped upon a examination that showed little hospitalization rates successful babies whose mothers had been vaccinated against BCG decades earlier, Stensballe recalled.

She recovered that troubling. “If the superior result is negative, the proceedings is negative,” she said. In different words, portion reworking information volition inevitably find immoderate affirmative result, a study’s conclusions should beryllium based connected the questions it was designed to answer.

The mode successful which Aaby and Benn airs questions sows unnecessary doubt, said Arthur Reingold, a prof emeritus of epidemiology astatine the University of California-Berkeley.

“Some of the questions they suggest to reply are important but tin ne'er beryllium answered successful my lifetime,” helium said, “and not by an ethical survey done successful the existent world.”

“And successful the meantime,” helium added, “babies volition miss vaccines and get sick and dice of preventable illness.”

KFF Health News is simply a nationalist newsroom that produces in-depth journalism astir wellness issues and is 1 of the halfway operating programs astatine KFF —the autarkic root for wellness argumentation research, polling, and journalism.