Guinea-Bissau stops vaccine study funded by Trump administration

Guinea-Bissau's foreign minister has said his government has stopped a study funded by the Trump administration aiming to evaluate side effects of the

life-saving hepatitis B vaccine, including any links to autism.



The West African country, one of the region's poorest, has high rates of hepatitis B, and the prospective study had drawn an outcry from scientists and international health bodies because only half the newborns in the trial would get the vaccine at birth. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros

Ghebreyesus said it was not ethical.



Guinea-Bissau last month suspended the trial pending an ethical review. Critics had said it was being used to test theories linking vaccines to autism, long promoted by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr but contradicted by scientific evidence.



Foreign Minister Joao Bernardo Vieira said in an interview on Tuesday that the study had been closed, citing concerns raised by the scientific community as well as U.S. senators.