The proposed infant trial has been branded unethical as criticism mounts, yet Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remains committed to funding it — with the money already allocated.
One number sits at the center of a gathering storm: $1.6 million. The CDC has allocated that sum for a study examining the alleged harms of the hepatitis B vaccine.
According to reporting from Ars Technica published in October 2026, the agency is reportedly poised to fund the trial connected to that study — research that would expose babies to a virus the outlet describes as deadly. That framing is what has turned a modest federal line item into a flashpoint. Health agencies commission vaccine studies constantly; ones that would place infants in contact with a lethal pathogen do not come around often. The gap between the allocation, which is settled, and a finalized funding decision, which per the report is not, is where the dispute currently lives.
Opposition is escalating in parallel. The proposed trial has already been branded 'unethical,' and outrage is growing over the very design of the research: deliberately placing infants at risk from a virus that can be fatal. For vaccine researchers, that design choice — rather than the study of alleged harms itself — appears to be where an accepted line has been crossed.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remains the project's champion. The report describes him as still eager to fund the trial, with 'still' doing quiet work in that phrasing: the effort has persisted even as criticism has mounted around it.
The concrete marker to watch is the $1.6 million. Whether it converts into a running trial — or whether the ethics backlash forces a retreat — will show up in the funding decision, not the rhetoric.
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