Suit Says Black Infants Were Subjected to Experimental Vaccine Without Consent

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/28/us/rsv-vaccine-testing-lawsuit.html

archive link: https://archive.ph/W6lnf

The families of two Black infants who were unknowingly enrolled as test subjects in a mid-1960s vaccine trial for a respiratory virus and died shortly afterward have sued the United States government.

Ross Otto Hambrick and Victor Marcellus King were just a few months old when they were administered a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., at a children’s clinic in Washington, D.C., between 1965 and 1966 without their families’ knowledge or consent, according to a lawsuit filed on May 22. Both died from the disease, coupled with bacterial pneumonia, about a year later, when Ross Otto was 14 months old and Victor 16 months.

Their families are now accusing the federal government of wrongful death, lack of informed consent and civil battery in a lawsuit filed on May 22. They are also asking for an unspecified amount of financial relief, because sample tissues taken from the boys’ autopsies were crucial to developing the R.S.V. vaccine that is now used around the world.

The lawsuit is in response to a 2023 investigation by Undark Magazine, a nonprofit digital magazine affiliated with M.I.T., which discovered Victor and Ross Otto’s names in a doctor’s government-issue laboratory notebook along with a long paper trail of records. The families were not aware of the connection to the study until a reporter from the magazine contacted them.