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

The work of Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn has long been controversial. Until Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the U.S. health policy chief, most vaccine scientists tended to ignore it. That has changed.

By: Arthur Allen

Outlets: KFF Health News

Published: May 18, 2026

Words: 2,680

Last Updated: 2 months, 1 week ago

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In 1996, Guinea-Bissau seemed like an ideal research post for budding pediatrician Lone Graff Stensballe. Her supervisor, a fellow Dane named Peter Aaby, had spent nearly two decades collecting data on 100,000 people living in the mud brick homes of the West African country’s capital.

Aaby and his partner, Christine Stabell Benn, believed that the years of research in the impoverished country had yielded a major discovery about vaccines — and what they described …

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