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HHS officials would not confirm that a study protocol leaked on Thursday by Inside Medicine represented the study design. That protocol drew comparisons to the infamous Tuskegee study of syphilis because it failed to include testing for hepatitis B among most mothers in the trial and would thus effectively ensure that the life-shortening disease would be transmitted to unvaccinated babies. “The protocol provides no ethical justification to withhold from vulnerable infants a lifesaving vaccine,” says Wilbur H. Chen of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, a former member of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel.