Illinois Professor Conducted Illegal Secret Herpes Vaccine Testing In Hotel Rooms

An Illinois professor conducted illegal herpes vaccine testing on at least eight people in several hotel rooms, according to an investigative report by Kaiser Health News published Tuesday.

The professor, William Halford, taught at Southern Illinois University (SIU) and conducted the experiments at a nearby Holiday Inn Express and a Crowne Plaza Hotel in 2013 — he conducted a similar experiment in St. Kitts in 2016 without alerting U.S. or St. Kitts and Nevis authorities.

Halford, who died this year from cancer, conducted the tests in secret and with no safety oversight. The Department of Health and Human Services said it was investigating the matter with the university, which receives federal funding.

SIU responded to federal investigators saying they found Halford was in “serious noncompliance with regulatory requirements and institutional policies and procedures.” The school said it was unaware of some of his experimental practices, despite promoting his research in public relations campaigns.

In addition to administering the vaccine himself without the presence of a medical professional as is required, Halford also flouted federal law by not obtaining written informed consent from patients. It also appeared that Halford wasn’t particularly clear about possible side effects of the vaccine with his patients who already had the disease.

“Furtive unregulated live virus vaccine injections in a Holiday Inn? This is really, really out there,” said Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, an expert in sexually transmitted diseases at John Hopkins University to Kaiser. “Someone in the university had to know that this stuff was going on. If they didn’t, they should have.”

The vaccine contained a live strain of the disease and at least one patient thinks they may have a new type of herpes because of the vaccine. The drug was meant to help temper herpes outbreaks in patients.

The university told federal regulators “if deemed necessary, SIU will develop an effective corrective action plan,” but some people involved in the tests said they felt the school was shutting them out. One woman who was involved in the experiment called the school “dismissive.”

Halford continued his experimentation in St. Kitts in 2016 with the backing of a company he formed with Hollywood filmmaker Agustín Fernández III and multimillion-dollar investment by a company owned by Peter Thiel, a libertarian Silicon Valley investor. Despite the testing in St. Kitts having no regulatory oversight, the company planned to submit the experiment data to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) anyway, in hopes of eventual approval of the drug.

“There’s a tradition of having oversight of human experimentation, and it exists for good reasons,” said former FDA head Robert Califf to Kaiser. “It may be legal to be doing it without oversight, but it’s wrong.”