The families of two Black infants who died in a 1960s government RSV vaccine trial have filed a federal lawsuit, alleging researchers enrolled the children without parental knowledge or consent. The suit also claims tissue samples from the deceased babies later contributed to the development of modern RSV vaccines.

The families of two Black infants who died during a 1960s experimental RSV vaccine trial have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S., alleging government researchers enrolled the babies in a dangerous medical experiment without their parents' knowledge or consent, The New York Times reported.

The lawsuit, filed May 22 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other researchers, in 1965 and 1966, subjected dozens of infants — most or all of them from low-income Black families — to testing of Pfizer's Lot 100 experimental vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

Two infants, Victor Marcellus King and Ross Otto Hambrick, later died after developing vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease (VAERD), a severe respiratory illness caused by the vaccine.