Two Washington, D.C., families have filed a federal lawsuit accusing the United States government of secretly enrolling their infants in a mid‑1960s experimental RSV vaccine trial and failing to inform their parents, according to the complaint. The suit names two boys, Ross Otto Hambrick and Victor Marcellus King, who attorneys say received doses of a concentrated formulation known as "Lot 100" and later died in January 1967. Lawyers led by Ben Crump say the boys’ lung tissue was preserved and later used to study what went wrong, and they are asking a federal court for money, disclosure and accountability nearly six decades later.
What the complaint says
The complaint was filed in federal court under the Federal Tort Claims Act and, according to a release from the plaintiffs’ legal team, alleges the National Institutes of Health and associated researchers targeted Black infants from low‑income families for the Lot 100 tests in 1965–66. Attorneys on the case include Ben Crump, William H. Murphy Jr., Carol Lexing Powell, Malcolm P. Ruff and Nabeha Shaer, who say the families were never told their children were research subjects. In a press release, the legal team said the families "deserve the truth, accountability, and justice." Ben Crump Law
Names, dates and the Lot 100 connection
The suit centers on two infants identified as Ross Otto Hambrick and Victor Marcellus King, both of whom died in January 1967 after developing severe respiratory illness, the complaint says. It alleges the babies were among the youngest subjects given the experimental Lot 100 vaccine at a Children’s Hospital clinic in Washington and that autopsies removed and preserved lung tissue that later informed laboratory research. Those allegations are laid out in reporting and the court filing, which also link the data to RSV vaccines and antibody products approved by regulators in 2023. The Washington Informer
How the Lot 100 experiments fit into the record
Investigative reporting has documented how the Lot 100 trials in the 1960s were run at several sites, including a Children’s Hospital clinic, military bases and an institution called Junior Village, and how a 1966 RSV outbreak raised early warnings that the vaccine might worsen disease in some children. Decades later researchers used preserved tissue and blood samples from affected children to study what went wrong with the formalin‑inactivated vaccine, work that investigators say helped steer modern RSV science. Undark
What the families want
The plaintiffs are seeking financial damages, full disclosure about who authorized and ran the trials, and an accounting of how the children’s tissue was handled and shared, their lawyers say. The legal team frames the suit as an effort to force transparency from federal agencies and to win recognition and compensation for families that say they were never told of their children’s roles in research. Ben Crump Law
Legal hurdles ahead
The suit was filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which waives sovereign immunity in certain circumstances but also imposes procedural requirements, including administrative‑claim steps and statutory exceptions that can narrow plaintiffs’ paths to damages. Those procedural rules, along with exceptions such as the FTCA's discretionary‑function and other limits, have shaped prior suits against federal agencies and can complicate litigation for years. Legal Information Institute
Why this case resonates now
The lawsuit revives questions about informed consent, racial targeting and the ethical legacy of mid‑century medical research, issues that have surfaced repeatedly in U.S. history and scholarship. Reporting tracing the Lot 100 failures shows researchers later used tissue samples from the infants to explore vaccine‑associated enhanced respiratory disease. Undark Investigators say that work informed the safer RSV vaccines and monoclonal antibody products that regulators cleared in 2023. CDC
What’s next
Attorneys held a news conference in Washington last Thursday and said they will press for discovery and agency records as the case moves forward while the government prepares any response. The Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment about the filing, according to initial reporting, and plaintiffs’ lawyers say this suit is aimed at forcing agencies to turn over records that families say were hidden for decades. The Washington Informer
