The suit alleges both infants died in January 1967 without their parents ever knowing they were test subjects; their tissue samples were later used to develop the RSV vaccines now generating billions in revenue
WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 22, 2026) — Nationally renowned civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump, alongside co-counsel William H. Murphy, Jr. and Jason P. Foster of Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, attorneys Nabeha Shaer and Brooke Cluse of Ben Crump Law, PLLC, and Carol D. Powell Lexing of the Law Office of Carol D. Powell Lexing & Associates, PLC, today filed a federal lawsuit against the United States of America in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. The suit is brought on behalf of the families of Ross Otto Hambrick and Victor Marcellus King, two Black infants secretly enrolled as test subjects in a National Institutes of Health (“NIH”)-sponsored experimental RSV vaccine trial, “Lot 100,” in 1965–66, without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
According to the complaint, two-month-old Ross Otto Hambrick and four-month-old Victor Marcellus King received the first dose of Lot 100 in the winter of 1965–66. The complaint alleges that by December 1966, both boys were gravely ill with RSV. Victor died on January 1, 1967. Ross Otto died the following morning, January 2, 1967. According to the complaint, each died in a hospital, lungs ravaged by an immune response that the vaccine had catastrophically misprogrammed. The complaint further states that a Catholic priest baptized Ross Otto through an oxygen tent in his final hours.
According to the complaint, the road to “Lot 100” began with an earlier NIH failure. Researchers administered an initial experimental RSV vaccine to at least 54 children at a hospital known for its largely Black patient population — and at least 10 required hospitalization, a rate that the complaint alleges head NIH respiratory virus researcher Dr. Robert Chanock later acknowledged was “possibly outside the range of normal.” Rather than halt the program, the complaint alleges the NIH partnered with Charles Pfizer & Company to produce a new version of the failed vaccine — this time made 100 times more concentrated — which became known as Lot 100. According to the complaint, what followed was a strikingly inadequate safety review: Lot 100 was tested on just four mice, four guinea pigs, and 25 monkeys before the NIH deemed the results “satisfactory” and cleared it for human trials. The complaint alleges those human trials were conducted almost exclusively on poor Black infants in Washington, D.C.
The complaint alleges that tissue samples were taken from the boys’ autopsies and preserved without the knowledge or consent of their families, and that decades later, NIH researchers retrieved those samples to unlock the precise immunological mechanism behind Lot 100’s failure. According to the complaint, that knowledge directly informed the safety protocols underlying the RSV vaccines and antibody treatments approved by the FDA in 2023, treatments now expected to generate significant revenue in global sales. As alleged in the complaint, the families of Ross Otto and Victor have never been compensated, acknowledged, or informed of the role their sons’ deaths and tissues played in that scientific breakthrough.
“This is one of the most egregious examples of racial exploitation in the history of American medicine,” Crump said. “Ross Otto Hambrick and Victor Marcellus King were not volunteers. They were Black babies whose lives were treated as expendable by the very government that was supposed to protect them. Their deaths were not accidents; they were the foreseeable result of an NIH program that chose the most powerless children it could find, injected them with an inadequately tested and dangerous experimental vaccine without telling their parents, and then, when those babies died, preserved their tissue to mine for scientific profit. The families of Ross Otto and Victor have waited nearly sixty years for justice. This lawsuit is the first step toward finally providing it.”
“The historical record is damning and unambiguous,” said co-counsel William H. Murphy, Jr. of Murphy, Falcon & Murphy. “The NIH knew the prior RSV vaccine had failed. They knew Lot 100 had barely been tested. They knew these infants were at the highest possible risk. And they pressed forward anyway — in communities of color, on children whose parents were never given the chance to say no. Decades of silence cannot erase what happened to Ross Otto and Victor. We intend to hold the United States accountable.”
The complaint further alleges that NIH researchers received multiple warning signals during the Lot 100 trial, including a November 1966 conference at which evidence was presented that the vaccine was making children violently ill rather than protecting them, yet the trial continued. Victor and Ross Otto received their third and final dose of Lot 100 even as the RSV outbreak that would kill them was already underway.
The complaint details how, beginning in 1962, NIH researchers led by Dr. Robert M. Chanock launched an RSV vaccine program, initially administering an experimental vaccine to over fifty children. According to the complaint, after that initial trial failed at alarmingly high hospitalization rates, NIH enlisted a pharmaceutical company to develop a more concentrated version, designated Lot 100. The complaint alleges that animal testing before human trials consisted of just four mice, four guinea pigs, and 25 monkeys.
“For nearly sixty years, the Hambrick and King families have carried a grief they didn’t fully understand — not knowing their sons and siblings were used as test subjects, not knowing their tissue was taken, not knowing their babies and brothers helped build a billion-dollar industry,” said co-counsel Carol D. Powell Lexing. “Ross Otto and Victor never had a chance to speak for themselves. We will speak for them.”
The lawsuit asserts claims of wrongful death, lack of informed consent, and civil battery, and is styled as Hambrick, et al. v. United States of America, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, Southern Division.
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Through his work, nationally renowned civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump has spearheaded a legal movement to better protect the rights of marginalized citizens. He has led landscape-changing civil rights cases and represented clients in a wide range of areas including civil rights, personal injury, labor and employment, class actions, and more. Ben Crump Law is dedicated to holding the powerful accountable. For more information, visit bencrump.com.
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