When it comes to conversations about vaccines and autism, we always have plenty to write about. And the latest news that the Trump administration has tapped David Geier for a study on possible links between immunizations and autism, first reported by the Washington Post, is no exception.
Geier has a long history of promoting the debunked claim of a link between vaccines and autism, STAT and others report. He has published on the topic as recently as 2020. A December 2020 paper lists his affiliation as the Institute of Chronic Illnesses, an organization he founded with his father Mark Geier, court documents say. In 2011, the Maryland State Board of Physicians disciplined Geier for practicing medicine without a license. He’s currently listed in the HHS employee directory as a senior data analyst, the Post reports.
Geier’s first appearance in Retraction Watch was in 2017, when Science and Engineering Ethics, a Springer Nature title, retracted a paper on how conflicts of interest might influence research on the link between vaccines and autism. That paper has been cited 13 times according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
While there’s irony in the retraction of a paper on conflicts of interest for issues with conflicts of interest, the key part of that story is that the journal replaced it with a new version of the paper with an updated conflict of interest statement and changes throughout — and this paper remains intact. It has been cited seven times.
Geier was one of 10 authors on that paper, including his father Mark. Coauthors Brian Hooker and Geir Bjorklund have appeared in Retraction Watch for their own retractions.
Geier’s history with lost papers begins more than a decade earlier, with a 2006 paper withdrawn before it was even officially published, Brian Deer reported in BMJ in 2007 — three years before Retraction Watch was founded:
Last October, Autoimmunity Reviews published online the draft of a seven page paper by reporting laboratory and clinical tests suggesting that thiomersal, a mercury based preservative once routinely added to most vaccines, was the main culprit for a sharp rise in diagnoses of behavioural disorders. The paper was written by Dr Mark Geier, a self employed American geneticist, and his son David. The pair also reported treating autistic children with a hormone product, leuprorelin acetate, which is sometimes prescribed for precocious puberty. They claimed that the drug produced “very significant overall clinical improvements” with “minimal” adverse effects.
But before that draft was finalized, Autoimmunity Reviews, an Elsevier title, withdrew the paper with no specific reason listed. (We’ve criticized Elsevier’s practices for withdrawals, which seem to violate Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines, before.) Deer reported that autism activist Kathleen Seidel had sent a letter to the journal’s editor in chief and entire editorial board detailing issues with the work, including an institutional review board that included the Geiers themselves.
The Trump administration wants to prioritize replicating medical research, Axios and others have reported, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggesting in his confirmation hearing that at least 20 percent of the NIH budget should go toward replication efforts. But studies of a link between vaccines and autism diagnoses have failed to find a connection time and time again.
“We have already done that many times over. It wastes valuable resources to revisit the same question instead of using them to address critical health challenges,” David Higgins, a practicing pediatrician and health services researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, told Axios. “Reexamining settled questions that have already been repeated, replicated, and tested many times is not healthy skepticism; it’s cynicism and science denial.”
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Level 99 Grift. Holy Cow.
Brian Deer, mentioned above, wrote a good book: “The Doctor Who Fooled the World”. There are lawyers behind the grifters, waiting to sue if they get the fake research papers published.
Giving leuprorelin to autistic children is criminal.
So, what is causing Autism ? Is it all in my head ?
There’s pretty solid evidence that new mutations (not inherited from the parents) in a wide array of genes are increased in autistic children over their non-autistic siblings.
The large number of genes and rarity of each individual mutation makes it difficult to go further with this line of investigation–the same problem as for other neurological traits such as schizophrenia–but it’s pretty clear there is a genetic component.
Can you comment on Isaac’s case?
“As part of a custody battle, a Tennessee judge ordered a family to vaccinate all three of their children, all of whom had never been vaccinated. FIVE-year-old Isaac immediately became ill and was eventually diagnosed with severe regressive autism. ”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/isaac-ihben-autism-vaccine-injury/
That doesn’t change the fact that in every single study on autism and vaccines, there have been zero correlation. One child that became ill after vaccination is horrible. That doesn’t change the fact that the incredibly vast majority of children are absolutely fine and now not at risk of other illnesses (or at the very least at a significantly reduced risk). The judge, in their capacity and knowledge from relevant medical professionals, ruled that the children were medically neglected by not being vaccinated.
“Severe regressive autism” does not exist outside of the worm-ridden heads of antivaxxers.
Interesting. When I googled “regressive autism”, it looked like a term of art referring primarily to when a young child seems to develop normally but then regresses, which isn’t that uncommon about autistic children (and in practice, it tends to happen during the time period when childhood vaccines are given, hence the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” reasoning blaming autism on vaccines).
That said, on ScienceDirect, the first references to “regressive autism” are from a review article from “Complementary and Alternative Medicine”, which is certainly a red flag: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/regressive-autism
I don’t have a dog in this fight – but out of curiosity about hearing about Greier, went digging past the first few pages of search results, until I found the other side of the story. It looks ALMOST like history is repeating itself at the CDC. Start here and follow where it leads.
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Key Figure who Vouched for Vaccination Autism Safety Under Investigation for Fraud
by Tony Isaacs
One of the central figures in the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) claims disputing the link between vaccines and autism and other neurological disorders is reported to be under investigation by Danish police after almost $2 million has turned up missing that was supposed to have been spent on research. Dr. Poul Thorsen, one of the researchers involved in two highly publicized autism reports that appeared in the influential New England Journal of Medicine, was accused of fraud last month by the university.
According to reports, Thorsen’s fraud was uncovered as the result of an investigation by Aarhus University and CDC which found that Thorsen had falsified documents and, in violation of university rules, was accepting salaries from both the Danish university and Emory University where he led research efforts to defend the role of vaccines in causing autism and other neurological disorders. Emory University is located in Atlanta near CDC headquarters.
Thorsen was a leading member of a Danish research group that wrote several key studies supporting CDC’s claims that the MMR vaccine and mercury-laden vaccines were safe for children. Thorsen’s 2003 Danish study reported a 20-fold increase in autism in Denmark after that country banned mercury based preservatives in its vaccines. His study concluded that mercury could not be the culprit behind the increase in autism.
The 2003 study has long been criticized and condemned since it failed to disclose or account for increases in reports of autism due to the result of new mandates requiring that autism cases be reported for the first time on the national registry. It is believe that the new mandates and the opening of an autism treatment in Copenhagen accounted for the sudden rise in reported cases after the removal of mercury from vaccines in Denmark.
After Thorsen’s study, CDC and mainstream media were quick to jump on the bandwagon of pointing to the study as proof that mercury-laced vaccines are safe for infants and young children, even at concentrations hundreds of times over the U.S. safety limits. Thorsen’s Danish studies from 2002 and 2003 are widely referred to by groups that dispute the vaccine connection to autism and nervous system disorders. A spokesman for the US Surgeon General’s Office called the reports’ conclusions that no connection exists ‘irrefutable’.
Thorsen, who is a psychiatrist and not a research scientist or toxicologist, used his studies to build a lucrative long-term relationship with CDC. He built a research empire called the North Atlantic Epidemiology Alliances (NANEA) that advertised its close association with CDC. Thorsen and his research staff at the center have churned out numerous research papers, many of which assure the public about vaccine safety. In all, CDC is reported to have paid Thorsen’s center $14.6 million from CDC since 2002.
Earlier this month, Thorsen resigned from his position in the US as adjunct professor at Drexel University in Philadephia. The timing of the investigation and Thorsen’s resignation coincide with a US Court of Federal Claims last Friday, which ruled against parents asserting that the MMR vaccines were responsible for their children’s health problems.
Thorsen’s partner Kreesten Madsen recently came under fire after damning e-mails surfaced showing Madsen working with CDC officials intent on fraudulently cherry picking facts to prove vaccine safety.
Thorsen’s widely referenced research articles have been published in major scientific journals. The validity of the studies and Thorsen’s scientific integrity may force CDC to rethink the vaccine protocols since most of the other key pro vaccine studies cited by CDC rely on the Thorsen’s research group’s work.
Sources included:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/central-figure-in-cdc-vac_b_494303.html
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/03/copenhagen-police-investigating-autism-vaccine-researcher-dr-poul-thorsen-for-fraud.html
http://www.politicolnews.com/cdc-vaccine-fraud-2-million/