A constant figure in the anti-vaccine movement that contributed to modeling the thought of the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On a possible link with autism he joined his department to work on a study that examines the theory for a long time, according to people who are familiar with the matter.
The new analyst, David Geier, has published numerous articles in medical literature that tries to tie mercury in the vaccines to autism. In 2012, the state authorities in Maryland discovered that they practiced medicine without a license together with his father, Mark Geier, who was a doctor at the time.
The Maryland authorities also suspended Mark Geier’s medical license following statements that they endangered children with autism and exploited their parents, according to state registers.
Federal judges rejected their research on autism and vaccines as too unreliable to get up in court.
David Geier’s new government role has stunned public health experts, who had already expressed concern about the decisions of Mr. Kennedy to cancel a meeting of longtime vaccines and cut the subsidies focused on understanding the outcome of the vaccine.
In addition, David Geier’s involvement in the research of the government increases their fears that the trust of vaccines could be further eroded, especially after Kennedy’s recent embrace of questionable alternative treatments for measles during the temptular extension in Texas.
“If we change the hesitation and immunization rates, vaccine, we will see more outbreaks of diseases predictable from the vaccine,” said dr. Christopher Beyrer, director of the Duke Global Health Institute. “That’s how it works.”
Several experts have said that naming David Geier to work on a study on vaccine safety preordinate the result, how to make a basketball referee appear in the shirt of a team.
“You would think that you would like a fresh eye,” said Edward L. Hunter, former head of the Washington office of the centers for the control and prevention of diseases.
“This is not a new eye. They have already published their results and spending all this time and money will not help anyone. I am quite sure that they will come to the same conclusion.”
An official of the Department of Health and Human Services of Kennedy refused to comment. Two spokesperson for the White House did not respond to a commentary request. David Geier has not answered AE -mail or calls that require a comment.
Mary Holland, CEO of the defense of children’s health, the non-vaccinian non-profit, Mr. Kennedy ran until his presidential offer, praised David Geier on his website on Wednesday, describing him as “a brilliant, extremely well-informed researcher with deep experience on Mercury”.
(During the weekend, federal officials ordered the non -profit to remove a fake CDC web page that suggests a connection between vaccines and autism.)
David Geier is listed in the Department of Health and Human Services Directory as “Senior Data Analyst”. The news of his role in the agency was initially reported by the Washington Post.
At the beginning of this month, federal officials announced plans for a large study to review if there was a connection between vaccines and autism. Trump expressed support for HHS officials who wanted to revisit the problem, citing increases in autism diagnoses in children over the decades.
About 1 out of 36 children have a diagnosis of autism, according to CDC data collected in 11 states, compared to 1 out of 150 children in 2000.
Many scientists believe that the increase is partly due to a greater awareness of the disorder and changes in the way in which it is diagnosed by medical professionals, although even genetic and environmental factors can play a role.
The Senate confirmed Mr. Kennedy largely because he conquered the president of the Senate Health Committee, Bill Cassidy, republican of Louisiana, who is a doctor and a strong supporter of childhood vaccines.
Cassidy said that further research on any alleged link between vaccines and autism would be a waste of money and a distraction from studies that could shed light on the “real reason” for the increase in autism rates.
Thursday, Cassidy said he wanted to confirm the role of David Geier, apart from the news. He said he had breakfast with Mr. Kennedy on Thursday, but said the topic did not emerge.
During one of his confirmation hearings, Kennedy reported Mr. Cassidy, citing a study by an ecosystem of vaccines critics who demonstrated a connection between vaccines and autism.
David Geier comes from a similar circle of researchers. Together with his father, he played a training role in Mr. Kennedy’s thought.
Kennedy interviewed David Geier for an essay in 2005, “Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal”, in which he accused the CDC of deliberately hiding the data of the vaccine, under titles of the chapters such as “conspiracy” and “the lid”.
Kennedy described Geiers’ belief that Thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury used in some vaccines, was connected to childhood autism. Since then the preservative has been removed from most childhood vaccines but is still used in some shots of influence.
In an article by Rolling Stone called “Deadly Immunity”, Mr. Kennedy attributed to the Geiers that they were among the few who had gained access to the data of the CDC vaccine, which said they “demonstrated a powerful correlation between Thimerosal and neurological damage in children”. (The magazine later withdrawn the article, but did not develop.)
Almost a decade later, in the book of Mr. Kennedy, “Thimerosal: Let the Science speaks”, paid tribute to the Geiers, mentioning them almost 250 times. He defined them as a “father-child team of independent medical researchers” which he had “published widely on the subject of Thimerosal and its potential link with neurological development disorders, in particular autism”.
Kennedy recognized that the two had become “disputes of disputes in the debate on vaccine safety”.
“The Geiers have published no less than thirteen epidemiological studies of associations between Thimerosal and health effects in US populations, using accepted statistical practices,” wrote Kennedy in the book.
On a podcast in 2022, Kennedy accredited the search for Geiers for showing that vaccines “had nothing to do with” a decline in infectious diseases over the decades. “It was all an illusion,” said Kennedy, attributing the decrease to improve the toilet -Sanitarian services and nutrition.
Geiers’ work has been repeatedly discredited by other scientists and decisions of the Federal Court.
A vast revision of the alleged link between vaccines and autism in 2004 by the Institute of Medicine, a group of elites of doctors and researchers, launched Geiers’ studies. The review found that their work is healed by defects “that make their results uninterprediable”.
The institute’s report on a connection with the Morbillo shots said: “The committee concludes that the tests favor the refusal of a causal relationship between mmr vaccine and autism”.
In 2011, Maryland Medical Board accused David Geier of practicing medicine without a license together with his father in a clinic of Rockville, MD., Clinic for Children with Autism.
A mother of a 10 -year -old boy with Autism opposed when, according to reports, David Geier ordered 24 different blood tests for his son.
His father, Mark Geier, lost his medical license in 2012. The registers in that case indicate that both father and son promoted a theory that Thimerosal caused autism.
State authorities discovered that the geiers had offered care with drugs that block puberty. For some patients, they offered Chelation, a procedure to remove heavy metals from the blood, show records. David Geier has been assessed a $ 10,000 fine.
The judges rejected the efforts of the geiers to serve as the security experts of vaccines in court. The registers show that the judges contested the invoices of the father-child team for hundreds of thousands of dollars relating to the services they provided as experts for a specialized court for vaccine injuries.
The judges mentioned the lack of qualifying by David Geier, including a degree in biology and raised concerns about the credibility of his father.
In 2016, judge George L. Hastings Jr. said David Geier was not qualified to make an opinion of experts in a case of the national vaccine compensation court.
Judge Hastings said that his report “is neither useful nor relevant, because he is not qualified as an expert regarding the issues he discusses.”
In a review of two Geier studies this week, Jeffrey S. Morris, director of the biostatistic division at the University of Pennsylvania, said he had found what seemed to be a numerical prestigious game that made it seemed that the vaccines caused a peak in autism.
“When I look at these two studies, they are so fatally imperfect that I have serious concerns that any study he is about to design is going” to be quite rigorous, he said, “to produce valid results”.
To Mr. Hunter, previously of the CDC, the decision to spend federal funds for a new study of a brazen theory would have come to the cost of a significant discovery.
Since he became secretary to health, Kennedy has chaired the cuts that involve research in almost all aspects of health care and diseases. Thursday announced a massive reorganization and reduction of the workforce from 82,000 to 62,000.
“For me, the great shame is that with the budget cuts, we are not increasing research on what is actually causing autism,” said Hunter. “And if you are worried about the preventable disease with the vaccine, this is such a clear setback.”
Michael Gold Relationships contributed by Washington. Alain Delaquerière Research contribution. Jeremy Singer-Vine analysis of the data provided.