(editor’s note: from our inbox. Long but much worthwhile information)
STATEMENT: The Trump Administration Is Putting An Anti-Vax Quack Scientist and Fake Doctor In Charge of “Researching” Long-Debunked Claims That Vaccines Cause Autism
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 27, 2025
Contact: Parker Williamson, Press Secretary press@protectourcareiowa.org
Paging Dr. Cassidy: Republicans Who Bought What RFK Jr. Was Selling Will Bear Responsibility For More Sick and Dead Americans.
Donald Trump and RFK Jr. just took their boldest step yet to push their anti-vaccine agenda. According to reports, David Geier, a discredited researcher and vaccine skeptic, will lead a Department of Health and Human Services study into the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. The Maryland State Board of Physicians disciplined Geier for practicing without a medical license, as he had been improperly diagnosing and treating children with autism. A vocal anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, Geier’s protocols included Lupron, a hormone suppressor used for prostate cancer, precocious puberty, and to chemically castrate sex offenders. In addition, similar to RFK Jr., Geier has participated in anti-vaccine litigation against the federal government.
Geier’s disproven claims align with Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr.’s absurd views on immunizations. During RFK’s confirmation process, he gave “assurances” to Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) that he would trust the science, but he immediately walked it all back when he got confirmed to lead HHS, ramping up his efforts to fuel disinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines.
In response, Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach issued the following statement:
“Senator Cassidy got played. After saying anything to Cassidy and other on-the-fence senators to get confirmed, RFK Jr. is escalating his efforts to undermine lifesaving vaccine access for the American people. David Geier is a quack who has previously been caught practicing medicine without a license, and now he is leading an HHS study on the dangerous, debunked claim that vaccines cause autism – all thanks to Senator Cassidy’s key vote. RFK Jr. and Donald Trump don’t care about children getting sick and dying from long-eradicated diseases.”
Washington Post: Vaccine Skeptic Hired to Head Federal Study of Immunizations and Autism
By Lena H. Sun and Fenit Nirappil // March 26, 2025
A vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism has been tapped by the federal government to conduct a critical study of possible links between the two, according to current and former federal health officials.
The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have published papers claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked.
David Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license. He is listed as a data analyst in the HHS employee directory.
Public health and autism experts fear that choosing a researcher who has promoted false claims will produce a flawed study with far-reaching consequences. They fear it will undermine the importance of the lifesaving inoculations and further damage trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The government’s premier public health agency has stressed vaccination as the safest and most effective measure to control the spread of some contagious diseases, including the growing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico.
“It seems the goal of this administration is to prove that vaccines cause autism, even though they don’t,” said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds autism research. “They are starting with the conclusion and looking to prove it. That’s not how science is done.”
President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have repeatedly linked vaccines to autism. Kennedy has often cited studies by David Geier and his father, a physician, asserting that their research reveals the negative effects of vaccines.
David Geier said in a brief telephone interview Tuesday he had no comment about whether he has a role in the study, how he was hired, and whether he holds the same views about vaccines and autism as described in his previous research.
“I don’t have any comment to say,” he said. “Talk to the secretary. He’s the person that’s in charge.”
HHS and CDC officials did not respond to emails requesting comment.
Jessica Steier, a public health researcher who leads the nonprofit Science Literacy Lab that scrutinizes research on high-profile health topics, said that the Geiers’ research is riddled with basic flaws and that the pair have “demonstrated patterns of an anti-vaccine agenda.”
“This is a worst-case scenario for public health,” Steier said. “It’s a slap in the face to the decades of actual credible research we have.”
HHS instructed the CDC in early March to conduct the vaccine-autism study. The request came two days after Trump, in an address to a joint session to Congress, described the growing prevalence of autism in American children.
But in recent weeks, HHS officials directed the CDC to turn over vaccine safety data to the National Institutes of Health so that agency could conduct the analysis instead, according to three current and one former federal health officials. Geier was identified as the person who “would be the one analyzing the data,” said one official.
It’s unclear why HHS officials turned to NIH to conduct the study. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has long criticized the CDC and, in particular, vaccine safety.
During Kennedy’s confirmation hearings, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) pressed Kennedy to publicly disavow his past claims about vaccines and autism. Kennedy replied he would do so if presented with data disproving the link, despite the overwhelming body of research that already does.
The information that the CDC has turned over to NIH includes the underlying data from four studies on vaccines and autism published in the 2000s, three current officials said. None of the papers found any link.
Nor have more than two dozen other studies, including a decade-long study of a half-million children in Denmark published in 2019. It showed the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine does not increase the risk of autism, lending strong statistical evidence to what was already medical consensus.
Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and author of a book about his daughter’s autism, said the federal government should focus money and attention on the roles of genetics and early brain development in the condition.
Instead, Hotez said, the agencies are repurposing scarce research dollars that leave “all the oxygen sucked out of the room over phony autism links.”
It’s not clear how or why Geier, who is not a physician and has an undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, was chosen.
Since the 2000s, the Geiers published some studies suggesting a link between thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines that drew public concern, and autism. The preservative had largely been excised from childhood vaccines by 2001.
The journal Science and Engineering Ethics retracted a 2015 paper co-authored by the Geiers that contended public health officials have conflicts of interest in studying whether mercury exposure triggers autism. The journal cited errors and failures to disclose the authors’ own conflicts of interest, including the Geiers’ involvement in a mercury-free-drugs coalition.
In a 2015 interview at a gathering of AutismOne, an organization that promotes the discredited link between vaccines and the condition, David Geier described CDC research on vaccines as compromised. He said the federal government sees its role as increasing vaccine uptake and quashing research that undermines immunization.
“This seems to be ubiquitous, that the government scientists are assigned to do a study, and invariably they find harm,” he said.
In addition to conducting research, Geier helped people who claimed injuries from vaccines seek compensation from the federal government and co-founded an organization that sued federal health officials, alleging harm from the use of thimerosal.
He was charged with practicing medicine without a license in May 2011, just weeks after his father’s license was suspended for allegedly putting autistic children at risk.
The Maryland Board of Physicians said Geier worked with his father using a hormonal drug therapy for prostate cancer and early-onset puberty to treat autistic children. Autism experts say the treatment is unproven and based on the debunked link to mercury in vaccines.
Mark Geier did not respond to a request for comment. An attorney for the Geiers said in 2011 that the treatment may be considered “crazy” but works on especially difficult patients.
The regulators said David Geier improperly played a role in the medical care, and parents assumed he was a doctor. Geier contended his role was administrative.
Then-Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) ousted Geier from a state commission on autism in 2011, saying he was not qualified to serve as a “diagnostician” on the panel.
The Geiers later sued state officials for publicly disclosing private medical information about the family, alleging they did so to embarrass them. A judge sided with the Geiers and ordered officials at the Board of Physicians to pay them millions, but an appellate court overturned the penalties.
In recent years, David and Mark Geier have targeted the use of mercury-containing amalgam fillings in dental care and promoted removal of those fillings.
The American Dental Association says dental amalgam is durable, safe and effective, and removing the fillings to replace them with materials that do not contain mercury is “unwarranted.” In recently published papers about dental amalgams, the Geiers disclosed owning shares in a company developing treatments for “mercury intoxication.” The company is led by a proponent of the claim that vaccines cause autism.
In interviews in 2022, the Geiers described their focus on mercury in dental fillings as a natural outgrowth of their examination of mercury in vaccines.
Elissa Slotkin delivered the Democratic response to DT’s SOTU address. I didn’t watch at the time, but 
From our inbox an important message from Ken Martin, DNC chair –
From the On Tyranny series by 
Blog For Iowa 