David Geier, a man without a medical degree who once was disciplined by the Maryland State Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license, reportedly will lead a new HHS study to identify whether a relationship between vaccines and autism exists.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long promoted a link between vaccines and autism, despite volumes of data showing the two are not associated.
The news of the HHS study comes as measles cases total nearly 330 in Texas and outbreaks have been reported in numerous other states, while Kennedy has downplayed the role of vaccination.
David Geier and his father Mark Geier, MD, are known for several discredited studies claiming that thimerosal, a preservative containing low levels of ethylmercury used in some vaccines, increased the risk of autism. (Thimerosal has been reduced or eliminated from vaccines for decades, and all vaccines recommended for children 6 and younger are available in formulations that do not contain thimerosal.)
"The studies were poorly done; they were full of confounding variables," Paul Offit, MD, of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told MedPage Today.
One study used data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The American Academy of Pediatrics warned clinicians about the study, saying it contained "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements," and failed to show a connection between thimerosal and autism.
Another evaluated the CDC's Vaccine Safety Datalink to study diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTaP) vaccines and autism. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) said it was "characterized by serious methodological flaws and their analytic methods were nontransparent making their results uninterpretable."
David and Mark Geier also "promoted bogus and potentially dangerous therapies for autism," Offit observed, combining leuprorelin (Lupron), a synthetic hormone that suppresses testosterone production, with chelation.
"It basically was chemical castration to delay puberty and chelation therapy to rid your body of the heavy metals that presumably were causing your autism," Offit said. "For that, the Maryland Department of Health censured David Geier for practicing medicine without a license."
David Geier never held a license to practice any health occupation, according to the Maryland state board. He has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Maryland and was "on staff" at his father's clinical practice, known as the Genetic Centers of America. Mark Geier lost his medical license in Maryland and other states.
So why was David Geier chosen to lead a new HHS study?
"It seems the goal of this administration is to prove that vaccines cause autism even though they don't," noted Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, a nonprofit group that funds autism research. "They are starting with the conclusion and looking to validate it. That's not how science is done," Singer wrote in an email to MedPage Today.
"There are many database studies using data from all over the world -- Sweden, Denmark, Great Britain, and the U.S. -- that the Institute of Medicine has found persuasive, but the IOM has dismissed the Geiers' past work as being so flawed as to be uninterpretable. My concern is that we will get more of the same."
Dozens of studies have looked at autism and vaccines and none of them show a link, Singer pointed out.
"We have studied whether children who received MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccine had a higher rate of autism than those who didn't get the shot or those who separated the shots into three individual shots. They didn't. We have studied whether children who received vaccines with thimerosal had a higher rate of autism. They didn't," she stated.
"We have studied whether children who got their vaccines according to the CDC schedule had a higher rate of autism compared to those who used some alternative schedule or to those who are unvaccinated. They don't," she added.
"The data here are clear. The question has been asked and answered," Singer emphasized. "We need to ask new questions if we want to find the causes of autism and develop treatments that will improve people's lives."
During Kennedy's HHS confirmation hearings, Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD (R-La.), pressed him to disavow his past claims about vaccines and autism. Kennedy did not respond directly but indicated that "if the data is there," he would change his mind.
"I think one can expect that with David Geier at the helm and Kennedy as head of HHS, we may soon see a study that shows that vaccines cause autism, even though they don't -- which will further scare parents, further cause them to forego vaccines for their children, and further increase the rates of vaccine-preventable diseases," Offit said.
Judy George covers neurology and neuroscience news for MedPage Today, writing about brain aging, Alzheimer’s, dementia, MS, rare diseases, epilepsy, autism, headache, stroke, Parkinson’s, ALS, concussion, CTE, sleep, pain, and more. Follow