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Anti-vaxxer David Geier to manage vaccines and autism study

As if the news out of the Robert F Kennedy Jr junta could get any worse, he has named anti-vaxxer David Geier to run the planned vaccines and autism study. I was worried that Kennedy would force a “vaccines cause autism” conclusion, but with Geier in charge, I can guarantee they are going to “prove” that vaccines cause autism.

This post will tell you who David Geier is (along with his recently deceased father, Mark) and what they have done in the anti-vaccine world. Of course, then we need to discuss what RFK Jr is planning with Geier to push false information about vaccines and autism.

Nothing here is good news.

close up shot of fake money

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All about David and Mark Geier

Although this article is about the anti-vaccine David Geier, it also has to include his equally anti-vaccine, and recently deceased, father, Mark.

Mark Geier, MD, had a typical career in medicine until he became fascinated with vaccines and autism. In the early 1970s, while a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, he started dabbling in vaccine safety issues. Since then, Geier has testified in more than 90 vaccine cases before the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP, also known as the Vaccine Court).

His basic shtick was that thimerosal, mercury, and other factors in vaccines caused autism. He got away with all this junk science until a judge ruled, in an NVICP case, that Dr. Geier was “a professional witness in areas for which he has no training, expertise, and experience.”

In another case, the Special Master ruled that “Dr. Geier’s testimony is not reliable, or grounded in scientific methodology and procedure. His testimony is merely subjective belief and unsupported speculation.”

In a third case, the judge stated that “The court is inclined not to allow Dr. Geier to testify before it on issues of Table injuries. Dr. Geier clearly lacks the expertise to evaluate the symptomatology of the Table injuries and render an opinion thereon.”

In other words, like many so-called authorities of the anti-vaccine world, Mark Geier lacks any background or training in any field of biomedicine related to vaccines. He was (and still is) a quack pushing his “subjective beliefs” without any regard to real science.

As we all know, vaccines are not linked to autism, but Mark and David, despite their total lack of education, research, and experience in vaccines, claimed that it was. This would be bad enough. But Mark Geier (and David) engaged in an activity so horrendous that I still can’t believe that they got away with it for so long.

As many of us are aware, a portion of the anti-vaccine world has this extreme level of bias against autistic children. I don’t get it, but it is a thing. These people want to “cure” their children of autism as if it makes their children something less than other children. Most of us reject this treatment of autistic children.

In light of the fear of autism, the Geiers developed a “protocol” for curing autism that used the drug Lupron, which is a synthetic hormone used for chemical castration. I’ll turn to an oldie but goodie from the cantankerous Orac for a description of this junk science:

I’ve written extensively about the Geiers’ quackery before, beginning over five years ago. Basically, somehow the Geiers came up with an idea so wrong it’s not even wrong, a spinoff of the scientifically discredited notion that autism is “mercury toxicity” due to the thimerosal preservative that used to be in many childhood vaccines. Somehow, some way, the Geiers got it in their head that testosterone binds mercury and that decreasing levels of testosterone would, therefore, make chelation therapy work better to get rid of that nonexistent mercury toxicity. Never mind that there’s no evidence that testosterone binds to mercury the way the Geiers claim under physiological conditions.

Worse, in order to get the expensive drug Lupron paid for by third-party payors, the Geiers had a propensity to diagnose many of their patients with “precocious puberty,” whether they met the medical criteria for the diagnosis or not, sometimes whether they had undergone puberty at a normal age or not. Worse, their quackery metastasized to different states, as the Geiers set up a veritable chain of autism treatment clinics promoting their protocol.

Not only is Lupron expensive, but the diagnostic tests that the Geiers had ordered were also pricey, up to $12,000 for the protocol. It’s disgusting junk science to prey upon parents who want to cure their child of autism.

On 27 April 2011, the Maryland Board of Physicians suspended Mark Geier’s medical license, stating that he “endangers autistic children and exploits their parents by administering to the children a treatment protocol that has a known substantial risk of serious harm and which is neither consistent with evidence-based medicine nor generally accepted in the relevant scientific community.” The Board also ruled that Mark Geier misdiagnosed patients, diagnosed patients without sufficient tests, and recommended risky treatments for autism without full informed consent from the parents (that’s called irony).

In case you think that it was just a vendetta against the Geiers by the Maryland Board of Physicians, it was not. The suspension was reaffirmed by that board in May 2011. Then, after a full evidentiary hearing in an appeal, the findings and suspension were upheld. Then, Geier’s licenses to practice medicine in Washington, Virginia, California, Missouri, Illinois, and Hawaii were revoked as well. After all of this, Mark Geier cannot practice medicine in any jurisdiction in the United States.

Also in 2011, son David Geier, who only has a bachelor’s degree in biology, was charged by the Maryland Board of Physicians with practicing medicine without a license and fined $10,000.

David and Mark Geier committed horrific acts against autistic children. Though the parents of these children are not without guilt themselves, they were essentially conned by the Geiers to treat their children with this junk medicine.

These were the reasons why Mark Geier was stripped of his license to practice medicine. It is also the reason why David Geier was charged and fined for practicing medicine without a license.

The facts behind these actions are unchanged — the Maryland Board of Physicians’ decisions regarding the Geiers have not been vacated, changed, or overturned. There has been no change in facts about the Geiers, and they have not been exonerated.

David Geier has continued his pseudoscientific nonsense by publishing “science articles” in various predatory and low-ranked journals about autism and vaccines, most of them coauthored by Mark. Most of the “studies” were poorly designed and statistically useless.

One of these “studies” used data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which I have shown provides little to no evidence about vaccine adverse effects. 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 prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM) said the study was “characterized by serious methodological flaws and their analytic methods were nontransparent making their results uninterpretable.”

close up view of person holding a vaccine

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David Geier and Robert F Kennedy Jr

As I mentioned above, Kennedy has tapped David Geier to lead the study that I had discussed recently to review vaccines and autism. I was not optimistic that the study would be unbiased or provide any scientific evidence supporting a link, but I had secretly hoped that Kennedy would get a real scientist to do the work.

Of course, he did the opposite by getting one of the worst anti-vaccine crackpots out there. David Geier is not a vaccine scientist, he’s not even a scientist. At least his father was an MD, even though his licenses to practice were revoked.

It is obvious to me (or anyone with a science education) that David Geier was hired to find evidence to support the conclusion that vaccines cause autism. That’s not how science works.

In real science, data is accumulated from studies from which a conclusion is developed. I am not exaggerating to state that I think that Geier will exclude any evidence that contradicts his pre-ordained conclusion to “prove” that vaccines cause autism. Of course, we have over 160 real science articles published in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals that firmly show that there is no evidence supporting the vaccines and autism claims.

We have studies that examined whether children who received the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) had a higher rate of autism than those who didn’t get the vaccine — they didn’t.

We have studies that researched whether children who received vaccines with thimerosal had a higher risk of autism — they didn’t.

We have studies that researched whether children who received their vaccines according to the CDC immunization schedule had a higher rate of autism compared to children who were not vaccinated or used some alternative immunization schedule — they didn’t.

But David Geier is going to do everything he can to find data anywhere that supports his beliefs. And he won’t care if the data doesn’t say what he believes. And he will use some mysterious analytical process to make that data fit his beliefs.

The upshot will be that this study will show that vaccines cause autism, and it will frighten parents from vaccinating their children. The recent measles outbreak, which has struck nearly 500 people and children across the USA, will be a drop in the bucket compared to what we will see if vaccination rates fall off a cliff because of this fake study.

Well, I guess I’ll be writing a critique when this “study” appears. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be positive.

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Michael Simpson

Lifetime lover of science, especially biomedical research. Spent years in academics, business development, research, and traveling the world shilling for Big Pharma. I love sports, mostly college basketball and football, hockey, and baseball. I enjoy great food and intelligent conversation. And a delicious morning coffee!