News that a major player in the anti-vaccine community may have been tasked by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a study looking for a link between immunizations and autism has been met with incredulity and dropped jaws among vaccine experts and others familiar with the anti-vaccine movement.
The apparent choice of David Geier — who does not have a medical degree and who was disciplined by the State of Maryland’s Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license — to conduct a study looking for the link that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long asserted exists, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, struck many as a surreal choice.
Geier and his father, a physician who lost his medical license in multiple states, promoted claims that use of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines led to an increase in autism diagnoses. A raft of studies has refuted the allegation, and autism rates have not declined in the more than 20 years since thimerosal was phased out of most vaccines in the United States. For a time, the two treated autistic children with unproven therapies, including a drug licensed for prostate cancer that induces chemical castration.
In the early 2000s, Geier and his father were granted access to vaccine safety data maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the grounds they were conducting a study into adverse events following receipt of a vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. But their access was later terminated after officials concluded they were instead trying to mine the data for evidence that the DTaP vaccine triggered higher rates of autism in children who received it and to manipulate the data in ways that could have undermined the confidentiality of the people whose information was in the database.
Geier’s selection was first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post. A source familiar with the plans has confirmed the appointment for STAT, but spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
HHS spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment from STAT. An email sent to a David Geier listed as a “senior data analyst” in the HHS staff directory — and apparently working in the office of the HHS secretary, specifically under the assistant secretary for financial resources — drew no response.
Geier himself refused to comment when reached by the Post, deferring to Kennedy. “Talk to the secretary. He’s the person that’s in charge,” he said.
People who have followed Geier and his father over the years were dumbfounded that he may have been chosen by Kennedy to conduct a study on the notion that childhood vaccines have led to an increase in autism rates.
“It’s like hiring Andrew Wakefield,” said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at UC Law San Francisco who studies the anti-vaccine movement.
Wakefield is the British doctor who alleged that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine triggered autism in some children. That study, published in the Lancet in 1998, was later retracted and Wakefield lost his medical license in 2010 for conducting research on children without the approval or oversight of his hospital’s medical board.
British investigative journalist Brian Deer, author of “The Doctor Who Fooled The World,” a book about Wakefield, couldn’t believe that Geier might have been chosen to conduct a study for HHS.
“My first thought was … is this a hoax?” he said in an interview with STAT. “He has no relevant qualifications. … He’s not qualified to express an opinion on these matters.”
Deer, however, had a theory as to why Geier was chosen.
“If you want an independent source, you’d go to [a place like ] Johns Hopkins… people who have spent their lives doing this stuff. You wouldn’t go to somebody with no qualifications and a long track record of impropriety and incompetence,” he said.
“If you wanted to get in anybody off the street who would come up with the result that Kennedy would like to see, this would be your man. But I just think anything he published would just be howled down.”
The report on Geier’s disciplinary hearing before the Maryland Board of Physicians said he has a bachelor of arts degree in biology from a Maryland university. According to that report, Geier and his father set up multiple corporate entities over the course of several years aimed at treating children with autism and/or conducting research.
They included ASD Centers LLC, which in a curriculum vitae Geier provided to the Maryland Board of Physicians was described as a “national network of genetic centers with locations in Missouri, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Maryland involved in the evaluation and treatment of more than 600 patients diagnosed with autism spectrum and other neurodevelopmental disorders.”
Other entities included a company called MedCon Inc., a “medical-legal consulting and biochemical-epidemiological research” enterprise, Genetics Centers of America, the non-profit Institute of Chronic Illnesses, Inc., and CoMeD Inc. — the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs. Several of these entities listed as their addresses the Maryland home in which Geier lived with his father.
The two often testified as expert witnesses in court cases in which plaintiffs alleged they had been injured by vaccines, though the veracity of their testimony was called into question on several occasions. They also published a number of scientific papers purporting to find evidence that thimerosal is linked to a higher risk of autism. At least one of those papers was retracted after the journal, Science and Engineering Ethics, deemed the conflict-of-interest declarations to be inadequate. The paper was later reposted with an updated conflict-of-interest section along with other changes, according to the website Retraction Watch.
In a 2005 article in The New York Times, Steven Black, at the time director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, Calif., assessed the pair’s science this way: “The problem with the Geiers’ research is that they start with the answers and work backwards.”
Vaccine experts say there is substantial concern that methodology will come into play again, if Geier undertakes a new study of autism and vaccinations.
Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine proponent at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, called the notion that Geier would be leading an effort to reanalyze data from previous studies looking for evidence of a link between vaccines and autism “a frontal attack on public health and an attack on children.”
“The goal here is not to try and get an answer. The goal here is to provide RFK Jr. with the answer that he wants to hear. It’s shameful. It is shameful. Children in this country deserve better than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or David Geier,” Offit said.
Reiss admitted she was caught off guard by the choice, given how much is known about Geier, his lack of credentials, and his approach to research.
“I would expect them to pick someone unknown who can’t be easily discredited. Let’s say a young, up-and-coming epidemiologist who would have looked great on paper…. Or I would have expected them to pick someone who is well within their field, but doesn’t have the same baggage as Geier,” she said.
“So I was surprised. If you really want your claims to have any credibility, this seems like a tactical error.”
In the mere weeks since he was nominated as HHS secretary, Kennedy has moved aggressively to promote his agenda questioning the safety of vaccines. With a large measles outbreak in Texas and several surrounding states still growing — an outbreak that has already claimed two lives — Kennedy has publicly stressed treatment of measles over prevention of the disease. And he has greenlit a new study of autism and vaccinations, even though the lack of a link is considered settled science in most quarters.
He has faced a few setbacks, however. Earlier this month Dave Weldon, a former congressman who has long alleged a link between childhood vaccines and autism, saw his nomination to head the CDC pulled hours before his first hearing before a Senate committee was to take place. And last weekend Kennedy had to instruct Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization he used to run, to take down a webpage questioning vaccine safety that the group had created using the CDC’s logo and a format identical to that used on the agency’s official website.
This article has been updated to note that a study by David Geier and his father that had been retracted was later amended and republished.
