We don鈥檛 defend the things we take for granted. Vaccines have long been victims of their own success, but only insofar as too many people were hesitant to get them. But what if vaccines were eliminated altogether?
It鈥檚 hard to ring the alarm these days without sounding mad. The eradication of vaccines from the United States? It may seem farfetched to people who don鈥檛 pay attention to the Trump administration鈥檚 actions vis-脿-vis public health, but the听听that David Geier is to be a senior data analyst on a study of vaccines and autism commissioned by the American federal government is one more step toward eliminating one of humanity鈥檚 scientific triumphs.
Vaccines do not cause autism. I have recently written about听how we know that vaccines are safe. You can also spend a day reading the听听answering this question. The debate has been put to rest by the scientific community and is being kept on life support by activists who deny the consensus on this issue. They will often prop up bad studies birthed by anti-vaxxers. The problem for their credibility is that these studies do not emanate from the government of the most powerful country on Earth.
This is about to change.
Dumpster diving at the CDC
You would expect an organization called the Institute of Chronic Diseases to occupy a large glass building on a university campus, filled with people dressed in white lab coats. But the nonprofit鈥檚听听show one name running the show: Dr. Mark Geier. Under 鈥淐ompensation of five highest-paid employees,鈥� we read a single word: NONE.
The self-described institute was led by Dr. Mark Geier, who according to RFK Jr鈥檚 anti-vaccine organization, Children鈥檚 Health Defense, passed away a few weeks ago. On paper, he looked like a legitimate physician-researcher: a bachelor鈥檚 degree in zoology, a doctorate in genetics, and a medical degree, all from George Washington University in D.C. His obituary on the site lists various affiliations as diplomat and co-founder of a few scientific and medical endeavours, and it notes that he is survived by 鈥渉is son and tennis partner,鈥� David.
While his father鈥檚 credentials are impressive, David鈥檚 are much shorter (and he should not be confused with听, an orthopaedic surgeon). He has neither doctorate nor medical degree, but听. Why would David Geier be recruited by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a study on whether or not vaccines cause autism? Because Kennedy is not driven by curiosity but by his preexisting belief that vaccines are responsible for autism.
Pseudoscience is often steered by confirmation bias, where the conclusion comes first and the evidence must follow, otherwise it is rejected. Cherry-picking allows for small, skewed studies to be heralded as definitive proofs, while larger, rigorous trials are dismissed as coming from corrupt sources. David Geier was chosen because he will deliver the conclusion Kennedy already believes in.
Mark and David Geier have a long history of unethical research practices, the most amusing example of which may be听听and which argued that conflicts of interest may explain why most studies on the vaccine-autism link failed to find an association. The twist? On top of a number of errors, the Geiers鈥� paper had failed to disclose, wait for it, their own conflicts of interest on this topic, chief among them that some of the paper鈥檚 authors were involved in litigation related to vaccines and autism. Indeed, the Geiers were picked as expert witnesses in听, though many judges dismissed the pair for being unqualified.
But the most salient of these breaches of ethics may be听听in late 2003, early 2004. They had received ethics approval to go to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and access information from their Vaccine Safety Datalink, which collects data on vaccination and health outcomes. On their first visit, they tried to perform analyses of the data that had not been approved for their research project. On their second visit, they attempted to merge data files to create more complete medical records, thus increasing the risk of a breach of confidentiality, and they renamed files for removal which were not allowed to be removed. Conspiracy theorists will claim the CDC was trying to keep information secret; clinical researchers, however, know that large datasets filled with identifiable information should only be used by researchers according to strict rules. Imagine a scientist going through your own medical records willy-nilly and unsupervised, violating their own ethics-approved protocol because they鈥檙e on a mission to document something that doesn鈥檛 exist.
Now imagine David Geier being given access to an even larger dataset and receiving permission by the anti-vaxxer-in-chief to find a connection between autism and vaccines. That鈥檚 what鈥檚 on the horizon.
Dr. David Gorski, an oncologist who has devotedly tracked the modern anti-vaccine movement over the decades, calls the motivated trawling of large health databases by anti-vaccine activists 鈥渄umpster diving.鈥� This activity is now mandated by the U.S. government.
The Geiers鈥� dumpster diving at the CDC, however, is just the tip of a disturbing iceberg. I haven鈥檛 even mentioned the chemical castration of autistic children.
The testosterone-mercury hypothesis听
The Institute of Chronic Illnesses has its own institutional review board tasked with evaluating and approving or denying research projects involving human participants. In听, this board was denounced as consisting of David Geier; Mark Geier, his wife, and two of his business associates; and the mother of an autistic child who was a patient and research participant of Mark Geier鈥檚, and the mother of another child with autism who was a plaintiff in three pending vaccine-injury claims. It should go without saying that the scientist submitting a research proposal to an ethics committee and his buddies should not sit on said committee. It turns the process into a farce.
This denunciation was provoked by a paper the Geiers were in the process of having published and which detailed what they had been up to. It turns out that they believed that autism was caused by the mercury in vaccines, and that testosterone could somehow bind to mercury and make it harder to get rid of, creating so-called 鈥渢estosterone sheets鈥� inside the body. The Geiers were thus injecting autistic children with high doses of Lupron庐 (also known as leuprorelin and leuprolide), which delays puberty, and then performing chelation therapy on them, where a substance is used to bind to toxins and help the body eliminate them. None of this is supported by good scientific evidence; this is dangerous pseudoscience in the service of an anti-vaccine ideology.
Pseudoscience has a patina of legitimacy, and sure enough the Geiers were running actual medical tests on their patients. Per听, it was revealed that the Geiers would order over 50 different tests, totalling up to $12,000. If one of the testosterone-related tests revealed a value outside of the reference range, Lupron injections would be considered at a daily dose 鈥�10 times the amount American doctors use to treat precocious puberty.鈥� Keep in mind that the more medical tests you run, the higher the odds that one of them will turn up something outside the normal range by chance alone. Tests aren鈥檛 perfect and 鈥渘ormal鈥� is not always easy to define.
Eventually, the Geiers鈥� aberrant behaviour led to penalties. Dr. Mark Geier鈥檚 medical licenses were suspended from every state in which he had one, and his son was charged in Maryland with听听and fined听.
While David Geier is clearly not qualified to be running a study for the U.S. government on the subject of vaccines, he is the ideal candidate for a regime that is institutionalizing pseudoscience within its borders.
Doubt is our product
The very media outlet that broke the story of David Geier鈥檚 latest commission referred to him as a 鈥渧accine skeptic.鈥� Legacy media outlets are failing to meet the moment here, either because of fear of lawsuits or as a misguided attempt to appear neutral. RFK Jr received a similar sanewashing in the media. If we can鈥檛 call anti-vaxxers 鈥渁nti-vaxxers,鈥� we will be unprepared for the outcome of their crusade.
The pieces of the puzzle are there for anyone to see. Agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services鈥攍ike the FDA and the CDC鈥攁re being gutted as you read these lines. The FDA鈥檚 former commissioner said of his agency that听听Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA鈥檚 top vaccine regulator, was apparently听听a few days ago, writing that Kennedy wanted 鈥渟ubservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.鈥�
Meanwhile, a fake CDC website () with clear ties to Kennedy鈥檚 anti-vaccine organization mixed good science with vaccine misinformation before it was exposed and shut down. This is straight out of the听Merchants of Doubt听playbook: 鈥渄oubt,鈥� as one tobacco executive wrote decades ago, 鈥渋s our product.鈥� You don鈥檛 need to forcefully convince people that smoking is healthy; just make them doubt that we really know it鈥檚 harmful. The opposite can be done for vaccines.
Kennedy has announced a consolidation of divisions within his department and the creation of an Administration for a Healthy America, an Orwellian banner which echoes his 鈥淢ake America Healthy Again鈥� movement, itself a听cargo cult fuelled by pseudoscience. Even more troubling is his desire to听听within the CDC. Currently, people who think they have been injured by a mandated vaccine in the U.S. can receive compensation from the federal government. This was a way to ensure vaccines would continue to be available in the country after a wave of lawsuits in the 1980s. But will this system be maintained?
Kennedy鈥檚 institutionalization of anti-vaccine pseudoscience鈥攎eaning not just making the fringe mainstream but sanctioned by the government鈥攃ould have a drastic impact on vaccine availability. Geier鈥檚 study, born out of the听square one fallacy听where something well established is argued to be unknown, will assuredly show a link between vaccines and autism through bad research practices. This government-commissioned study will then be used to encourage lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers鈥攆rom which RFK Jr himself could听鈥攁nd here is where we arrive at the final piece of the puzzle. Right now, vaccine makers benefit from the federal no-fault system compensating people believed to have been injured by a vaccine (whether they can successfully prove it or not). This protection could be eliminated.
We could subsequently see vaccine manufacturers decide to stop making vaccines for the American market because the risk of unwarranted lawsuits would be too high. The so-called free market would effectively eliminate vaccines in the United States. This is ultimately what Kennedy wants. He has, on multiple occasions, called childhood vaccines听听and he wants to save America from this perceived cataclysm. The outcome of this renunciation of reality will be death and disability, and with international travel, there will be spillover.
What can we do in the face of this? As science communicator and immunologist Andrea Love wrote in听, Americans can call members of Congress, vote responsibly, and support unsanitized public health journalism.
All of us, Americans or not, will need to rely on uncorrupted sources of public health information moving forward. American government websites have been captured by science deniers. We need to turn to听,听,听, and听听websites instead. Even PubMed, the search engine of the biomedical literature, sits under the NIH and may not be spared from the U.S. ideological purge; I recommend the bookmarking of听听and听听as alternatives. In a move that echoes Isaac Asimov鈥檚听Foundation,听U.S. government websites before Trump returned to office are being preserved and made accessible to the public, through portals such as the听, the听, the听, and the听.
The future looks bleak but to quote a famous fictional scientist, 鈥淟ife finds a way.鈥� So will science.
Take-home message:
- David Geier, who has neither a medical degree nor a graduate degree, has been hired by the U.S. government to do a study on whether vaccines cause autism, even though mountains of evidence have shown no such connection
- Geier and his father, the late Dr. Mark Geier, have a history of unethical research practices, including violating their own research protocol when accessing CDC data, and David Geier was charged with practicing medicine without a license in 2011
- This commissioned study is one more step toward eliminating vaccines from the United States, as RFK Jr has often called childhood vaccines 鈥渁 holocaust鈥�
