Anti-Vaxx Not-A-Doctor Picked To Head HHS's Vaccine-Autism 'Study'
What could possibly go wrong?
I don’t know what I was thinking. I must have been terribly naïve when I suggested that perhaps Robert F. Kennedy Jr. actually should “investigate” the non-existent link between autism and vaccines. I guess I thought that it would prove to him, once and for all, that autism as a vaccine “injury” is not a real thing — but it didn’t occur to me that the people running the “investigation” would be unqualified weirdos who already share his beliefs. I guess I thought they’d be, you know, actual scientists or something. My bad.
RFK Jr.’s pick to lead this study is, of course, not a scientist. He’s not a doctor, though he has gotten in trouble for practicing medicine without a license before, so there’s that. His father was a doctor, so perhaps if we were in medieval times he might have learned medicine as a trade and be considered a highly sought-after barber-surgeon, were any of us looking to have our humors properly balanced.
But we are not in medieval times, and David Geier has a BA from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.
Why has David Geier been picked to do this study instead of, say, a qualified scientist? Because he and his father (the one who actually is a doctor, though a repeatedly censured one who had his license suspended) have previously done studies they claim prove that thimerosal — organomercurial compound that is no longer used in vaccines apart from some flu vaccines — causes autism. It doesn’t, and it remains unclear why they would think vaccines that do not contain thimerosal also cause autism. Maybe it’s some kind of homeopathy thing and they think vaccines retain a memory of the existence of thimerosal? Who can say?
What exactly will he be doing? He doesn’t really want to say and refused to answer direct questions about his part in the “study” when contacted by Washington Post reporters. He is, however, listed as a “data analyst” in the HHS directory.
The Washington Post reports:
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.
David Geier and his father Mark (the actual doctor, though clearly not a very good one) have a long and very shady history of anti-vaccine nonsense.
In 2015, a paper co-authored by the Geiers on the “link” between mercury in vaccines and autism was retracted by the journal Science and Engineering Ethics because they and the other authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest, as well as because “the article itself contains a number of errors, and mistakes of various types that raise concerns about the validity of the conclusion.”
In addition to claiming vaccines cause autism, the Geiers have also sought to treat it. In the late 2000s, the father-son duo touted their “Lupron protocol” as a “miracle” treatment for autism. Lupron is a drug once commonly used to treat prostate cancer, but it has another use as well. Can you guess what it is?
It’s a puberty blocker.
It’s used in gender-affirming care to prevent a child with gender dysphoria from going through puberty until they decide what they want to do. You know, the treatments that the Right has been so very enraged about for the past few years? Yes. That is what Mark and David Geier have used to “treat” autistic children. They didn’t run it through any actual trials or anything, but they believed in it enough to file a patent application for it. I cannot, however, find any mention of it past 2011, so clearly it didn’t work out all that well. The treatment, like much other autism-woo, was based on the belief that mercury in vaccines causes autism.
Which, you know, it doesn’t. But, personally, I’d love to see all of the people who have been raging against puberty blockers for trans kids suddenly forced to start defending their use for kids with autism.
There are thousands of people that RFK Jr. could have picked to head up this study, but he purposely picked someone who is not a scientist, who is simply a weird guy who shares his same weird beliefs about vaccines and autism. He may as well have asked Jenny McCarthy to oversee the whole thing.
It’s clear that he wants this “investigation” to support his belief and doesn’t actually have any interest in learning the truth. He wants the data to be analyzed by someone who doesn’t know what he is doing, but who is as committed as he is to proving that vaccines cause autism, probably because it would be pretty darned embarrassing for him if it were not. (It isn’t.)
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
So if you just say you have autism you can get gender affirming care?
look, as a rule one doesn't comment on other's appearances, or other things beyond their control
but this unfortunate motherfucker...