RFK Jr. Hires a Vaccine 'Skeptic' To Find the Cause of Autism

Vaccine “skeptic” David Geier has reportedly been hired by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a data analyst to oversee a new study probing the possible links between vaccinations and autism. This project was presaged in an early March HHS statement: “As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening. The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering.”

High-quality research and transparency are not likely outcomes from a project headed by Geier. Geier and his physician father, Mark, have published in a variety of obscure journal articles claiming that vaccines cause autism. Based on those sketchy publications, they began hiring themselves out as “expert witnesses” in hundreds of vaccine-related lawsuits. Mark Geier was stripped of his medical license by the Maryland Board of Physicians over dosing autistic children with his home-brewed treatments.

The Geiers asserted that their research had found that tiny amounts of ethyl mercury preservative (thimerosal) in some vaccines was the culprit behind the rise in autism diagnoses. Interestingly, thimerosal has never been used in the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine that has most widely been blamed for causing autism. However, excepting seasonal flu vaccines, thimerosal in the U.S. was removed from any other vaccines in 1999. Amusingly, the Geiers took note of that fact and published an article in 2006 claiming that autism rates were subsequently declining. As it happens, the rate of autism diagnoses has increased since then. Evidently tiny amounts of mercury in vaccines has nothing to do with autism.

In any case, the claim that vaccines cause autism has been comprehensively debunked.

“The problem with the Geiers’ research is that they start with the answers and work backwards,” said Dr. Steven Black, director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, California, in 2005. “They are doing voodoo science.”

By applying his methodology in his new study of the putative relationship between autism and vaccines, Geier will doubtlessly and transparently get the answers that our new secretary of Health and Human Services thinks he already knows.

The post RFK Jr. Hires a Vaccine ‘Skeptic’ To Find the Cause of Autism appeared first on Reason.com.