The hallmark of the Trump administration is the discrepancy between its appointees’ responsibilities and their qualifications/competence for their jobs. A well-known anti-vaccine activist assigned the job of reviewing the supposed link between vaccination and autism is a recent case in point. The Washington Post reported that David Geier has been nominated for a study on possible links between immunizations and autism. Retraction Watch recently dedicated an article to Geier pointing out that he has a long history of promoting the debunked claim of a link between vaccines and autism. In 2011, the Maryland State Board of Physicians even had to disciplin Geier for practicing medicine without a license!
The Trump administration has also announced that it will prioritize replicating medical research. At least 20 percent of the NIH budget will now be directed towards replication efforts. But studies of a link between vaccines and autism have failed to find a connection time and time again. “We have already done that many times over. It wastes valuable resources to revisit the same question instead of using them to address critical health challenges,” commented David Higgins, a practicing pediatrician and health services researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “Re-examining settled questions that have already been repeated, replicated, and tested many times is not healthy skepticism; it’s cynicism and science denial.”
The news of the HHS study comes as measles cases in Texas increase, and further outbreaks have been reported in numerous other states, while Kennedy has downplayed the role of vaccination. As of 27 March, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed 483 measles cases in the US this year. This is the highest number of infections since 2019, when there were more than 1200 confirmed cases. The CDC is aware of more potential measles cases but is waiting for confirmation before including them in the case count.
David Geier and his father Mark Geier, MD, are known for several discredited studies claiming that thimerosal, a preservative containing low levels of ethylmercury used in some vaccines, increased the risk of autism. But Thimerosal has been reduced or eliminated from vaccines for decades, and all vaccines recommended for children 6 and younger are available in formulations that do not contain thimerosalopens in a new tab or window.
“The [Geier] studies were poorly done; they were full of confounding variables,” commented Paul Offit, MD, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The American Academy of Pediatrics warned that it contained “numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements,” and failed to show a connection between thimerosal and autism.
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They say that, if you elect a clown, you’ll get a circus. So, to make the farce complete, why does RFKJr not recruit our friend Andrew Wakefield to the team of clowns, jesters and illusionists?
8 Responses to David Geier to study the debunked notion of a link between immunizations and autism: HAVE THEY GONE MAD?
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Be careful what you ”wish” for!
yes!
“HAVE THEY GONE MAD?”
Well … yes?
This is of course fully expected:
– Trump is a deeply stupid sociopath with malignant narcissism, whose main (and even preferred) tools of interaction with other people are lies, threats, hatred and retribution.
– Therefore, Trump surrounded himself with people who are more or less like him, and whose only job requirement is unconditional loyalty to him.
– More than anything, Trump hates intellectuals and otherwise ‘smart’ people, as well as empathic people. In his regime, cruelty is a feature, not a bug.
– This automatically means that there is no place in Trump’s entourage for sane, honest and competent people.
– As a result, Trump’s regime is characterized by (among lots of other bad things) a complete lack of integrity, scientific or otherwise.
– Which in turn means that US healthcare policy is no longer based on facts, reality and science, but rather the other way round: facts and science must first and foremost conform to the political views of the Trump regime in order to be recognized as such. Wherever they don’t, those facts and science are simply rejected and replaced with things that are made up to conform. Like this proposed Geier
propaganda piece‘study’.Oh, he will. But not just yet. Let’s just say that RFK Jr. is saving Wakefield as a trump card (pun intended), to be played after poisoning science-based healthcare through less notorious (but equally stupid) jokers like Geier.
you might be right – watch this space [which sadly is about all we can do]
Who knows? Perhaps Kennedy has already asked our “friend” DUllman whether he would like to accept a leadership position in a health authority. Birds of a feather flock together.
*sarcasm off*
Immunisation and autism ?
In Austria wie have a “Journalist” and anti-vaxxer named Bert Ehgartner. He also follows the debunkted hypothesis of autism and vaccination.
He has written a lot of Books claiming that Al³+ Salts cause severe Problems, the thiomersal story etc pp.
His blog is in German , but I only make a link to his autism and vaccination complaints
https://ehgartner.blogspot.com/search/label/Autismus
needless to say thaat Ehgartner has no qualification in medicine.
In Austria I was a member of EMEA/ biotechnology working party and very active in getting rid of thiomersal in vaccines and other biologicals. In 1986 we had nearly no data on thiomersal, but some data of methylmercury, which is more toxic than thiomersal. Thiomersal is very unstable in biological medicines it is degraded to ethylmercury chloride and thiosalicylic acid. Thiomersal has a potency to sensitise nearly 20% of recipients. EMEA recommended to withdraw thiomersal from vaccines and othe biologicals in 1998.
It’s a strange sort of madness. I’m pretty certain Kennedy will cheat to ‘show’ vaccines cause autism and claim his mantle of hero. That wont change the science, and slowly, the data will emerge to confirm what a dangerous man he is – unless that is, he changes the way disease is counted and gets rid of the institutions which monitor illness. Oh Dear.
but even then, he will be found out – the US does not have a monopply on science!