WaPo Runs Preemptive Hit Piece on Vaccine Researcher Reportedly Tapped to ‘Head’ Autism Study

Citing anonymous “officials,” The Washington Post on Tuesday published a preemptive hit piece on David Geier, a data analyst reportedly tapped by HHS to lead a study on vaccines and autism.

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

The Washington Post on Tuesday published a preemptive hit piece on David Geier, a researcher the Post claims has been tapped by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to lead a study of possible links between vaccines and autism.

The Post reported that Geier was “hired to head” the study, quoting anonymous federal health officials who said that Geier — an experienced data analyst — ”would be the one analyzing the data.”

At presstime, the HHS and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had not confirmed that Geier was tapped to lead the study or work on it. Geier did not respond by deadline to a request by The Defender for confirmation.

Geier is an expert on thimerosal — a mercury-based preservative used as an adjuvant in vaccines — and on the connections between toxic exposures and autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

He has conducted extensive analysis on the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, a nonpublic database with data on more than 10 million patients. The CDC uses the database to monitor vaccine adverse events.

Geier is also the lead or second author of hundreds of peer-reviewed articles on these and related topics.

However, the Post and other mainstream news outlets described him solely as a “vaccine skeptic” who has “long promoted false claims about the connection between immunization and autism.”

Commenting on the Post’s report, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland said:

“I don’t know whether The Washington Post account that David Geier will be appointed to analyze vaccine safety data is accurate, but I hope it is. Geier is a brilliant, extremely knowledgeable researcher with deep expertise on mercury.”

Holland said Geier had worked with CHD’s predecessor organization, the World Mercury Project, and with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 2015 on Kennedy’s groundbreaking book, “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak.”

Holland added:

“Despite the hackneyed mantra that ‘vaccines don’t cause autism’ and that this causation theory has been ‘debunked,’ the truth is that only very limited, marginal science backs up that dubious claim.

“Officials in the Senate, CDC and pharma-friendly media like The Washington Post should be gratified that further research on this important causation theory will now take place, so we can put this issue to bed once and for all.”

Kennedy’s nomination process reignited the debate over a possible link between vaccines and autism. During the confirmation hearings, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) pressed Kennedy to say that vaccines don’t cause autism. Kennedy said he would only do so if presented with data disproving the link. Several senators expressed support for examining the link.

President Donald Trump pulled the nomination for his first choice to lead the CDC, Dr. David Weldon, at the last minute after Weldon failed to secure enough votes — reportedly because of comments he made about the link between vaccines and autism.

The CDC also confirmed earlier this month, before Trump withdrew Weldon’s nomination for its director, that the CDC was planning a large study into potential connections between the vaccines and autism.

The Post today reported that in recent weeks, HHS officials directed the CDC to turn over the vaccine safety data to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct the analysis. The HHS did not confirm or deny the report by the deadline.

CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker, who has worked extensively with Geier, told The Defender that Geier is “an absolutely brilliant researcher and one of only a handful of independent scientists to ever work in the Vaccine Safety Datalink. He was mentored by his father, Mark Geier, M.D., Ph.D., who was a scientist at the NIH and a medical practitioner during his long and illustrious career.”

The Post said that Dr. Mark Geier didn’t respond to its request for comment, apparently unaware that the senior scientist passed away last week.

Hooker added:

“David has published well over 100 papers on PubMed and he is an extremely fair arbiter of vaccine safety. He also has an implicit understanding of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders and has published many peer-reviewed scientific papers specifically in that area.”

Geier and his father are just two of the many scientists the media and unequivocally pro-vaccine scientists have attacked and attempted to discredit for publishing scientific research showing the dangers of vaccine ingredients — even though behind closed doors, public health agencies have acknowledged those issues, including a possible link between mercury-based thimerosal in vaccines and autism.

The Post also reported that thimerosal had largely been excised from childhood vaccines by 2001. That’s because in 1999, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded a risk assessment of thimerosal in vaccines and found no “evidence of harm.”

Yet, despite those findings, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC issued a statement calling for thimerosal to be removed from vaccines “as soon as possible.”

By the end of 2001, thimerosal had to be reduced or removed from vaccines administered to children under age 6, except for the flu vaccine — although vaccines already produced with thimerosal stayed on the shelves.

Several flu vaccines continue to contain the ingredient. So does MassBiologic’s Tetanus and Diphtheria vaccine. However, none of the preferentially recommended vaccines, other than flu vaccines, contain thimerosal.

The Post claimed studies have ruled out the connection between vaccines and autism. However, only one vaccine — the measles-mumps-rubella or MMR — and one ingredient, thimerosal, have ever been studied for a possible link to autism.

There are 15 different vaccines on the CDC childhood schedule. Studies of the other vaccines have not been conducted, either individually, in combination or cumulatively.

As attorney Aaron Siri wrote recently:

“In 1991, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued its report on this question and could not find a single study on the question of whether pertussis vaccine causes autism. Meaning, the science had not been done.

“In 2012, the IOM was again commissioned to study this question, this time by CDC, and also the question of whether tetanus and diphtheria vaccines can cause autism (DTaP), and again the IOM could not find a single study to support the claim that these vaccines do not cause autism. Not one. But it did find one study supporting that DTaP vaccine is correlated with autism but threw it out since it was based on VAERS data.”