The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hiring a researcher to study the widely debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. And that person is reportedly one of the chief disseminators of misinformation about a purported link between vaccines and autism in America.
With this hire, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Health and Human Services Department is dealing a blow both to public faith in vaccine safety and to the credibility of the federal government’s public health guidance, by turning what should be a technical, evidence-based institution into overtly political terrain.
I cannot be certain what David Geier will find in this dubious study, but his track record is about as damning as it gets.
NBC News, citing two sources familiar with the plan, reports that the CDC is expected to hand over multiple sets of vaccine safety data to a “senior data analyst” at HHS named David Geier. NBC News reports that Geier and his father, Mark Geier, are “researchers known for their poorly designed and retracted studies using government safety data that have long fueled widespread misinformation about vaccines.” Among other things, the father-son duo claimed at an Institute of Medicine panel in 2004 that CDC data showed vaccines were linked to autism — and the claim was “refuted by scientists at the meeting and in scores of published studies since,” NBC reported. NBC News said that neither HHS nor Geier responded to requests for comment.
Though Mark Geier has testified in scores of court cases involving vaccines, his testimony has consistently been rejected as irrelevant in legal settings. According to The New York Times, in 2003 a judge ruled that Geier was “a professional witness in areas for which he has no training, expertise and experience.” Other judges have called Geier’s testimony “intellectually dishonest” and “wholly unqualified,” The Times reported.
Both Geiers have records of unethical behavior. Per NBC News, they have “promoted an unproven treatment for autism that cost families tens of thousands of dollars and included injections of Lupron,” and “diagnosed kids with precocious puberty without proper tests and misled parents into thinking they were signing up for an approved autism therapy.”
According to The Washington Post, the Maryland Board of Physicians suspended Mark Geier’s medical license in 2011 “because he was treating autistic children with a drug considered dangerous for young people and not known to alleviate symptoms of the disorder,” and revoked it altogether the next year, saying “he had misrepresented his credentials.” And David Geier — who has no medical degree — was sanctioned for practicing medicine without a license by the Maryland Board of Physicians.
I cannot be certain what David Geier will find in this dubious study, but his track record is about as damning as it gets. If I were Kennedy and I wanted to convince the country that — despite the massive record of debunking — there is still more research to be conducted on a possible link between vaccines and autism, I would hire someone with impeccable credentials, and not someone who has been tarred by a record of practicing without credentials and retracted studies. But choosing Geier gives away the game: Kennedy wants someone who will confirm his priors and, should Geier make a new set of claims about vaccines causing autism, will give them the imprimatur of the CDC. This is a harrowing development for public health in America. The commissioning of the study alone is enough to once again put this theory in the news and intensify increasing vaccine hesitancy — which is already having serious consequences. Should Geier use this opportunity to peddle more misinformation, that will be even worse, and it’s reasonable to expect it could intensify vaccine hesitancy even further. There’s another longer-term cost here, which is that the CDC will be seen as yet another arena for politicians to exploit to score points or push fringe ideas unsupported by evidence. The CDC is not infallible — consider the way it handled masking guidance during the first weeks of the Covid pandemic. But the CDC has corrected itself and generally held itself to high standards for evidence and rigor in scientific inquiry. Hiring noncredible anti-vaxxers should be seen as an attack on those principles — and Americans’ health.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
