Man busted for working as a doctor despite no medical training to head Trump's review of debunked vaccine-autism link

A vaccine skeptic who was sanctioned after practising medicine despite having no medical qualifications is expected to lead the US review into possible links between autism and vaccines.

David Geier was last week named by The Washington Post as the Trump administration’s choice to lead head review, which will be carried out under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health.

With his father, Dr Mark Geier, he has published a series of studies over the past 20 years purporting to show that vaccines containing thiomersal increase the risk of autism.

One paper, published in 2017 in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology, assessed 164 atypical autism cases against 15,200 controls and concluded they were significantly more likely to have been administered thiomersal-containing hepatitis B vaccines in the first six months of life.

When referring to the 95% confidence intervals for the analysis, the paper states they are “indeterminate”.

But from this, it concluded that the findings “suggested thimerosal should be eliminated from vaccines”.

Another 2003 study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons — again, suggesting a link between autism and thiomersal — was publicly condemned at the time by the American Academy of Pediatrics, saying it contained “numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies and misstatements”.

But Mr Geier’s critics have also pointed to a complaint he faced back in 2008 from the mother of a child being treated at his father’s clinic called Genetic Centers of America.

According to the Maryland State Board of Physicians, she accused Mr Geier of examining and diagnosing her 13-year-old son without making it clear he was not medically qualified.

“[She] reported that Mr Geier, after asking very few questions regarding her son’s medical history and symptoms, told her that he was absolutely certain that her son seemed to be a ‘typical high-testosterone kid’ whose growth would be stunted if his testosterone production continued at its current pace,” the medical board said.

The parent then alleged he had attempted to perform an ultrasound examination but that her son, who had been diagnosed with autism at the age of three, was too restless to sit or lie on the examination table.

“[Mr Geier] followed him as he walked around the room attempting to examine his neck and abdomen by tapping him with the ultrasound wand,” the board said.

“When the parent asked him how he could possibly obtain an accurate reading under such circumstances, [Mr Geier] replied that everything was ‘okay’ and that the test results were normal.”

The mother later received referrals signed under the name of Mr Geier’s medically qualified father for 22 different pathology tests at a local laboratory.

“According to the parent, the laboratory personnel were ‘flummoxed by the amount of blood needed for the tests’ and she instructed them to draw only as much blood as was necessary to assay some genetic conditions, urine metals and porphyrins.”

It was at this point that the mother said she wondered why Mr Geier would order so many tests requiring so much blood and decided to search the internet about the Geiers and their practice.

It was then she discovered that Mr Geier was not a doctor.

The board, which said he had a Bachelors of Art degree in biology from a Maryland university, noted he had taken several graduate courses but had “no graduate degree in any specialty or discipline”.

It fined him $10,000, although Mr Geier argued his role had been purely administrative.

When contacted by The Washington Post, Mr Geier refused to comment on whether he had been chosen to lead the Trump administration’s review into the alleged links between autism and vaccines.

However, Dr Jessica Steier (PhD), a public health expert and CEO of the Science Literacy Lab, said Mr Geier’s research was riddled with basic flaws.

“The prospect of David Geier leading the review into alleged links between autism and measles vaccine is deeply concerning for scientific integrity,” she told 6Minutes.

“His studies demonstrate fundamental methodological flaws including temporal mismatches between case and control groups, cherry-picked endpoints, biased study designs, and inappropriate statistical reporting.

“In his 2017 thimerosal paper, confidence intervals were reported as ‘indeterminate’ without explanation – a significant statistical red flag that violates standard research practices and makes independent verification impossible.

“These methodological errors contradict dozens of properly conducted large-scale epidemiological studies across multiple countries that have consistently found no causal relationship between vaccines and autism.”

She added: “Even more concerning is that Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators in 2011 for practicing medicine without a license and has been identified by Nature Medicine as a prominent ‘science denialist.'”

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stressed there is a “robust body of evidence” supporting the safety of thimerosal as a preservative to prevent bacterial growth in vaccines.

And there are formulations in child, adolescent and adult vaccines that are thimerosal-free, the FDA added.

The reported appointment of Mr Geier, who has also appeared on the Retraction Watch website, comes as measles cases total some 330 in Texas, with outbreaks reported in other US states.

“It seems the goal of this administration is to prove that vaccines cause autism — even though they don’t,” Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, told The Washington Post.

“They are starting with the conclusion and looking to prove it. That’s not how science is done.”

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