Fact Check: RFK Jr. said HHS researcher without medical license wasn't hired for autism study
Claim:
David Geier, appointed by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead autism-related research, is not a licensed medical doctor.
Rating:
What's True:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' directory website states that David Geier is currently employed by the department as a "senior data analyst." Geier has never held a medical license and he was charged in Maryland with practicing medicine without one.
What's False:
According to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Geier was not hired to conduct or lead autism research, but rather to review historical vaccine safety data from the CDC's Vaccine Safety Datalink.
On May 14, 2025, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, where senators questioned him on a range of issues — including the controversial hiring of David Geier.
The hearing came weeks after a viral rumor claimed that Geier, whom Kennedy reportedly chose to work on autism-related research, was not a licensed doctor and had a history of unethical medical practices, including administering dangerous hormone treatments to autistic children.
As Snopes reported in early January 2025, investigating the reasons for the growing prevalence of autism diagnoses was one of the stated goals of President Donald Trump's second administration.
Readers messaged us asking whether Geier, reportedly in charge of the "autism solution" under Kennedy, "ever had a medical license" and "chemically castrated autistic children." Similar claims also spread on social media.
"David Geier is neither a doctor nor a scientist; he is a discredited conspiracy theorist and hack researcher who RFK Jr. hired to advance his anti-science, anti-vaccine agenda," one Facebook post on the topic stated.
Similar claims about Geier circulated on X, Bluesky, Facebook, and Reddit. "Vaccine skeptic hired to head federal study of immunizations and autism," one Reddit post on the topic read. Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor, wrote on X that "the man tapped by RFK Jr to run a clinical trial looking to tie vaccines to autism has been charged with practicing medicine without a license, given autistic children a dangerous drug not approved for use in the US & improperly prescribed puberty blockers."
In short, the claims were a mixture of true and false information.
Geier, who in fact has never held a medical license and was previously charged in Maryland with practicing medicine without one, is now listed as a "senior data analyst" at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website. In the mid-2000s, he and his father promoted an unapproved treatment for autism that involved administering Lupron, a testosterone-suppressing drug.
While multiple news outlets have reported that Geier may be involved in a federal effort to analyze potential links between vaccines and autism, a longstanding and widely debunked theory, during a May 14, 2025, Senate hearing, Kennedy testified that Geier was not hired to lead autism research, but rather to review historical vaccine safety data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Vaccine Safety Datalink.
We have reached out to Geier and HHS to inquire about his role in the department and will update this article if we receive a response.
Geier is a controversial figure in the debate over autism and vaccines. CNN, for instance, described Geier as a "self-proclaimed autism expert who published a since-retracted paper with his father, Mark Geier, purporting to show links between vaccines and autism." In fact, one of the articles the Geiers co-authored was retracted because, according to the editors of the Science and Engineering Ethics journal, it contained "a number of errors, and mistakes of various types that raise concerns about the validity of the conclusion." Similarly, the BBC described Geier as a "leading vaccine sceptic who was fined by the state of Maryland for practicing medicine without a medical degree or licence and prescribing dangerous treatments to autistic children."
Geier is the son of Mark Geier, a physician whose medical license was revoked in multiple states for misconduct. According to Children's Health Defense, Kennedy's nonprofit anti-vaccine group, Mark Geier died in late March 2025.
Unlike his father, David Geier never obtained a medical license. In 2011, the Maryland State Board of Physicians charged him with practicing medicine without a license. "David Geier has never obtained a license to practice medicine nor has he held a license to practice any health occupation," the board wrote. "In 2002, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has not attended any medical school."
According to an unreported opinion from the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland, an administrative law judge initially recommended dismissing the charges. However, in July 2012, the board rejected this recommendation, concluding that Geier "who is not a physician, had diagnosed a patient, determined which blood tests to order for the patient, and ordered those blood tests," and as a penalty for practicing medicine without a license imposed a $10,000 fine.
Geier appealed the board's decision, but the Circuit Court for Montgomery County upheld the ruling in April 2014. Subsequently, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals affirmed the lower court's decision, maintaining the board's findings and the fine.
According to Science magazine, in the mid-2000s, the Geiers promoted a discredited theory suggesting that autism was caused by a harmful interaction between mercury (specifically thimerosal, a preservative formerly used in vaccines) and testosterone. They claimed that lowering testosterone could improve autism symptoms, and developed an unapproved treatment plan involving daily injections of Lupron, a drug used to treat "symptoms of prostate cancer, early-onset puberty and other hormone-related conditions." In children, Lupron is approved only for treating rare cases of precocious puberty.
The board found "that Dr. Geier treated patients with Lupron, a medication that was not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") for use on children in the absence of precocious puberty, and that Dr. Geier did not perform an adequate examination to determine if the patients had precocious puberty."
On April 10, 2025, Kennedy said during a broadcasted cabinet meeting chaired by Trump, "We've launched a massive testing and research effort that's going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world. By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures."
During a May 14 Senate hearing, when Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., questioned Kennedy about Geier's alleged role of leading autism research at HHS, he testified, "We did not hire David Geier to manage autism research at HHS." He clarified Geier's role was to compare current data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink with what he previously accessed in the 2000s. Below is a transcription of the relevant part of the hearing:
KENNEDY: So, do you want to know why we brought David Geier in?
HASSAN: Sure.
KENNEDY: Because it wasn't to run autism research. In 2002, the CDC runs a Vaccine Safety Datalink which is supposed to be the vaccine information for the biggest HMOs that are supposed to allow CDC to have a surveillance system for vaccine injury. It's a backs-up system. The CDC will not let any physicians in there to look at it, or any scientists, independent scientists.
HASSAN: He's neither a scientist nor a physician.
KENNEDY: The Congress ordered CDC to open it to the Geiers. So they are the only scientists who have ever been in there.
HASSAN: But again, Mr. Geier is not a scientist.
[…]
KENNEDY: David Geier is the only living independent scientist who's seen the VSD inside. There's been a lot of monkey business with the VSD, including allegations of fraud. He was hired by an independent contractor — not as an HHS employee — but by an independent contractor, to look at the documents that we were getting to the VSD to see if they conformed with what he saw between 2002 and 2016. And that's the only reason that he was brought in, to see if there was […] . There is so much information that has disappeared from that database. The only way we could find out what information disappeared was because he was the one guy who saw it.
Kennedy said Geier was hired "by an independent contractor — not as an HHS employee."
However, according to the HHS directory website (archived), as of this writing Geier was listed as a senior data analyst in the HHS' Office of Secretary for the Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources. The exact circumstances of his hiring remain unclear.
(HHS Employee Directory via Wayback Machine)
The listing did not provide further details about the nature or scope of Geier's responsibilities.
Between April and early May 2025, several news outlets reported Geier would "lead" or "oversee" a study on the causes of autism. We have not independently verified these reports.
The Washington Post first reported on Geier's hiring on March 25, 2025. The outlet said the HHS hired Geier "to conduct the analysis, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation." In a brief phone interview with the Post the same day, Geier said "he had no comment about whether he has a role in the study, how he was hired, and whether he holds the same views about vaccines and autism as described in his previous research."
"I don't have any comment to say," he told the Post, "Talk to the secretary. He's the person that's in charge." The Post noted it was not clear "how or why Geier, who is not a physician and has an undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, was chosen."
According to the Post, an unnamed federal health official identified Geier as the person who "would be the one analyzing the [vaccine safety] data." Similarly, The New York Times reported Geier "joined his department to work on a study examining the long-debunked theory," vaguely crediting "people familiar with the matter." Additionally, the NBC article on the matter cited "two sources familiar with the plan" that "learned about the matter during recent meetings at the CDC but were not authorized to speak about it publicly."
All in all, in mid-May 2025, Kennedy denied the claims that HHS hired Geier to lead a federal study examining potential links between vaccines and autism, saying he was brought on only to review vaccine safety data from the CDC's Vaccine Safety Datalink, not to conduct or lead an autism-related study.
In mid-April 2025, we investigated whether Kennedy said autistic children "will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted," and unpacked rumors about the National Institutes of Health's alleged plans to launch a "disease registry" to track Americans with autism.
"'Rare in His Brilliance': Tribute to Dr. Mark Geier — Advocate for Vaccine Safety and Autistic Children." Children's Health Defense, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/themes/chd-shop-theme/chd-theme, 27 Mar. 2025, childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/dr-mark-geier-tribute-vaccine-safety-autistic-children-advocate/. Accessed 8 May 2025.
AFP News Agency. "RFK Jr Says Study Will Reveal Cause of Autism 'Epidemic' in September | AFP." YouTube, 10 Apr. 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQDUFDnkfpA. Accessed 8 May 2025.
Chicago Tribune. "Autism Doctor Loses License in Illinois, Missouri." Archive.is, Chicago Tribune, 5 Nov. 2012, archive.is/nyG8Q. Accessed 8 May 2025.
Deng, Grace. "What to Know about Reports RFK Jr. Is Launching Registry to Track Americans with Autism." Snopes, Snopes.com, 22 Apr. 2025, www.snopes.com/news/2025/04/22/rfk-jr-registry-to-track-autism/.
Edwards, Erika, and Brandy Zadrozny. "HHS Taps Anti-Vaccine Activist to Look at Debunked Links between Autism and Vaccines, Sources Say." NBC News, 26 Mar. 2025, www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/hhs-taps-anti-vaccine-activist-look-debunked-links-autism-vaccines-sou-rcna198214.
"Four Vaccine Myths and Where They Came From." Www.science.org, www.science.org/content/article/four-vaccine-myths-and-where-they-came.
Geier, Max G. "Book Review: Etulain,Lincoln and Oregon Country Politics in the Civil War Era, by Max G. Geier Lincoln and Oregon Country Politics in the Civil War Era . By Richard W. Etulain . ( Corvallis , Oregon State University Press , 2013 . Xii + 210 Pp. $19.95 Paper)." Pacific Historical Review, vol. 83, no. 4, Nov. 2014, pp. 698–99, https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2014.83.4.698. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
"HHS Employee Directory." Archive.org, 2025, web.archive.org/web/20250502131637/directory.psc.gov/hhsdir/eeKey.asp?Key=64696. Accessed 8 May 2025.
Jewett, Christina, et al. "RFK Jr. Turns to a Discredited Vaccine Researcher for Autism Study." The New York Times, 27 Mar. 2025, www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/health/rfk-jr-autism-vaccines.html.
"Julia Davis - the Daily Beast." The Daily Beast, 2025, www.thedailybeast.com/author/julia-davis/. Accessed 8 May 2025.
Kern, Janet K., et al. "RETRACTED ARTICLE: Systematic Assessment of Research on Autism Spectrum Disorder and Mercury Reveals Conflicts of Interest and the Need for Transparency in Autism Research." Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 23, no. 6, Oct. 2015, pp. 1689–90, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9713-6. Accessed 11 June 2021.
---. "Systematic Assessment of Research on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Mercury Reveals Conflicts of Interest and the Need for Transparency in Autism Research." Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 23, no. 6, Nov. 2017, pp. 1691–718, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9983-2. Accessed 11 June 2021.
King, Jordan. "RFK Jr Autism Study Led by Man Who Injected Children with Anti-Puberty Drug." Newsweek, 17 Apr. 2025, www.newsweek.com/rfk-jr-autism-study-david-geier-lupron-2061072.
kreidler, Marc. "Maryland Medical Board Suspends Dr. Mark Geier's License | Quackwatch." Quackwatch.org, 8 May 2011, quackwatch.org/cases/board/med/geier/order/. Accessed 8 May 2025.
"Lupron (Leuprolide): Uses & Side Effects." Cleveland Clinic, my.clevelandclinic.org/health/drugs/18166-leuprolide-injection.
"MARYLAND BOARD of PHYSICIANS v. GEIER (2015) | FindLaw." Findlaw, 2015, caselaw.findlaw.com/court/md-court-of-special-appeals/1714746.html. Accessed 8 May 2025.
Rascouët-Paz, Anna. "Yes, RFK Jr. Said Autistic Children Will Never Pay Taxes, Hold a Job, Play Baseball or Write a Poem." Snopes, Snopes.com, 18 Apr. 2025, www.snopes.com/fact-check/quote-rfk-jr-autistic-kids/.
Schreiber, Melody. "Autistic People and Experts Voice Alarm at RFK's 'Terrible' Approach to Condition." The Guardian, The Guardian, 24 Apr. 2025, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/rfk-jr-autism-disability-services-cuts.
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, et al. "Kennedy Instructs Anti-Vaccine Group to Remove Fake C.D.C. Page." The New York Times, 23 Mar. 2025, www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/health/cdc-kennedy-vaccine-disinformation.html.
Sun, Lena H., and Fenit Nirappil. "Vaccine Skeptic Hired to Head Federal Study of Immunizations and Autism." The Washington Post, 25 Mar. 2025, www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/03/25/vaccine-skeptic-hhs-rfk-immunization-autism/.
Tirrell, Meg, et al. "RFK Jr. Claims New Research Effort Will Find Cause of 'Autism Epidemic' by September." CNN, 10 Apr. 2025, edition.cnn.com/2025/04/10/health/kennedy-autism-causes/index.html. Accessed 8 May 2025.
Wendling, Mike. "RFK Jr Pledges to Find the Cause of Autism 'by September.'" BBC, 11 Apr. 2025, www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0z9nmzvdlo.
X (Formerly Twitter), 2025, x.com/ChildrensHD/status/1905409507989012613. Accessed 8 May 2025.
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