Latest news with #VaccineSafetyDatalink
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
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, 27 Mar. 2025, Accessed 8 May 2025. AFP News Agency. "RFK Jr Says Study Will Reveal Cause of Autism 'Epidemic' in September | AFP." YouTube, 10 Apr. 2025, Accessed 8 May 2025. Chicago Tribune. "Autism Doctor Loses License in Illinois, Missouri." Chicago Tribune, 5 Nov. 2012, Accessed 8 May 2025. Deng, Grace. "What to Know about Reports RFK Jr. Is Launching Registry to Track Americans with Autism." Snopes, 22 Apr. 2025, 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, "Four Vaccine Myths and Where They Came From." 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, Accessed 6 Nov. 2019. "HHS Employee Directory." 2025, 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, "Julia Davis - the Daily Beast." The Daily Beast, 2025, 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, 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, Accessed 11 June 2021. King, Jordan. "RFK Jr Autism Study Led by Man Who Injected Children with Anti-Puberty Drug." Newsweek, 17 Apr. 2025, kreidler, Marc. "Maryland Medical Board Suspends Dr. Mark Geier's License | Quackwatch." 8 May 2011, Accessed 8 May 2025. "Lupron (Leuprolide): Uses & Side Effects." Cleveland Clinic, "MARYLAND BOARD of PHYSICIANS v. GEIER (2015) | FindLaw." Findlaw, 2015, 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, 18 Apr. 2025, Schreiber, Melody. "Autistic People and Experts Voice Alarm at RFK's 'Terrible' Approach to Condition." The Guardian, The Guardian, 24 Apr. 2025, Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, et al. "Kennedy Instructs Anti-Vaccine Group to Remove Fake C.D.C. Page." The New York Times, 23 Mar. 2025, Sun, Lena H., and Fenit Nirappil. "Vaccine Skeptic Hired to Head Federal Study of Immunizations and Autism." The Washington Post, 25 Mar. 2025, Tirrell, Meg, et al. "RFK Jr. Claims New Research Effort Will Find Cause of 'Autism Epidemic' by September." CNN, 10 Apr. 2025, Accessed 8 May 2025. Wendling, Mike. "RFK Jr Pledges to Find the Cause of Autism 'by September.'" BBC, 11 Apr. 2025, X (Formerly Twitter), 2025, Accessed 8 May 2025.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr to require all new vaccines to undergo placebo testing
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is requiring all new vaccines to undergo placebo-controlled trials in a policy change the agency described as a "radical departure from past practices." "Under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, all new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure — a radical departure from past practices," an HHS spokesperson said to Fox News Digital on Thursday. HHS suggested that childhood-recommended vaccines listed under the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, should be tested. "Except for the COVID vaccine, none of the vaccines on the CDC's childhood recommended schedule was tested against an inert placebo, meaning we know very little about the actual risk profiles of these products," the HHS spokesperson said. Robert F. Kennedy Jr: Measles Outbreak Is A Call To Action For All Of Us Placebo testing, which involves volunteers receiving dummy injections such as saline shots, is already a common practice for new pathogens. Updated versions of proven protective immunizations, however, often do not undergo new placebo trials and are instead tested against existing vaccines. Read On The Fox News App Some health experts have raised concerns about conducting placebo trials, arguing that such tests could expose people to illnesses that otherwise could have been prevented. "Vaccine trial design can raise challenging ethical questions, especially regarding the use of placebo controls when an efficacious vaccine exists," a 2014 World Health Organization report published on the National Institutes of Health's website says. The risks of using a placebo control may be ethically justified even when an efficacious vaccine exists if the trial is "in settings where vaccine supplies are limited, where vaccines remain investigational and/or where public health recommendations for use of these vaccines have not been made," according to an article from the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, also on the NIH website, citing a trial from a pharmaceutical company. Watch Full Interview With Dr. Marc Siegel And Rfk Jr. On Fox Nation HHS also claimed that the CDC has not been monitoring vaccine complications adequately, and criticized its current surveillance system. "The CDC's former practice of suppressing information about vaccine injuries has badly eroded trust in our public health agencies," the agency said. "The CDC's own research has shown that the post-licensure surveillance system, VAERS, captures fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries," the HHS spokesperson said. "It's a system that was designed to fail. The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) — intended as a backup to VAERS — is virtually unusable for serious research. Both systems have become templates of regulatory malpractice." Kennedy, who has repeatedly said vaccines are not adequately tested for safety, is calling for greater transparency in its testing and approval process. "Secretary Kennedy's HHS has pledged radical transparency to the American public," the spokesperson said. "This means being honest and straightforward about what we know — and what we don't know — about medical products, including vaccines." "HHS is now building surveillance systems that will accurately measure vaccine risks as well as benefits — because real science demands both transparency and accountability," the spokesperson article source: RFK Jr to require all new vaccines to undergo placebo testing
Fox News
01-05-2025
- Health
- Fox News
RFK Jr to require all new vaccines to undergo placebo testing
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is requiring all new vaccines to undergo placebo-controlled trials in a policy change the agency described as a "radical departure from past practices." "Under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, all new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure — a radical departure from past practices," an HHS spokesperson said to Fox News Digital on Thursday. HHS suggested that childhood-recommended vaccines listed under the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, should be tested. "Except for the COVID vaccine, none of the vaccines on the CDC's childhood recommended schedule was tested against an inert placebo, meaning we know very little about the actual risk profiles of these products," the HHS spokesperson said. Placebo testing, which involves volunteers receiving dummy injections such as saline shots, is already a common practice for new pathogens. Updated versions of proven protective immunizations, however, often do not undergo new placebo trials and are instead tested against existing vaccines. Some health experts have raised concerns about conducting placebo trials, arguing that such tests could expose people to illnesses that otherwise could have been prevented. "Vaccine trial design can raise challenging ethical questions, especially regarding the use of placebo controls when an efficacious vaccine exists," a 2014 World Health Organization report published on the National Institutes of Health's website says. The risks of using a placebo control may be ethically justified even when an efficacious vaccine exists if the trial is "in settings where vaccine supplies are limited, where vaccines remain investigational and/or where public health recommendations for use of these vaccines have not been made," according to an article from the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, also on the NIH website, citing a trial from a pharmaceutical company. HHS also claimed that the CDC has not been monitoring vaccine complications adequately, and criticized its current surveillance system. "The CDC's former practice of suppressing information about vaccine injuries has badly eroded trust in our public health agencies," the agency said. "The CDC's own research has shown that the post-licensure surveillance system, VAERS, captures fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries," the HHS spokesperson said. "It's a system that was designed to fail. The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) — intended as a backup to VAERS — is virtually unusable for serious research. Both systems have become templates of regulatory malpractice." Kennedy, who has repeatedly said vaccines are not adequately tested for safety, is calling for greater transparency in its testing and approval process. "Secretary Kennedy's HHS has pledged radical transparency to the American public," the spokesperson said. "This means being honest and straightforward about what we know — and what we don't know — about medical products, including vaccines." "HHS is now building surveillance systems that will accurately measure vaccine risks as well as benefits — because real science demands both transparency and accountability," the spokesperson added.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The little-known database at the heart of Kennedy's vaccine conspiracy theory
For as long as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has falsely claimed that vaccines cause widespread harm — from autism to sudden death — he has pointed to the one source he says could immediately prove it. In speeches, interviews and writings, Kennedy has repeatedly claimed that the evidence of a massive public health cover-up lies buried in a little-known database of medical records of some 12 million Americans: the Vaccine Safety Datalink, or VSD. 'For decades, the CDC has kept a tight grip on the Vaccine Safety Datalink, concealing vital vaccine safety information from the public,' Kennedy said in 2023. Kennedy now oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including the Vaccine Safety Datalink — and one of his first initiatives as health secretary was to launch his long-dreamed-of study using the VSD to investigate the link between childhood vaccines and autism. It's a theory that has already been disproven in dozens of studies, many using VSD data. 'We're going to be able to get into these databases and give answers to the American public,' Kennedy said last month. He told President Donald Trump at recent Cabinet meeting that he would reveal the cause of autism by September. However, in recent weeks, Kennedy's anti-vaccine allies have begun casting doubt on this pledge, once again alleging a government conspiracy to block access to the truth. Without evidence, anti-vaccine lawyer Aaron Siri and activist Del Bigtree have claimed on the internet show "The HighWire" that the CDC scattered the vaccine safety data after Kennedy took office, making it unavailable for Kennedy's team to examine. The goal, according to Siri, was to 'thwart the ability for the current administration to actually conduct a study in the VSD.' It's a pattern that has echoed through the first months of the Trump administration: Onetime outsiders who had long asserted that the federal government was hiding the truth suddenly had access to all the government documents they could want — only to reveal that, perhaps, there were no nefarious secrets after all. The JFK assassination files exposed little about his killing that wasn't already known. The release of records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case was a dud. Trump and Elon Musk's claims that millions of people over 100 were receiving Social Security quickly fell apart. Now, it appears that anti-vaccine activists are similarly girding for the possibility that Kennedy's promises may fall short — and they're already laying the groundwork for someone to blame. 'We've been saying that database is where the answers are,' Bigtree, who was communications director for Kennedy's 2024 presidential campaign, said of the VSD on 'The HighWire' last week. 'You could do the study in probably minutes with AI and computer learning and everything that's possible. Then the moment before Bobby gets in there to be able to do that study, what did they do? They obliterated it.' It's not clear exactly what Bigtree and Siri meant; neither responded to requests for comment. Kennedy also didn't respond. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services initially said he would 'look into it,' but did not respond to further requests for comment. A CDC spokesperson confirmed that nothing about the stewardship of VSD data had changed in the last year. There's one thing that Bigtree and Siri have right: The data in the VSD is not actually housed at the CDC — but that's not a recent change. The VSD is a collaboration between a small team at the CDC's Immunization Safety Office and 11 private health care organizations. Since the 1990s, it's been used to monitor vaccine safety and conduct studies of rare side effects. 'These studies that use the VSD are able to tell the difference between a condition that coincidentally happens after vaccination and a condition that may actually be the result of vaccination,' said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The health care organizations used to send their anonymized medical data to the CDC each year for analysis, but since 2001, the organizations have kept the data on their own servers, to ensure it stays secure. 'Sometimes people have the image that if there's a vaccine safety study, there must be one giant database with all the information in it,' Sharfstein said. 'If you're not familiar with how distributed networks of data are designed and used in studies, then it can be confusing. Because there is no one big dataset. There is no single file that can just be sent or released.' The conspiracy lore around the VSD began in the early aughts, around the time that Kennedy, then an environmental lawyer, was being introduced to the anti-vaccine movement. At that point, the only groups with access to the VSD were the CDC and the participating health care organizations. The studies they produced relied on the data they collected, including from doctor and hospital visits, vaccinations, pharmacies and lab results. Then in 2002, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., who had a grandson he believed had been injured by vaccines, allied with several parent-led autism groups. Frustrated with anti-vaccine researchers' lack of access to data that might prove the link, Burton threatened to subpoena the VSD's patient records. At a hearing on the topic, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., urged Burton not to do it. 'A subpoena could have the effect of driving HMOs from the program and destroying CDC's ability to scientifically test hypotheses relating to adverse events potentially associated with vaccines,' Waxman warned, referring to the health care organizations. (Burton and Waxman left Congress in the mid-2010s.) Subpoenaing millions of medical records 'would have been a profound invasion of privacy,' said Johns Hopkins' Sharfstein. The CDC offered a solution: It would work with the participating health organizations to get independent researchers access to the data. Among the earliest beneficiaries — with the help of former Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., the recently withdrawn CDC director nominee — were the anti-vaccine researchers Mark and David Geier, a father-son pair who baselessly theorized that autism was the result of an interaction between a preservative in vaccines and testosterone. (Mark Geier died this year in Florida, over a decade after being stripped of his medical license in several states, partly for improperly treating autistic children with hormone blockers. David Geier, who was disciplined by the Maryland Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license in 2012, was hired at HHS this year as a senior data analyst to reanalyze vaccine safety data under Kennedy, according to two sources familiar with the plan.) The Geiers' work with VSD data was marked by alleged ethical breaches. In 2003 and 2004, the Geiers visited the CDC's Maryland data center to access VSD data for a study looking at whether the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine increased risks for harmful side effects. Instead, according to a letter of complaint from one of the health care groups, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, the Geiers violated protocol and began comparing rates of autism in children who received vaccines with different amounts of a preservative. Further, Kaiser Permanente said the Geiers tried to merge datasets in a way that would have risked patients' confidentiality, then tried to remove files from the datacenter. Subsequently, Kaiser Permanente suspended the Geiers' access to the VSD. The Geiers denied the accusations and published their findings in journals known more for conspiracy theories than rigorous science. At an Institute of Medicine panel in 2004, Mark Geier claimed the VSD data they analyzed showed that vaccines were linked to autism. Their published papers have been widely criticized by scientists and their findings never replicated or supported by mainstream research. In 2006, they were approved for another study using VSD data, and again, stopped after violating protocol, according to lawyers representing the government in a set of test cases known as the Omnibus Autism Proceedings. Lawyers representing the parents of autistic children — for whom the Geiers had been providing research — suggested in legal filings that the Geiers had been unfairly banned at the whims of CDC. For the Geiers, the experience was one of oppression. At anti-vaccine conferences, they presented PowerPoints alleging that the CDC had 'restricted' their access to data and 'attacked' their findings. At the same conferences, Kennedy, who has consistently praised the Geiers, told a similar story. 'Oh, they've hidden it, and they won't let anybody in it, except their own guys who cherry-pick and design these fabricated studies and change the protocols constantly to try to use it to defend vaccines,' Kennedy said in a 2017 keynote at AutismOne, an anti-vaccine conference for parents of autistic children where the Geiers also presented. 'It's being used instead to craft these fabricated, fraudulent studies,' he said, 'to fool the public about vaccine safety.' That same year, as Trump considered chairing a committee to review vaccine safety, Kennedy and a group of anti-vaccine activists met with Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health, to ask him to 'open up' the VSD to scientists who would 'investigate whether vaccines are associated with the epidemic of health disorders plaguing our children today.' In a letter following the meeting, Collins, who resigned from the NIH last month, told Kennedy that because of privacy concerns, access was limited to researchers who made formal requests and met certain criteria. Further, Collins said the kind of study Kennedy had suggested would be difficult because the sample population of unvaccinated children in the VSD — already just a fraction of the U.S. population — would be too small. Now, with Kennedy at the helm of HHS and Geier working for him, there are no roadblocks left. This article was originally published on
NBC News
30-04-2025
- Health
- NBC News
The little-known database at the heart of Kennedy's vaccine conspiracy theory
For as long as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has falsely claimed that vaccines cause widespread harm — from autism to sudden death — he has pointed to the one source he says could immediately prove it. In speeches, interviews and writings, Kennedy has repeatedly claimed that the evidence of a massive public health cover-up lies buried in a little-known database of medical records of some 12 million Americans: the Vaccine Safety Datalink, or VSD. 'For decades, the CDC has kept a tight grip on the Vaccine Safety Datalink, concealing vital vaccine safety information from the public,' Kennedy said in 2023. Kennedy now oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including the Vaccine Safety Datalink — and one of his first initiatives as health secretary was to launch his long-dreamed-of study using the VSD to investigate the link between childhood vaccines and autism. It's a theory that has already been disproven in dozens of studies, many using VSD data. 'We're going to be able to get into these databases and give answers to the American public,' Kennedy said last month. He told President Donald Trump at recent Cabinet meeting that he would reveal the cause of autism by September. However, in recent weeks, Kennedy's anti-vaccine allies have begun casting doubt on this pledge, once again alleging a government conspiracy to block access to the truth. Without evidence, anti-vaccine lawyer Aaron Siri and activist Del Bigtree have claimed on the internet show "The HighWire" that the CDC scattered the vaccine safety data after Kennedy took office, making it unavailable for Kennedy's team to examine. The goal, according to Siri, was to 'thwart the ability for the current administration to actually conduct a study in the VSD.' It's a pattern that has echoed through the first months of the Trump administration: Onetime outsiders who had long asserted that the federal government was hiding the truth suddenly had access to all the government documents they could want — only to reveal that, perhaps, there were no nefarious secrets after all. The JFK assassination files exposed little about his killing that wasn't already known. The release of records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case was a dud. Trump and Elon Musk's claims that millions of people over 100 were receiving Social Security quickly fell apart. Now, it appears that anti-vaccine activists are similarly girding for the possibility that Kennedy's promises may fall short — and they're already laying the groundwork for someone to blame. 'We've been saying that database is where the answers are,' Bigtree, who was communications director for Kennedy's 2024 presidential campaign, said of the VSD on 'The HighWire' last week. 'You could do the study in probably minutes with AI and computer learning and everything that's possible. Then the moment before Bobby gets in there to be able to do that study, what did they do? They obliterated it.' It's not clear exactly what Bigtree and Siri meant; neither responded to requests for comment. Kennedy also didn't respond. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services initially said he would 'look into it,' but did not respond to further requests for comment. A CDC spokesperson confirmed that nothing about the stewardship of VSD data had changed in the last year. There's one thing that Bigtree and Siri have right: The data in the VSD is not actually housed at the CDC — but that's not a recent change. The VSD is a collaboration between a small team at the CDC's Immunization Safety Office and 11 private health care organizations. Since the 1990s, it's been used to monitor vaccine safety and conduct studies of rare side effects. 'These studies that use the VSD are able to tell the difference between a condition that coincidentally happens after vaccination and a condition that may actually be the result of vaccination,' said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The health care organizations used to send their anonymized medical data to the CDC each year for analysis, but since 2001, the organizations have kept the data on their own servers, to ensure it stays secure. 'Sometimes people have the image that if there's a vaccine safety study, there must be one giant database with all the information in it,' Sharfstein said. 'If you're not familiar with how distributed networks of data are designed and used in studies, then it can be confusing. Because there is no one big dataset. There is no single file that can just be sent or released.' The conspiracy lore around the VSD began in the early aughts, around the time that Kennedy, then an environmental lawyer, was being introduced to the anti-vaccine movement. At that point, the only groups with access to the VSD were the CDC and the participating health care organizations. The studies they produced relied on the data they collected, including from doctor and hospital visits, vaccinations, pharmacies and lab results. Then in 2002, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., who had a grandson he believed had been injured by vaccines, allied with several parent-led autism groups. Frustrated with anti-vaccine researchers' lack of access to data that might prove the link, Burton threatened to subpoena the VSD's patient records. At a hearing on the topic, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., urged Burton not to do it. 'A subpoena could have the effect of driving HMOs from the program and destroying CDC's ability to scientifically test hypotheses relating to adverse events potentially associated with vaccines,' Waxman warned, referring to the health care organizations. (Burton and Waxman left Congress in the mid-2010s.) Subpoenaing millions of medical records 'would have been a profound invasion of privacy,' said Johns Hopkins' Sharfstein. The CDC offered a solution: It would work with the participating health organizations to get independent researchers access to the data. Among the earliest beneficiaries — with the help of former Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., the recently withdrawn CDC director nominee — were the anti-vaccine researchers Mark and David Geier, a father-son pair who baselessly theorized that autism was the result of an interaction between a preservative in vaccines and testosterone. (Mark Geier died this year in Florida, over a decade after being stripped of his medical license in several states, partly for improperly treating autistic children with hormone blockers. David Geier, who was disciplined by the Maryland Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license in 2012, was hired at HHS this year as a senior data analyst to reanalyze vaccine safety data under Kennedy, according to two sources familiar with the plan.) The Geiers' work with VSD data was marked by alleged ethical breaches. In 2003 and 2004, the Geiers visited the CDC's Maryland data center to access VSD data for a study looking at whether the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine increased risks for harmful side effects. Instead, according to a letter of complaint from one of the health care groups, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, the Geiers violated protocol and began comparing rates of autism in children who received vaccines with different amounts of a preservative. Further, Kaiser Permanente said the Geiers tried to merge datasets in a way that would have risked patients' confidentiality, then tried to remove files from the datacenter. Subsequently, Kaiser Permanente suspended the Geiers' access to the VSD. The Geiers denied the accusations and published their findings in journals known more for conspiracy theories than rigorous science. At an Institute of Medicine panel in 2004, Mark Geier claimed the VSD data they analyzed showed that vaccines were linked to autism. Their published papers have been widely criticized by scientists and their findings never replicated or supported by mainstream research. In 2006, they were approved for another study using VSD data, and again, stopped after violating protocol, according to lawyers representing the government in a set of test cases known as the Omnibus Autism Proceedings. Lawyers representing the parents of autistic children — for whom the Geiers had been providing research — suggested in legal filings that the Geiers had been unfairly banned at the whims of CDC. For the Geiers, the experience was one of oppression. At anti-vaccine conferences, they presented PowerPoints alleging that the CDC had 'restricted' their access to data and 'attacked' their findings. At the same conferences, Kennedy, who has consistently praised the Geiers, told a similar story. 'Oh, they've hidden it, and they won't let anybody in it, except their own guys who cherry-pick and design these fabricated studies and change the protocols constantly to try to use it to defend vaccines,' Kennedy said in a 2017 keynote at AutismOne, an anti-vaccine conference for parents of autistic children where the Geiers also presented. 'It's being used instead to craft these fabricated, fraudulent studies,' he said, 'to fool the public about vaccine safety.' That same year, as Trump considered chairing a committee to review vaccine safety, Kennedy and a group of anti-vaccine activists met with Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health, to ask him to 'open up' the VSD to scientists who would 'investigate whether vaccines are associated with the epidemic of health disorders plaguing our children today.' In a letter following the meeting, Collins, who resigned from the NIH last month, told Kennedy that because of privacy concerns, access was limited to researchers who made formal requests and met certain criteria. Further, Collins said the kind of study Kennedy had suggested would be difficult because the sample population of unvaccinated children in the VSD — already just a fraction of the U.S. population — would be too small. Now, with Kennedy at the helm of HHS and Geier working for him, there are no roadblocks left.
