{"id":10084,"date":"2025-08-20T14:57:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T19:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10084"},"modified":"2025-08-20T14:57:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T19:57:58","slug":"the-playbook-used-to-prove-vaccines-cause-autism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/08\/20\/the-playbook-used-to-prove-vaccines-cause-autism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Playbook Used to \u2018Prove\u2019 Vaccines Cause Autism"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/The Playbook Used to \u2018Prove\u2019 Vaccines Cause Autism\">NYT<\/a> The Playbook Used to \u2018Prove\u2019 Vaccines Cause Autism. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., says he wants to understand what causes autism. It\u2019s a perfectly laudable goal and one that scientists have been pursuing for decades. But after announcing a large new federal study on the topic, he made a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/27\/health\/rfk-jr-autism-vaccines.html\">shocking choice<\/a>&nbsp;by bringing in the vaccine critic David Geier as a researcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the scientific community, Mr. Geier is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/anti-vax-vaccine-movement-rfk-jr-david-mark-geier.html\">infamous<\/a>\u00a0for the deeply\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2025\/07\/david-geier-vaccine-safety-shoddy-research\/683630\/\">flawed studies<\/a>\u00a0he conducted with his father, Mark Geier, claiming that vaccines cause autism. Researchers have long called attention to the serious methodological and ethical defects in their work. The Geiers once created an illegitimate\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC1839225\/\">review board<\/a>\u00a0for their research, composed of themselves, family members and business associates. They also\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/2009\/05\/21\/miracle-drug-called-junk-science-2\/\">promoted the drug Lupron<\/a>, used for chemical castration and prostate cancer, as a supposed treatment for autism,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/archives\/la-xpm-2009-may-24-na-autism24-story.html\">charging $5,000 to $6,000<\/a>\u00a0monthly for unproven therapies. As a result, Mark Geier\u2019s medical license was ultimately\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/story\/2025-04-01\/rfk-jr-puts-anti-vaxxer-in-charge-of-studying-debunked-link-between-vaccines-and-autism\">revoked or suspended by all 12 states<\/a>\u00a0in which he was licensed, and David Geier was fined for practicing medicine without a license.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NYT The Playbook Used to \u2018Prove\u2019 Vaccines Cause Autism. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., says he wants to understand what causes autism. It\u2019s a perfectly laudable goal and one that scientists have been pursuing for decades. But after announcing a large new federal study on the topic, he made a&nbsp;shocking choice&nbsp;by bringing in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10085,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10084\/revisions\/10085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}