The Division of Well being and Human Providers has employed anti-vaccine activist David Geier to investigate authorities information looking for totally debunked hyperlinks between immunizations and childhood autism.
Geier, who holds a bachelor’s diploma in biology, has spent a long time pushing discredited theories linking vaccines to autism. Geier and his father have lengthy been identified for peddling unhealthy science, with the scientific journal Nature even naming them among the many world’s high science deniers in 2010.
Greater than a decade in the past, Geier was charged with training drugs with no license, whereas his father’s medical license was suspended for treating autistic youngsters with the reckless “Lupron protocol,” which entails a drug used to deal with prostate most cancers and in chemical castration of intercourse offenders.
Geier’s new position inside HHS alerts one other win for the anti-vaccine motion—and a loss for public well being.
“This is a worst-case scenario for public health. It’s a slap in the face to the decades of actual credible research we have,” Jessica Steier, a public well being researcher who leads the Science Literacy Lab, informed the Washington Publish.
Regardless of having his entry to information from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention revoked in 2004, Geier will now be given a number of units of CDC information on vaccine security.
Throughout HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Senate affirmation hearings, Democratic lawmakers highlighted his inadequacy to guide the nation’s public well being companies.
Now, his mismanagement of the ongoing measles outbreak, unconscionable reductions to the federal well being providers workforce, and hiring of Geier show that he’s a hazard to public well being.