The Division of Well being and Human Providers has employed anti-vaccine activist David Geier to research authorities information searching for totally debunked hyperlinks between immunizations and childhood autism.
Geier, who holds a bachelor’s diploma in biology, has spent many years pushing discredited theories linking vaccines to autism. Geier and his father have lengthy been identified for peddling dangerous science, with the scientific journal Nature even naming them among the many world’s prime science deniers in 2010.
Greater than a decade in the past, Geier was charged with working towards drugs and not using a license, whereas his father’s medical license was suspended for treating autistic kids with the reckless “Lupron protocol,” which includes a drug used to deal with prostate most cancers and in chemical castration of intercourse offenders.
Cartoon by Clay Bennett
Geier’s new function 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, advised the Washington Put up.
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 continued 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.
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