From PBS NewsHour.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday for details of his department’s $50 million study investigating possible causes of autism.
Luján and Kennedy went back and forth, trading barbs and insults. Luján asked Kennedy whether HHS was employing David Geier, a discredited vaccine skeptic who was charged in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license. Kennedy responded that Geier is a contractor, but Luján said the department’s website listed him as an employee.
Kennedy also said Geier is not running the study, but was brought in to access the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a project run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health care centers across the country that “monitors the safety of vaccines and conducts studies about rare and serious adverse events following immunization.”
“Because Congress ordered the CDC to open up the VSD to him in 2002, he’s the only outsider who’s seen it,” Kennedy said. David Geier and his father Mark Geier, a former Maryland physician who lost his license, had used their access to VSD data to publish studies claiming a link between vaccines and autism, which were later retracted.
Kennedy appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance a day after more than 20 medical societies and organizations called for his resignation. They cited “repeated efforts to undermine science and public health,” most recently the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez over vaccine science and the resulting resignations of other leaders at the organization.
During his tenure, the health secretary and former anti-vaccine advocate has narrowed long-standing U.S. vaccine recommendations. He’s also replaced a key panel of medical experts with his hand-picked candidates ahead of the start of the respiratory virus season in the United States.
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