Discredited anti-vaccine advocate will lead CDC study on vaccines and autism | Hacker News Reader

Discredited anti-vaccine advocate will lead CDC study on vaccines and autism

arstechnica.com

79 pointsthrow0101c40 comments

Since this got flagged, I'm also reposting the URL in the comments:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/03/rfk-jr-hires-anti-vac...

Glad I live in a US State that will completely ignore these clowns.

This alone will force educated CDC people into pharma corporations, leaving the CDC irrelevant.

China and many other countries use CDC research, this will hand the lead in health research to Europe or more likely China.

Want to see the future of US health, just look at China under Mao 50+ years ago.

The US is a laughing stock currently - however much/little this chap is involved is irrelevant.

The US economy/way of life really only still stands because the world kinda believes in your ethos and credibility (eg usd as a global currency).

You keep going this way, and everyone is going to flee your influence and leave you a bankrupt mess.

You HAVE a technology moat, but that's rapidly eroding. I'd be surprised if it really survives this last term. The ongoing sanctions with your tech have driven other countries to make their own and be independent. You don't want others to be independent...

> A discredited anti-vaccine advocate who has no medical background and who has been disciplined for practicing medicine without a license will reportedly lead a questionable federal study on vaccines and autism

> Late Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that David Geier has been hired as a "data analyst" by the Department of Health and Human Services

So are they leading the federal study or are they a data analyst?

> So are they leading the federal study or are they a data analyst?

Why Or? What in the article indicates that only one of those things is the case?

Is Elon head of Doge or not? This is one of the many tactics they use. "Oh, he's not the head of it" He just makes all the decisions...

The purpose of this study is to allow the administration to say "Official CDC Study Concludes Vaccines Cause Autism". Then, the rebuttal to that statement will be not "No, there's no such study", but instead "yes it does, but the study was run by a discredited crank", which is a huge win because the target audience will stop reading after "yes".

The study doesn't need credibility for this purpose, it just needs to exist. I think it technically doesn't even need a body, just a title page and maybe an abstract to quote from.

So they put someone who is vehemently anti-vaccine at the head of a study, and when this individual finally concludes with data in hand that they're safe, what is the ultimate message and who does it affect, and how?

Just a reminder for the younger generation: Andrew Wakefield cooked up this whole mess in 1998 with study on a claimed link between MMR vaccination and autism. The study proved to be fraudulent and was retracted by the Lancet in 2010 and he was struck off the medical register. Nota bene: He wasn't against vaccination in general but suggested that the MMR should be split up into three separate jabs and he actually had a patent on separate jabs. Wikipedia is a good starting point to read up on the whole topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_and_autism

Welcome to the idiocracy.

This is ultimately the downfall of all fascist regimes: a charismatic leader who values loyalty above all else will end up surrounded by sycophantic morons.

It’s really just a question of how much damage gets done in the meantime.

For anyone who voted for Trump because of anti-woke backlash or whatever is this also acceptable? We're tearing any credibility we have left as a nation to shreds in that name of what exactly?

Liberals are too aggressive and disrespectful pushing for vaccines, it is their fault. Conservatives are too independent minded to accept vaccines in that situation.

I literally read that last week about unvaccinated Texans.

I know this has been pointed out many times, but it's really hard not to when it's so un-ignorable: The size of the gap in standards between liberals and conservatives regarding "disrespectful" behavior, especially taking context into account, is really, truly amazing.

What exactly is your point here?

That expectations on liberals are typically much much higher. First, people will blame liberals for not being super perfectly uber polite. Then they turn around and accept atrocious behavior on the conservative side with a word of complaint.

Second, while liberal politicians share blame for every online asshole who is liberal, conservative online assholes are excused and their politicians never share blame for that. Even when actual conservative representatives act rudely, someone will point out both are the same, because some liberal online troll something.

Third, very consistently, bad or stupid behavior on the republican side is claimed to be fault of liberals who made them do it. It is always backslash and conservatives are not to blame for their own behavior. I never seen reversed claim. If an SJW feminist do something wrong, it is never "backslash" to misogyny or bad behavior on the conservative side.

This is just a roundabout way of saying it's the Conservative's fault.

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not...

I was not sarcastic. I really read that. It was in a normal serious journal when I googled about measles. I do not recall which one exactly it was, but the claims stayed with me. Both the knee jerk blame the liberals for what conservatives do and knee jerked "Texas conservatives are independently minded" as soft defense. There was about zero independent thinking involved (anti-vaccers just follow what their chosen authorities tell them) and it was the only mention of liberals in the article.

I find the claim absurd, but it was made in all seriousness.

It is sarcastic in that the parent is quoting/paraphrasing somebody else (they clarify this in the second paragraph).

Can we please stop calling "bigoted views against anyone not WASP, and a refusal to acknowledge current and historical oppression of anyone not WASP" "anti-woke"?

It's like "PC" ("I hate the gays and/or blacks and/or jews and I'm annoyed I can't just be open about that without someone calling me a bigot"), "pro-life" ("I refuse to allow a woman to make decisions about her own body and insist on trying to legislate my extremist religious views"), and so on.

I always thought "PC" was a funny term given the people using it are the most likely to be trying to tell everyone else what can/can't be taught in schools, what people can/can't publish, what people can/can't read in their library, etc.

Anti-woke has a specific meaning and its not "pro racism to non WASPS" so cut that BS.

That’s why the purge everything that just mention gay , trans or black?

What is it then?

Woke is everything, everywhere, all at once.

Pretty much if an action can even so much as be perceived as helping someone, somewhere, with something in a way that they do not "deserve", then it is woke.

Clean air? Woke! Better consumer protections? Woke! Not having lead in our pipes? Believe it or not, woke!

The state and medical establishment already shredded their own credibility when they sent cops after people for going to the beach alone, and then sent out a proclamation that BLM protests were more important than the pandemic. Nevermind the intentional suppression of the lab leak theory and the smearing of anyone who supported it as a conspiracy theorist, including pressuring tech giants to silence and censor anyone who voiced skepticism or dissent.

These are the hills the state and medical establishment chose to murder their own credibility on, they've been dead for years now.

If you end up in an ER with a life threatening condition we'll all see just how fast you'll be begging the medical establishment to save your life.

No, because I'll be given lower priority for treatment by the medical establishment because of the color of my skin:

https://www.cato.org/commentary/why-racial-priority-covid-19...

Right now, Texans in affected areas are having prioritization for measles vaccines. There are attempts to educate and the state opened vaccination centers in affected areas.

Locals are white and they are not taking much interest, but state is still putting more effort into it then into vaccinations in some black area with low cases.

If that's what the Biden had pushed for with the vaccine rollout that would have been absolutely fine. The problem is that they explicitly acknowledged that by prioritizing blacks there would be more total deaths than by prioritizing age and other vulnerable groups.

At that time it wasn’t clear where and vow the infection spreads.

So putting other people’s life at risk while the hospital staff works still exhaustion to keep the already infected alive is a egomaniac move.

Yeah, no, these are pure excuses and rationalizations. And you know it. If you actually was preoccupied over covid, your only complain would not be anti racists protests - it would be overall excess deaths in read states.

When the only situation in which covid matter is the one where you can use it as a shield for anti-anti-racist stance while you are against vaccinations (which stopped the whole covid issue) and against any measure that cant be used for your favorite political cause ... then you are just making excuses.

Who the fuck ever said I was against vaccinations? I'm simply arguing that the governments and all of the health institutions of the western world burned their own credibility to ash in one glorious bonfire that they started themselves.

The anti-intellectual/anti-science bent of the Republican party knows no bounds

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