HHS Refuses to Say What An Anti-Vaccine Activist Is Doing at the Agency

Longtime and controversial anti-vaccine activist David Geier is still working at the Department of Health and Human Services—and the agency is still refusing to specify exactly what he’s doing. In mid-April, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the Senate Finance Committee that he would give them a copy of Geier’s contract. According to a member of the committee, he has still not.

“Three weeks after Secretary Kennedy committed to providing details regarding David Geier’s work at HHS (something he committed to doing within 3 days), our office has yet to hear from HHS on anything related,” says a spokesperson for Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.). 

Geier and his late father Mark, a physician who eventually lost his license, spent years presenting themselves as experts on alleged vaccine injuries and pursuing discredited and dangerous “treatments” for autism in children, including Lupron, a drug that inhibits testosterone production and is used to chemically castrate sex offenders. 

From Mark’s home in DC’s Maryland suburbs, the pair presented themselves as experts on autism, running organizations with serious-sounding names, including the Institute for Chronic Illness and the Genetic Centers of America. Their work has been widely panned: in 2003, the American Academy of Pediatrics said a study they published—which purported to show a link between thimerosal, a preservative previously used in some vaccines, and autism—not only “contains numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements,” but made inappropriate use of data from HHS’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. For another paper in the journal Autoimmunity Review, which was subsequently retracted, the Geiers’ apparent review board, journalist Brian Deer wrote, consisted of the Geiers themselves, Mark Geier’s wife, along with “two of Dr Geier’s business associates; and two mothers of autistic children, one of whom has publicly acknowledged that her son is a patient/subject of Dr Geier, and the other of whom is plaintiff in three pending vaccine injury claims.”

Both Geier and his father were banned in 2004 from accessing the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a federal database which records adverse vaccine reactions and contains medical information on millions of Americans. At the time, a National Immunization Program official wrote in a warning letter that the men had attempted “to merge data files” from the VSD in a way that could have created “complete medical records on subjects, and if so, could have increased the risk of a breach of confidentiality.” Mark Geier’s Maryland medical license was revoked in August 2012 for prescribing children the synthetic hormone Lupron as a supposed autism treatment. David Geier, who has a bachelor’s degree in biology but no other certifications, was himself fined $10,000 in 2011 by the Maryland medical board for practicing medicine without a license.

David Geier’s hiring, which was first reported by the Washington Post in March 2025, generated serious concern among autism organizations. The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network bluntly termed him “a quack,” adding that by “hiring David Geier, the Trump administration has abandoned its responsibility to safeguard public health and promote science.”

The situation has also raised concerns about Geier’s potential access to sensitive medical or personally identifying information. Senator Luján’s office sent a pointed letter to Kennedy on April 1, asking, among other things, “what specific research questions” Geier is investigating, and “what data use agreements are in place to ensure that privacy of the data is maintained.”

Geier’s employment is just one of many concerning changes that Kennedy has made at HHS. He’s also taken steps to weaken the federal vaccine court system, and “retired” every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a key vaccine review board, attempting to replace many of them with allies from the anti-vaccine movement. (The board remains in limbo after a judge issued an injunction against Kennedy’s appointments.)

Under Kennedy, the FDA also deleted a warning page outlining debunked autism treatments. One, chelation therapy, which removes heavy metals from the body, was practiced by the Geiers. (Some anti-vaccine activists falsely claim that vaccines impart heavy metals into the body; a separate FDA page which has not yet been removed warns against chelation therapy for autism.)

This month the New York Times reported that Kennedy has quietly continued driving what the paper described as a “vast inquiry” into vaccines, again attempting to link them to autism and various autoimmune conditions—theories that have been repeatedly debunked. The Times also reported that Kennedy has publicly deemphasized his inquiry at the behest of the White House, due to fears his anti-vaccine initiative will hurt Republicans in the midterm elections.

Neither David Geier nor HHS responded to requests for comment about his employment. The office of Senate Finance Committee chair Senator Mike Crapo, (R-Idaho) also didn’t respond to a request for comment.