The Pathophilia blog looks carefully at IRB Approval of Geier Autism Study: Yes or No?—–this would be the new study on thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders which lists David A. Geier and his father, Dr. Mark Geier, as two of the three co-authors. Aside from noting conflicts of interest, Pathophilia notes:
In a February 2004 letter to the IRB administrator of Kaiser of Northern California, the then Acting Associate Director for Science of the National Immunization Program at the CDC, Jeanne Santoli, MD, warned Kaiser of “potential breaches in confidentiality and execution of analyses that were not approved in advance,” when Mark …read more

There’s a new study published in the Journal of Neurological Sciences that reports an association between increased mercury (Hg) exposure from thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders (go here for a pdf file). The study has three co-authors, Heather A. Young, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, and David A. Geier and his father, Dr. Mark Geier. The Geiers have frequently been consultants in “vaccine-biologic cases before the no-faulty NVICP [National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program] and in civil litigation,” and Dr. Geier has also been an “expert witness,” as …read more

That’s how Dr. Steven Novella refers to various alternative medical practices used by parents on their autistic children in the May 8th Neurologica blog. Among those practices is chelation, in which medications are administered to remove “heavy metals” from a person’s body and thereby to “detoxify” his or her system. Dr. Novella discusses the recent dropping of charges against Dr. Roy Kerry, who was accused of causing the death of 5-year-old Abubakar Tariq Nadama. In 2005 Nadama went into cardiac arrest after undergoing chelation therapy with Dr. Kerry. Dr. Novella not only points out the dangers of chelation, …read more

This past Friday, a government-appointed working group met for the first time to discuss research about the safety of immunizations. Federal health officials said that the meeting is not in response to the recent concession by the government that vaccines aggravated an underlying mitochondrial condition in 9-year-old Hannah Poling and led to symptoms of autism; the April 13th New York Times states otherwise:
The meeting, the first of more to be set, came amid new controversy about vaccines and autism — and a fledgling theory that vaccinations might worsen a rare condition called mitochondrial dysfunction that sets off certain forms of …read more

More commentary on the case of Hannah Poling by pediatrician Rahul Parikh, M.D., on Salon (March 13). As Dr. Parikh clearly states, the government’s concession does not say that vaccines caused Hannah to become autistic, but that her “underlying mitochondrial disorder” was “aggravated” by vaccines and “manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autistic spectrum disorder.” Dr. Parikh continues:
Mitochondrial disorder does not equal autism [my emphasis]. Generally speaking, mitochondria are the parts of our cells that help generate energy. When they fail, the body’s cells go awry, which can lead to failures in any number of normal body …read more