STAT+: HHS abruptly cancels CDC meeting with RFK Jr., anti-vaccine activist as scrutiny mounts

A meeting of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., anti-vaccine campaigner David Geier, and leaders of the country’s most robust vaccine safety database was abruptly canceled Wednesday, just hours before they were likely to discuss using the data to investigate whether there is a link between autism and the national childhood vaccine schedule, according to a person who had been invited to attend. 

Decades of research has shown that vaccines do not cause autism. Nevertheless, Kennedy hired Geier to reanalyze data that he and his father worked with in the early 2000s to try to find such a link, which Geier has long sought. The duo quickly lost access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink in 2004 after managers of the database learned they were pursuing a research question different from what they had proposed and had been approved. 

The meeting with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials overseeing the VSD was intended to discuss granting Geier access to more recent vaccine safety data than he previously had analyzed, the VSD official told STAT. The official asked to remain anonymous due to fears that they could lose their job. 

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