Former CDC Autism Scientist Extradited to U.S. on Fraud, Money Laundering Charges
THIS IS THE WAY.
This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.
Poul Thorsen, a Danish native who worked for the CDC beginning in the late 1990s, was indicted in 2011 for the alleged misuse of over $1 million in CDC grant money that was earmarked for autism and public health research. Thorsen is accused of redirecting the funds for his personal use. He is also known for his role in authoring studies finding no link between vaccines and autism. Critics allege the studies, still widely cited today, were flawed.
A former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist who played a key role in research that denied any link between vaccination and autism was extradited to the U.S. last week to face charges of wire fraud and money laundering stemming from a 2011 indictment.
Poul Thorsen, 65, a Danish native, began working for the CDC in the late 1990s. In 2011, a federal grand jury indicted him for the alleged misuse of over $1 million in CDC grant money that was earmarked for autism and public health research. Thorsen is accused of redirecting the funds for his personal use.
Despite the indictment — and the existence of an extradition treaty between the U.S. and Denmark — Thorsen continued to live and work in Denmark. However, he was arrested in Germany last year on an INTERPOL warrant.
On May 8, U.S. Air Marshals escorted him from Germany to Atlanta, where he was arraigned.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which listed Thorsen on its most wanted list in 2012, posted a video of his extradition.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Thorsen faces two counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering. He is being held without bail until trial.
In 2011, studies Thorsen co-authored were used to dismiss cases filed by the parents of autistic, vaccine-injured children that were part of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings pending before the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP).
A 2016 book, “Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC,” focused on the Thorsen case, describing him as “a world-class villain whose manipulation of health data gave CDC and big pharma what they wanted: a report clearing thimerosal of any possible role in the autism crisis.”
Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said Thorsen “was central to the CDC and Pharma lies that ‘vaccines do not cause autism.’”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for CHD, said Thorsen’s work “set autism research back more than 20 years.”
“Previous administrations did not appear interested in pursuing Thorsen,” according to the MAHA Report. As a result, Thorsen was “living openly, apparently without concern of being captured in Denmark.”
HHS and DOJ did not respond to The Defender’s requests for comment.
Thorsen co-authored ‘flawed’ papers still used to disprove vaccine-autism link
When he first joined the CDC as a visiting scientist, Thorsen’s research focused on birth defects and developmental disabilities. However, by the early 2000s, he shifted his focus to autism research.
According to the DOJ, two Danish government agencies received over $11 million between 2000 and 2009 for a series of studies, including research on the vaccine-autism link.
Thorsen returned to Denmark in 2002 and “became responsible for administering the research money awarded by the CDC.” However, the DOJ and HHS allege that Thorsen embezzled some of this money, some of which was used to buy a home in Atlanta, two cars and a motorcycle.
Despite the alleged fraudulent activity, Thorsen left a strong imprint on autism research — and on subsequent narratives that autism isn’t linked to vaccines.
According to a 2017 report by the World Mercury Project — predecessor to CHD — “Thorsen’s influence on US vaccine projects and policies is extensive.”
“The studies he led had a strong influence on the review and outcomes of the Institute of Medicine (now known as the National Academy of Medicine) … when they looked at thimerosal in vaccines,” the report states.
One of those studies — the “Madsen study,” published in 2002 in The New England Journal of Medicine and co-authored by Thorsen — was a population-based study of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The study concluded that there is “strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism.”
However, according to the 2017 report, the Madsen study was “flawed from the outset” because the researchers reviewed clinical records of only 40 of the 316 children who had autism in the study’s cohort. A peer-reviewed analysis last year cast further doubt on the study’s conclusions.
In 2003, Madsen and Thorsen were among the co-authors of a study published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. That study did “not support a correlation between thimerosal-containing vaccines and the incidence of autism.”
Hooker accused the authors of both studies of hiding data, making simple arithmetic errors designed not to find a correlation and cherry-picking information “to form the CDC’s narrative.”
Both studies relied on Danish population data. According to the 2017 report, the studies bypassed ethical reviews required for this category of research:
“Thorsen’s Madsen MMR-Autism study was conducted and published without a review and approval from the ethics committee (the Danish version of the IRB [Institutional Review Board]). It also shows that Thorsen failed to obtain annual human subject protection reviews, as required under US federal law.”
When the CDC discovered Thorsen hadn’t obtained the required ethics approvals, the agency didn’t report the errors, and the studies weren’t retracted. Instead, CDC officials engaged in a cover-up, the 2017 report states
Thorsen used Danish data to draw conclusions about U.S. vaccine schedule
The use of Danish medical data to draw conclusions about the U.S. childhood vaccination schedule and its potential link to the autism epidemic among U.S. children raises questions, according to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In an op-ed Kennedy wrote last year for TrialSite News, he noted that the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule is “considerably more aggressive than Denmark’s,” which makes direct comparisons questionable.
Kennedy cited more recent Danish studies that have continued to deny any link between vaccines and autism. Some were produced by researchers at the North Atlantic Neuro-Epidemiology Alliance (NANEA) — a Danish research institute that Thorsen led and to which he channeled significant CDC funding.
“The purpose of NANEA’s research was to take health data from Denmark — not America — to conduct studies to determine whether vaccines were behind the rise in autism in the U.S.,” according to the MAHA Report.
‘Vaccine industry would have collapsed’ if Thorsen’s research not published
According to the 2017 report, the Madsen-Thorsen papers were used to reject over 5,000 claims filed as part of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings.
“These claims, if settled in the claimants’ favor, would have resulted in payouts totaling an estimated $10 billion,” the 2017 report states.
Researcher James Grundvig is the author of “Master Manipulator” and the parent of a child with autism who was vaccine-injured. Grundvig, who filed one of the claims that the VICP rejected, said the rejection motivated him to investigate Thorsen and the CDC, and to write his book.
Grundvig’s investigation revealed that Thorsen was useful for the CDC, as his findings fit the narrative that vaccines don’t cause autism.
“They knew inside the CDC what was causing the autism epidemic back then, and they needed to go basically spend $25 to $30 million over the next five years, which was a lot of money 25 years ago, to cover up all of the fraud and cover up a signal between autism and vaccines,” Grundvig alleged.
He said that “the whole vaccine industry would’ve collapsed at that time” if Thorsen’s research hadn’t been published.
Dr. Dave Weldon, a physician and Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1995 and 2009 — and who President Donald Trump nominated to lead the CDC in late 2024 before retracting his nomination — called Thorsen’s “dubious research” his “greatest crime.”
Weldon said:
“His greatest crime is not the money he stole but his dubious research, which was used by CDC to dismiss the legal case brought by hundreds of families with obviously vaccine-injured children.
“This was a total corruption of congressional intent when the vaccine compensation program was created, and justice is long overdue. We need full accountability and full transparency.”
Facing decades in jail, will Thorsen come clean about autism studies?
Following his 2011 indictment, Thorsen lived and worked in Denmark, including for Lillebælt Hospital and for the University of Southern Denmark, according to the 2017 report.
Grundvig said it is likely that Denmark avoided extraditing Thorsen as part of an effort to cover up broader research-related fraud.
“If Denmark and its medical community is trapped into this incredible fraud and lie that basically allowed the autism epidemic to happen, it is going to look really bad on them. So, there was no way Denmark was ever going to extradite Thorsen,” Grundvig said.
Thorsen’s extradition also has political dimensions. According to Danish newspaper Politiken, Thorsen “risks becoming a Danish casualty of the political pressure the Trump administration has increasingly exerted on the American justice system.” Thorsen’s lawyers told German authorities he would not receive a fair trial in the U.S.
The Danish Justice Ministry, Interior Ministry, Danish Police, the Danish Embassy in Washington, D.C., Lillebælt Hospital and the University of Southern Denmark did not respond to The Defender’s requests for comment. The Danish Foreign Ministry and Danish Prime Minister’s Office referred The Defender to the Justice Ministry.
The 2017 report noted that it was not the CDC that uncovered the fraud Thorsen was allegedly involved in, but his former employer, Denmark’s Aarhus University.
The report also noted that U.S. public officials “failed to distance themselves from Thorsen in any manner.” One CDC official, Diana Schendel, maintained an inappropriate romantic relationship with Thorsen and later accepted a position at Aarhus University to lead autism research there. She remains employed there today.
Hooker said that “both the U.S. and Denmark had much to lose” by extraditing Thorsen. “HHS has been captured by Big Pharma for many years. Only under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership could this monumental task be undertaken,” Hooker said.
Grundvig said Thorsen, who now faces decades behind bars, may seek to reveal information about fraudulent research in exchange for a lighter sentence. He said this information may implicate U.S. public health officials and researchers.
“If he faces 20, 25 years, he’s going to die in an American prison,” Grundvig said. “Does he want that? Probably not. So, you would have to logically think he’s going to sing like a canary and tell everything.”
Holland said, “Facing indefinite incarceration in the U.S., I hope he will tell the truth about what he did, who his co-conspirators were and their whole criminal scheme.”
Related articles in The Defender
Fugitive Scientist Behind Vaccine and Autism Studies Arrested for Stealing $1 Million From CDC
Study Claiming No Link Between Aluminum in Vaccines and Autism Riddled with Flaws, Critics Say
‘Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism’ Claim Built on ‘House of Cards,’ Authors of New Review Say
Donate to Children’s Health Defense
