Fugitive Vaccine Researcher Behind Infamous ‘No Autism Link’ Study ARRESTED for Stealing $1 Million from CDC
You can't make this up.
This article originally appeared on Focal Points and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
The very foundation of the “no autism link” narrative rests on research tainted by both criminal activity and scientific fraud.
Breitbart News has reported that Poul Thorsen, the Danish researcher whose work has been used for two decades to dismiss any link between vaccines and autism, has finally been arrested in Germany after more than a decade as a fugitive.
Thorsen, 64, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Atlanta in 2011 on 22 counts of wire fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors allege that from 2004 to 2010, he stole more than $1 million in CDC research funds—money intended to study autism, infant disabilities, genetic disorders, and fetal alcohol syndrome. According to the indictment, Thorsen funneled funds into his own accounts using fraudulent invoices on CDC letterhead.
He has been on the HHS “Most Wanted” list for over a decade. Acting on an INTERPOL red notice, German authorities finally took him into custody in June. The Department of Justice is now working with Germany to extradite him for trial in the United States.
Thorsen wasn’t just any researcher. He co-authored the infamous 2002 Danish study (published in NEJM) that became the CDC’s so-called “gold standard” for dismissing any link between vaccines and autism. That paper was cited by the National Academy of Medicine, weaponized to shut down more than 5,000 federal vaccine injury claims, and is still rolled out by officials today.
But the study itself was riddled with fatal flaws and fraud:
Outdated autism rates that undercounted true prevalence, artificially muting signals.
Diagnostic delay bias, since most unvaccinated children were too young to receive an autism diagnosis, suppressing their case counts.
Overadjusted statistical models that diluted any association into noise.
Immortal time bias and reclassification tricks that miscounted exposures and broke the basic rules of causality.
CDC co-authorship and funding conflicts that were never properly disclosed.
That’s what makes Thorsen’s arrest so significant. The fact that a man now facing trial for embezzlement and fraud was central to one of the most influential vaccine safety studies ever conducted raises profound questions.
The very foundation of the “no autism link” narrative rests on research tainted by both criminal activity and scientific fraud.
At the McCullough Foundation, we are finalizing one of the most comprehensive and rigorous analyses ever conducted on the vaccine–autism connection — untainted by the fraud and bias that corrupted past research. Stay tuned.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
www.mcculloughfnd.org
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