Archive for the ‘Autism’ Category

Former CDC Scientist Whose Studies Were Used to ‘Debunk’ Vaccine-Autism Link Will Plead Guilty

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/poul-thorsen-former-cdc-scientist-studies-debunk-vaccine-autism-link-plead-guilty/?

Former CDC Scientist Whose Studies Were Used to ‘Debunk’ Vaccine-Autism Link Will Plead Guilty

Poul Thorsen, 65, is finalizing a plea deal with prosecutors relating to charges stemming from a 2011 federal indictment charging him with wire fraud and money laundering. Thorsen’s research was used to dismiss over 5,000 claims filed by the parents of children with autism who were injured by vaccines. An assistant U.S. district attorney confirmed that prosecutors are working with Thorsen on a plea deal, but declined to comment for The Defender on details of the deal.

by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

August 24, 2026

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website.

poul thorsen and words "plea guilty"

Poul Thorsen screenshot via the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General YouTube page.

A former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist who played a crucial role in research rebutting any link between vaccines and autism is expected to plead guilty next week to wire fraud and money laundering.

Poul Thorsen, 65, is finalizing a plea deal with prosecutors relating to charges stemming from a 2011 federal indictment, Nathan Kitchens, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, told The Defender.

Thorsen, who began working for the CDC in the late 1990s, faces two counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering related to over $1 million in CDC grant money. The funds were earmarked for autism and public health research, but Thorsen allegedly used them to buy a home, two cars and a motorcycle.

Kitchens declined to comment on whether Thorsen will plead guilty to all or some of the charges.

Thorsen has been held in federal custody without bail since his extradition from Germany to the U.S. in May. The case is being heard at a federal court in Georgia, where the CDC is headquartered.

Researcher James Grundvig, the parent of a child with autism who was vaccine-injured, called the expected guilty plea “a very big deal.”

Grundvig, who wrote “Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC,” which focused on the Thorsen case, praised U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for extraditing Thorsen “in record speed.”

He said Thorsen likely understands that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice have “all the goods” to prosecute him.

“I guess Thorsen’s realizing, since he’s in American jail already and has no chance for bail, he might as well make a plea deal,” Grundvig said.

Dr. Dave Weldon, a physician and Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1994 and 2009 — and who President Donald Trump nominated to lead the CDC in late 2024 before retracting his nomination in March 2025 — welcomed the plea agreement but said it isn’t enough.

“It would be a miscarriage of justice if a plea deal failed to include a thorough investigation of allegations of scientific fraud,” Weldon said.

Danish independent vaccine safety researcher Vibeke Manniche, M.D., Ph.D., said some of the federal funds Thorsen is said to have misused may have been intended for vaccine-autism studies. Manniche said the guilty plea calls Thorsen’s research into question.

“An obvious question is whether he also has been cheating with data to achieve the results he sought,” Manniche said. “That we don’t know. A good rule in gold-standard science is replication, and it would be wise, for so many reasons, to replicate his work,” independently of the institutions Thorsen had been affiliated with.

Grundvig noted that the Thorsen indictment included unnamed co-conspirators, suggesting that the investigation may implicate more people — and also the controversial autism research that Thorsen helped publish in 2002 and 2003 that was cited as proof of no link between vaccines and autism.

“I think that’s going to be the second part of the story,” Grundvig said. “It could be an avalanche of bad news for both pharma and the CDC.”

Thorsen studies cited in dismissing over 5,000 vaccine injury claims

Despite questions around how those studies were conducted, the Madsen-Thorsen papers were used in 2011 to dismiss over 5,000 claims filed by the parents of autistic, vaccine-injured children. The claims were part of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding pending before the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

In “Master Manipulator,” Grundvig — whose son’s case was one of the claims dismissed as a result of Thorsen’s research — described Thorsen 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.”

According to Weldon:

“The real crime is not absconding with research dollars, but unresolved allegations around his research which served as the basis for the CDC and the U.S. government dismissing vaccine injury claims by thousands of injured children. These actions set back vaccine safety research by more than two decades.”

Grundvig suggested the Thorsen investigation and his guilty plea may call into question the dismissal of the omnibus cases, as it would “then make all of those vaccine omnibus proceedings completely fraudulent because it was based on a fraud, and that should reopen the cases.”

Hooker, whose omnibus claim for his son was also dismissed, said Thorsen likely didn’t act alone in misusing federal money or misrepresenting vaccine-autism research — and that the role of some of his key collaborators should be examined.

“There should be a separate investigation against Dr. Diana Schendel, who was Thorsen’s direct grant supervisor and lover and approved all of his invoices for expenditures from his CDC grant money. Dr. Schendel undoubtedly knew of Thorsen’s activities but did not report them to the authorities and could have spent some of the stolen grant money as well,” Hooker said.

Schendel maintained an inappropriate romantic relationship with Thorsen and later accepted a position at Denmark’s Aarhus University to lead autism research there. She remains employed at Aarhus University — and at Drexel University — today.

Thorsen continued to live in Denmark for years after the 2011 U.S. indictment. He worked there as a gynecologist despite an extradition treaty between the two countries and an INTERPOL warrant for his arrest.

Hooker added:

“Other co-conspirators who knew of the inappropriate relationship between Thorsen and Schendel over the seven-year grant history at CDC include Coleen Boyle, Ph.D., former director of the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities), and Dr. Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsop, former branch chief of the Developmental Disabilities Branch at the CDC.

“These individuals at a minimum should be brought in for questioning. Both have also been implicated in the MMR-autism fraud from the DeStefano et al. 2004 paper, where data showing a strong relationship between MMR timing and autism in Black boys was illegally destroyed.”

Thorsen’s vaccine-autism studies full of ‘irregularities’

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, Thorsen shifted his focus to autism research. His work in this area left a strong imprint, fueling future narratives that autism isn’t linked to vaccines.

According to a 2017 report by the World Mercury Project — predecessor to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) — Thorsen’s influence on U.S. vaccine projects and policies “is extensive” because his studies were used to dismiss a possible link between vaccines and autism.

One of the most influential studies became known as the “Madsen study,” a population-based study of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.

Published in 2002 in The New England Journal of Medicine and co-authored by Thorsen, the Madsen study concluded that there is “strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism.”

However, according to the 2017 World Mercury Project 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 published last year cast further doubt on the study’s conclusions.

In 2003, Madsen and Thorsen co-authored another influential study, published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study did “not support a correlation between thimerosal-containing vaccines and the incidence of autism.”

Thimerosal is a mercury-based adjuvant used in some vaccines, which some scientists and advocates for people with autism have suggested may trigger autism.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, said there are “numerous data irregularities” in the Thorsen studies.

In their critique of the 2002 paper, Hooker and Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD senior research scientist, found significant errors in the paper. They concluded the study’s unadjusted results “do not support rejecting the causal link” between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In a critique of the 2003 Madsen-Thorsen study, Hooker and researcher Jeffrey Allen Trelka concluded that the study’s findings “may have been skewed by participant selection and changes in diagnostic groupings.”

Other critiques of the 2002 and 2003 studies raised concerns about ethical considerations. Both studies relied on Danish population data. According to the 2017 World Mercury Project report, the studies bypassed ethical reviews required for this category of research, as required by 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.

“Given these irregularities, Thorsen should also be under investigation for data fraud as he clearly withheld data and could have altered data” from Danish official sources, Hooker told The Defender.

Manniche said that if it is proven Thorsen tampered with the data in his studies, it would be a “terrible tragedy,” because “parents were told that the MMR vaccine was safe and sound and that it couldn’t harm the child.”

As of July 31, there were 1,931 reports claiming onset of autism or autism spectrum disorder following MMR vaccination contained within the federally run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Will Thorsen sing?

Grundvig suggested that, as part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, Thorsen may have an incentive to provide testimony or information targeting other CDC figures.

“Thorsen’s 65 years old, born in 1961 … does he want to die in an American jail?” Grundvig asked. “I don’t think so. So, I think he wants to make, and will make, a plea deal. The only way he’s going to make a plea deal is with someone like Kennedy and maybe others in the Department of Justice that look at a bigger case,” Grundvig said.

Grundvig suggested this “bigger case” may involve the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO Act.

“There’s a bigger fraud involved than just stealing money, and I think it goes back to the vaccines, it goes back to the studies that the CDC cooked up,” potentially implicating Schendel and Madsen.

“Will he be used as a star witness against the CDC old guard and all of the shenanigans that went on massaging of science, of science papers, influence on Pediatrics and other journals, in order to get all of this done back in the early 2000s in order to exonerate vaccines and erase the autism signal?” Grundvig asked.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

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For more:

Autism Affects 1 in 31: One Doctor’s Search for Answers

https://imahealth.substack.com/p/autism-affects-1-in-31-one-doctors?

Autism Affects 1 in 31: One Doctor’s Search for Answers

Dr. Elizabeth Mumper’s 46-year pediatric career, spanning 600+ patients across 20 states, reveals what medical schools still aren’t teaching about autism.

In 1979, a medical student at the Medical College of Virginia was told to make sure she saw the patient with autism at the children’s treatment center. At the time, the condition was so rare it might be the only case she’d encounter in her entire career. Prevalence was 1 in 5,000.

That student was Elizabeth Mumper. Over the next 46 years, she diagnosed and treated more than 600 children with autism from 20 different states and lectured on their medical conditions in 21 countries. Today she is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance. And autism prevalence has reached 1 in 31 children.

In a new article published in the Journal of Independent Medicine, Dr. Mumper traces what changed and what the medical establishment has been slow to recognize: that autism is not just a psychiatric diagnosis. Children with autism often have treatable medical conditions, including gut inflammation, immune dysregulation, metabolic abnormalities, and mitochondrial dysfunction. When those conditions are identified and addressed, the improvements can be dramatic. Some children no longer meet the diagnostic criteria at all.

“When you find a problem that is treatable, it’s very, very rewarding to see the children feel better, and the families are very grateful.” — Elizabeth Mumper

The gap between published research and clinical training, Dr. Mumper writes, remains wide. Most pediatric residents still learn the behavioral model. Her article lays out the medical comorbidities, the evidence behind targeted interventions, and the opportunity for clinicians willing to look deeper.

📖 Read and Download the Full Paper

How Autism Changed Throughout My Career (JIM Vol. 2, No. 2, 2026)
Author: Elizabeth Mumper

👉 Visit the Journal of Independent Medicine to create a free account and download the full article.

Related Reading

For more:

A Blind Spot on Autism

https://www.lymedisease.org/autism-infectious%E2%80%91disease-lens/

Looking at autism through an infectious‑disease lens

The following excerpt comes from A Blind Spot on Autism. The book is co‑authored by Debbie Kimberg, a mother and advocate whose writing for LymeDisease.org has chronicled her son’s improvement after treatment for vector‑borne infections including Borrelia, Bartonella, and Babesia. She partners with Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt, one of the world’s leading Bartonella researchers. Together, they blend lived experience and scientific expertise to explore biological patterns they believe have been overlooked in autism research.

By Debbie Kimberg and Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt

Article Excerpts:

From the moment we step into a doctor’s office, we’re taught to think of health problems as separate boxes. A child’s learning issues go to a specialist for educational testing. A sibling’s anxiety is treated by a mental health professional. A parent’s autoimmune disease is managed by a rheumatologist. A grandparent’s memory loss goes to neurology.

Medicine is organized this way.

This book brings together two perspectives rarely combined: the lived experience of navigating these patterns as a parent and patient advocate, and the decades of research from one of the world’s leading infectious disease experts. Our goal is not to dismiss the work already done on autism, but to attempt to connect the dots between existing research that has remained scattered across a thousand scientific papers, often among different fields of study. When viewed together, these studies point toward a hypothesis that could explain both the near-exponential rise in autism cases and the convoluted web of health problems in so many families.

This is not the first time medicine has been blindsided by an invisible infectious cause. History is full of examples where an infectious trigger hid in plain sight for decades before science caught up. Syphilis was once thought to be a mysterious neurological illness, ulcers were blamed on stress, and HIV was first recognized only by its complications. Each time, the truth emerged slowly, in pieces, and often against the resistance of the medical establishment.

….Bartonella species may represent one of the most stealth and dangerous pathogens seen in generations, pathogens that have been allowed to spread silently, reshaping the health of millions without recognition.  (See link for article & ordering info)

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**Comment**

Sadly, autism is only one such illness with an infectious connection.  In this study, it was found that 92% of pediatric bip0lar disorder had tick-borne infections exposure.  PANS is connected with Lyme and mycoplasma.

For more:

 

Landmark Study: Vaccination is the Dominant Risk Factor For Autism

UPDATE:

Go here to listen to Nicolas Hulscher and Dr. Andrew Wakefield discuss the landmark autism report.

BREAKING — Landmark Report Finds Vaccination Is the Dominant Risk Factor for Autism Spectrum Disorder

McCullough Foundation’s authoritative analysis of more than 300 studies provides the most comprehensive synthesis to date on the possible causes of autism.

For decades, scientists have debated what drives the relentless rise in autism. Some have claimed it’s due to “increased screening” while others declare it’s anything but vaccines. Thousands of studies have explored genetic, environmental, and perinatal factors—but very few have ever examined vaccine and non-vaccine determinants together within a unified analytical framework.

Now, the landmark McCullough Foundation Report titled, Determinants of Autism Spectrum Disorder, provides the most comprehensive synthesis on the possible causes of autism to-date. Thanks to the tireless work of Nicolas Hulscher, MPH, John S. Leake, MA, Simon Troupe, MPH, Claire Rogers, MSPAS, PA-C, Kirstin Cosgrove, BM, CCRA, M. Nathaniel Mead, MSc, PhD, Bre Craven, PA-C, Mila Radetich, Andrew Wakefield, MBBS, and Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH — and support from the Bia-Echo Foundation — this historic effort was made possible.

Our report represents a major breakthrough through the iron grip of censorship imposed by the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex on the issue of vaccination and autism. It also marks Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s first major return to the scientific literature in years—after enduring years of irrational attacks from the vaccine cartel.

By systematically integrating more than 300 studies across epidemiologic, clinical, mechanistic, and molecular domains, our team delivers the most extensive mapping yet of autism’s multifactorial origins and opens a new line of inquiry into how environmental and iatrogenic exposures intersect with genetic susceptibility.

By evaluating all known risk factors side by side, this analysis uniquely clarifies the relative contribution of vaccination compared to genetic and environmental domains. No prior review has attempted this integrative scope without excluding positive vaccine-association studies or unvaccinated controls—an essential step in determining whether vaccines truly play a role in autism risk, and if so, how significant that role is within the broader causal landscape.

Here’s what we found as described in the Abstract:

Introduction: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is now estimated to affect more than 1 in 31 children in the United States, with prevalence rising sharply over the past two decades and posing an increasing burden to families and public health systems. Most of the literature on ASD characterizes it as a complex neurodevelopmental condition shaped by multiple determinants, including genetic liability, immune dysregulation, perinatal stressors, and environmental toxicants. Since 1996, the possible role of childhood vaccination has also been discussed and debated. This review synthesizes the full range of evidence to clarify both vaccine-related and non-vaccine contributors to ASD risk.

Methods: We comprehensively examined epidemiologic, clinical, and mechanistic studies evaluating potential ASD risk factors, assessing outcomes, exposure quantification, strength and independence of associations, temporal relationships, internal and external validity, overall cohesiveness, and biological plausibility.

Results: We found potential determinants of new onset ASD before the age of 9 years old to include: older parents (>35 years mother, >40 years father), premature delivery before 37 weeks of gestation, common genetic variants, siblings with autism, maternal immune activation, in utero drug exposure, environmental toxicants, gut-brain axis alterations and combination routine childhood vaccination. These diverse genetic, environmental, and iatrogenic factors appear to intersect through shared pathways of immune dysregulation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and neuroinflammation, culminating in neurodevelopmental injury and regression in susceptible children. Of 136 studies examining childhood vaccines or their excipients, 29 found neutral risks or no association, while 107 inferred a possible link between immunization or vaccine components and ASD or other neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), based on findings spanning epidemiologic, clinical, mechanistic, neuropathologic, and case-report evidence of developmental regression. 12 studies comparing routinely immunized versus completely unvaccinated children or young adults consistently demonstrated superior overall health outcomes among the unvaccinated, including significantly lower risks of chronic medical problems and neuropsychiatric disorders such as ASD. The neutral association papers were undermined by absence of a genuinely unvaccinated control group—with partial or unverified immunization even among those classified as unvaccinated—alongside registry misclassification, ecological confounding, and averaged estimates that obscure effects within vulnerable subgroups. Only a few case–control studies verified vaccination through medical records or parent-held cards, and none performed independent clinical assessments of the children for ASD. In contrast, the positive association studies found both population signals (ecologic, cohort, case–control, dose–response, and temporal clustering) and mechanistic findings converging on biologic plausibility: antigen, preservative, and adjuvant (ethyl mercury and aluminum) induced mitochondrial and neuroimmune dysfunction, central nervous system injury, and resultant incipient phenotypic expression of ASD. Clustered vaccine dosing and earlier timing of exposure during critical neurodevelopmental windows appeared to increase the risk of ASD. These findings parallel strong, consistent increases in cumulative vaccine exposure during early childhood and the reported prevalence of autism across successive birth cohorts. To date, no study has evaluated the safety of the entire cumulative pediatric vaccine schedule for neurodevelopmental outcomes through age 9 or 18 years. Nearly all existing research has focused on a narrow subset of individual vaccines or components—primarily MMR, thimerosal-containing, or aluminum-adjuvanted products—meaning that only a small fraction of total childhood vaccine exposure has ever been assessed for associations with ASD or other NDDs.

Conclusion: The totality of evidence supports a multifactorial model of ASD in which genetic predisposition, neuroimmune biology, environmental toxicants, perinatal stressors, and iatrogenic exposures converge to produce the phenotype of a post-encephalitic state. Combination and early-timed routine childhood vaccination constitutes the most significant modifiable risk factor for ASD, supported by convergent mechanistic, clinical, and epidemiologic findings, and characterized by intensified use, the clustering of multiple doses during critical neurodevelopmental windows, and the lack of research on the cumulative safety of the full pediatric schedule. As ASD prevalence continues to rise at an unprecedented pace, clarifying the risks associated with cumulative vaccine dosing and timing remains an urgent public health priority.

(See link for article)
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For more:

When a Tick Changes the Game: Jared Allen’s Battle with Alpha-Gal Syndrome

https://www.si.com/everyday-athlete/nfl-legend-jared-allen-s-tick-bite-diagnosis-every-athlete-needs-to-know-about

NFL Legend Jared Allen’s Tick Bite Diagnosis Every Athlete Needs to Know About

When a Tick Changes the Game: Jared Allen’s Battle with Alpha-Gal Syndrome

Most athletes know the importance of diet when it comes to peak performance; what you eat fuels your training, recovery, and overall health. But what happens when something as small as a tick forces you to rethink how you fuel your body completely? That’s precisely what happened to former NFL legend Jared Allen, who recently opened up about his battle with alpha-gal syndrome, a tick-borne food allergy that has reshaped his lifestyle—and his plate.

What is Alpha-Gal Syndrome?

Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) is an allergy caused by the bite of the Lone Star tick, commonly found in the southeastern and midwestern United States. Unlike typical food allergies that react to things like peanuts or shellfish, AGS is unique: it causes the body to have a delayed allergic reaction to red meat and other mammal-based products. That means beef, pork, lamb, venison, and even hidden mammal-derived ingredients in foods or supplements can trigger severe symptoms.

The reaction doesn’t always happen immediately after eating, which makes it tricky to diagnose. Symptoms can range from stomach pain and hives to life-threatening anaphylaxis hours after a meal.

Jared Allen’s Diagnosis

For Jared Allen—known for his grit and strength on the football field—the diagnosis meant he had to completely cut mammal meat out of his diet and switch to what he calls a “fins and feathers” lifestyle, sticking to poultry and fish. Imagine going from fueling your body with steak or burgers after grueling workouts to suddenly being told those foods could send you to the ER. That’s a massive change for anyone, let alone a professional athlete used to finely tuned nutrition. (See link for article)

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**Comment**

My son was recently bitten by a Lone star tick.  Well, I should say he was nibbled on by a LS tick, leaving a minuscule red pin prick.  The tick was not remotely engorged.  I received the frightening text from him but admitted I needed to brush up on all of this as so far Wisconsin patients are still mostly dealing with black legged ticks and Lyme/MSIDS even though Lone Star ticks have been found here.

But, the nibble was enough to cause profound illness in 2 weeks time.  (Yes, I’m kicking myself for not demanding prophylactic treatment, but we all grow slack at some point and need a wake-up call.  This was it!) 

His symptoms sounded exactly like Lyme but he was worried he had also developed Alpha Gal as he would get diarrhea within a few hours of eating red meat.  Thankfully this dreaded symptom quickly went away.

All I initially remembered was that LS ticks transmit not only Alpha Gal Syndrome (AGS) the meat allergy the NFL star got, but also STARI, which looks, smells, and acts just like Lyme disease, despite the fact at least 9 transmission experiments involving B. burgdorferi in Lone Star ticks have failed to demonstrate vector competency.  The offending agent of STARI is B. lonestari not B. burgdorferi, but the illness looks the same.  Go here for the nuts and bolts.

BTW: STARI is also called Masters’ disease, named after famed rebel Dr. Ed Masters who took the CDC on single-handedly and outwitted them.  All of Masters’ patients improved dramatically with extended antibiotic treatment despite the CDC’s belief that antibiotics should be used sparingly, if at all.

So, what to do?

Well, I figured if this looked and felt exactly like Lyme, it would respond to Lyme treatment.  My son went on the following (reminder: I’m not a doctor and I don’t diagnose or treat anyone):

  • 100mg minocycline, twice daily for two weeks; however when discontinued his symptoms returned, signaling that a layered approach was needed.  This is common.
  • he then pulsed 500mg tinidazole once a day for two successive days weekly
  • he then layered in 12mg ivermectin every other day
  • he did daily red light and sauna therapy
  • he did two rounds of EBOO (extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation) 3 weeks apart.  He said the EBOO completely knocked him on his butt and he had to take a day off work to sleep, but that shortly he felt the best he had felt since starting treatment.
It took every bit of that treatment for three months to finally knock it.
 I’m happy to report he has remained symptom free.

On a side note, ivermectin and/or fenbendazole has:

This was not a fun experiment but I know how important it is to share our experiences, as that is often all we patients truly have – each other.