Poul Thorsen Administered $11 Million in CDC Vaccine-Autism Research Money. Now He's Facing Federal Charges for Stealing It.

Poul Thorsen, the Danish researcher who administered over $11 million in CDC grant money to study the relationship between vaccines and autism, has been extradited from Germany to face federal charges of stealing those funds.

He is also the named author on two of the most cited studies ever used to settle the vaccine-autism debate: a 2002 New England Journal of Medicine population study on MMR vaccination, and a separate paper on thimerosal, both of which concluded there was no connection.

The CDC awarded that grant money between 2000 and 2009 to Danish governmental agencies specifically to study vaccine exposure and autism. Thorsen, who had worked as a visiting scientist at the CDC while it was soliciting those grant applications, later became responsible for administering the research funds. The studies he oversaw became foundational to the official position that the science was settled.

The question now is whether papers authored by a federally charged fraudster, funded by money he was stealing, will finally face the scrutiny or retraction they have long warranted.

@delbigtree