Vaccine/Autism Researchers for CDC indicted for fraud

Post Reply New Topic

I don't have the links, but I recently read that Poul Thorsen and Paul Offit, top researchers for autism/vaccine links have been indicted for embezzling millions of dollars of research money from the CDC. Interesting. And we are supposed to TRUST the results of their studies. You can google them if you want to read more.

Story here.

Thorsen was not a "researcher for the CDC"; he was a researcher in Denmark. He was not lead researcher on any of the studies. His alleged fraud did not involve manipulating study results in any way. Rather, what he is alleged to have done is to have taken the paperwork to request grant money, and directed grant monies from the CDC into a bank account that the CDC thought belonged to the Danish government, and which the Danish government thought belonged to the CDC, but which in point of fact appears to have been Thorsen's personal account.

Refusing to trust any studies done by this group on this basis would be akin to refusing to believe that Ford Motors makes working cars because Henry Ford admired Adolf Hitler. The two facts are related only in the existence of one person involved; neither fact affects the other. (And even this is assuming the accusations to be true.) Now, had Thorsen accepted money from, say, Smith-Kline-Glaxo, then headed a study which stated that Smith-Kline-Glaxo products specifically were clean, particularly had there been another study with contradictory results, then you might have a case. However, a) this was plainly not a bribe of any sort; b) Thorsen did not head any studies; and c) there is no evidence, nor any accusation, that Thorsen influenced anyone else to alter the results of any studies.

As for allegations against Offit, I can only find statements on websites with names like WarOnYou.com, which refer to Offit as a "well-known shill for vaccine companies", which leads me to believe that these are not exactly unbiased sources of information. Should I find a story on this later from an actual news source, I'll report back.

Seems Thorsen was more a figurative Ford VP than Ford himself, not being the lead on any of the studies.

But it is infuriating to have such ethics problems on an issue that is in desperate need of clean resolution. Why people can't think beyond themselves is beyond me.

Thanks DeaconBlues for posting the story. I guess you are right, but it still upsets me that someone could be so selfish.

I think the situation does beg some questions even if the alleged perpetrator wasn't a lead researcher. If the CDC thinks that $X amount of money was spent conducting a study and really only $X-$Y was spent on research because $Y went to someone's personal bank account, was the quality of the study really what the CDC expected it to be? There is a pretty close cost-quality relationship when conducting scientific research. I guess if $Y was small in comparison to $X then maybe it wouldn't have a significant effect.