Controversial RFK Jr. Advisor Has Access to Private Info in CDC Vax Database— David Geier can remotely access identifiable data from the old Vaccine Safety Datalink
by Kristina Fiore, Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting, MedPage Today
September 18, 2025
Discredited autism researcher David Geieropens in a new tab or window has full access to personally identifiable data from the original Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and may be angling to conduct more studies with newer VSD data, according to a former CDC official.
In a letter sent to co-chairs ahead of the Senate's health committee hearing on Wednesdayopens in a new tab or window, Daniel Jernigan, MD, MPH, former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, provided insights into what Geier is doing inside the agency.
That letteropens in a new tab or window was shared with media on Wednesday.
Geier has a laptop and remote access to VSD data through 2001, before the dataset was decentralizedopens in a new tab or window, wrote Jernigan, who resignedopens in a new tab or window after former CDC Director Susan Monarez, PhD, was fired late last month. Geier was also going to meet with current VSD leaders from the healthcare institutions that manage the data on Wednesday to discuss further studies, Jernigan told MedPage Today, but that meeting was cancelled.
CDC leadership was initially asked to support Geier in March. At that time, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hired Geier as a data analyst contractor in the office of the Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources, an office that deals more with budgets than scientific data.
Geier doesn't have a medical degree, and was once disciplined by the medical boardopens in a new tab or window in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license. David and his late father, Mark Geier, MD, published several discredited studies that linked thimerosal to an increased risk of autism.
Not much more was heard about Geier until June, when Kennedy's former deputy chief of staff, Hannah Anderson, went to CDC headquarters in Atlanta from Washington, D.C., and wasn't allowed to leave until she had VSD data in hand.
In response, CDC configured a computer that could hold and analyze more than 80 million records with personally identifiable VSD data, Jernigan wrote.
This was the same data Geier had access to over 20 years ago, when he was reprimanded for violating approved study protocols and attempting to remove data from a secure federal research center, the letter stated.
The computer didn't let Geier transfer files via the internet or removable drives. It was placed in an office on Jernigan's floor at the CDC where Geier could work.
However, the agency was later directed to enable Geier to access data securely from an HHS laptop at home or elsewhere.
Jernigan said it's not clear what Geier is doing with his access. If he has studies planned, no one has seen the protocols or methods, and it's not known if peer review is planned, he said.
During a Senate Finance Committee hearingopens in a new tab or window earlier this month, Kennedy said Geier wasn't conducting studies, but rather providing access to data.
Nonetheless, Geier was expected to meet with VSD leaders this week to propose more studies using more recent VSD data, Jernigan told MedPage Today. It is not clear whether the Wednesday meeting that was cancelled will be rescheduled.
Jernigan also noted in his letter that there initially was more collaboration between CDC and its parent agency at the beginning of the second Trump administration. Requests for data related to autism initially seemed legitimate, with ideas for assessing various potential causes, including environmental factors.
The agency even provided four datasets to contractors at NIH who were working with principal deputy director Matthew Memoli, MD, though they're still unsure what happened with those or what the scientific protocol was, Jernigan said.
An autism action plan was also being formulated that would have various HHS agencies collaborate via an interagency workgroup. Jernigan's letter said experts from the birth defects center and the chronic disease center were called upon to contribute.
However, that never materialized, in part because those two offices in particular were hit hard by the April 1 layoffsopens in a new tab or window.
"Rather than facilitating a collaborative effort among the nation's leading public health experts, the primary focus of the Secretary and his office was an increasingly top-down approach for requesting vaccine safety datasets for others outside of the department to use with what seemed like a goal to find associations between vaccines and autism," Jernigan wrote in the letter.
He noted that in the wake of the Aug. 8 shooting at CDC headquartersopens in a new tab or window, CDC experts who've done field work in Africa on Ebola and who've handled deadly viruses in labs found it hard to accept that it was more dangerous to be in their offices in Georgia than in those environments.
Jernigan, who had been at the CDC for more than 30 years serving under six presidents, nine HHS secretaries, and nine CDC directors, said he was astonished at what's happened to his agency.
"I never would have imagined a secretary of HHS using such a prominent position to tear down and trivialize an agency that serves to protect the health, security, and wellbeing of Americans," he wrote.
Judy George contributed reporting to this story.
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