By Dr. Mercola

Statistics don't lie, but statisticians certainly can. In his book, "Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC," investigative journalist James Grundvig exposes what really goes on at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In it, he reveals how the agency has engaged in massive fraud, misinformation and manipulation of vaccine information. What made Grundvig write such a book?

"A couple of reasons," he says. "One is I have an autistic son who's 16 years old now. He's one of the 5,000 cases kicked out of vaccine court [for] thimerosal poisoning.

Number two, I'm first generation Norwegian-American. Poul Thorsen, the main manipulator — but not the only one — is of Danish descent. I was introduced to an alliance [that asked me] to track down Thorsen over in Denmark, a culture and country I know very well."

Danish Scientist Charged in Vaccine Research Scam

Thorsen is a major player and an essential character in this real-life drama. In 2011, he was charged with 13 counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering. A federal grand jury alleged Thorsen stole over $1 million from autism research funding between February 2004 and June 2008.

He stole the money while serving as the principal investigator for a program studying the relationship between autism and exposure to vaccines. At the time, The Copenhagen Post reported that:¹

"... [Thorsen] submitted over a dozen false invoices from the CDC for research expenses to Aarhus University … instructing them to transfer the funds to a CDC account, which was in fact his personal account ...

Thorsen's research on autism is widely known in academic circles, where he was until this week a highly respected figure. A paper of his on the subject, which is known as 'The Danish Study,' is quoted extensively to refute the autism vaccine connection."

As of 2014, Thorsen was permanently expelled from Denmark's university hospital system. Thorsen has been a fugitive for the past five years. Yet his whereabouts are no secret. As noted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in a 2015 Forbes article:²

"The fact that he is roaming free and is easy to find, despite the U.S. Federal indictment … suggests a lack of enthusiasm by HHS and CDC to press for his capture and extradition.

The agency undoubtedly fears that a public trial would expose the pervasive corruption throughout CDC's vaccine division and the fragility of the science supporting CDC's claims about thimerosal safety." 

The Master Manipulator

Thorsen's spectacular demise was likely the result of an inside tip to Aarhus University. But was he really the sole person responsible for the creation of these manipulated studies? According to Grundvig's investigation, the CDC appears to have had a clear hand in the deception.

In 1999, Thorsen — who had earned his Ph.D. in Denmark the year before — was invited to the CDC in Atlanta as a foreign visiting scientist. He arrived at a time when there was a lot of discussion between vaccine makers and the CDC to remove thimerosal from vaccines.

Thorsen ended up being hired full-time to conduct five studies on Danish people, as the Danes had a preexisting database covering the entire population.

In the U.S., no federal health authority was collecting this kind of comprehensive vaccination and health data. "That was the beginning of five corrupt Danish studies that were done: four on thimerosal; one on MMR," Grundvig says.

The Danish Study

Thorsen's "Danish Study,"³ which was never retracted, reported a 20-fold increase in autism in Denmark AFTER mercury-based preservatives like thimerosal were banned from vaccines. This study has since been used to support the idea that thimerosal has no bearing on autism rates.

However, it was actually an example of lying by omission, because at the same time the apparent autism increase took place, a new Danish law required autism cases to be reported on the national level. There was also a new clinic dedicated to autism treatment.

These two factors were likely the driving forces behind the sudden spike in reported autism cases, but the researchers didn't even disclose them, let alone take them into account. Despite the obvious ramifications of these omitted details, the CDC has relied on the Danish Study to "prove" their case that MMR vaccine and mercury are safe.

Moreover, the fact that Thorsen's scientific integrity was in serious question was completely lost on the CDC, which issued the following statement following his arrest warrant:⁴

"Dr. Thorsen was one of many co-authors on these research projects. All of these were subject to extensive peer review and we have no reason to suspect that there are any issues related to the integrity of the science."

CDC Dumped Agent Orange Studies to Avoid Backlash From Injured Veterans

In researching Thorsen's involvement with the CDC, Grundvig came across other instances of malfeasance. In 1984, Coleen Boyle was a principal investigator for the CDC, charged with investigating the effects of Agent Orange. Today, Boyle is the director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD), an arm of the CDC.

In the 1980s, the CDC was given extensive information from the army on Operation Ranch Hand about the flight patterns of Agent Orange. The information was archived in Pennsylvania, but the CDC refused to go to the archives and look at it. Doing so meant they'd have to face the truth about the contamination of U.S. troops — about half a million American veterans who suffer from cancers and other diseases caused by Agent Orange.

The CDC basically gave up on the Agent Orange studies saying they "couldn't figure it out," when in fact they could have, had they simply gone to Pennsylvania. In so doing, they forfeited $21 million in research money, which in and of itself raises questions about motives. Apparently they deemed the loss of $21 million to be preferable to what they might find by doing the research.

"The 101st Congress came out [with a report in 1990 and called it [the] "Agent Orange cover up" to basically skewer the CDC. Unfortunately, nothing happened. They didn't fire the people in charge. They didn't clean house in the CDC. Once those people at the top were able to get away with this, they felt emboldened. They also had a template for future issues like Ebola and Zika," Grundvig says.

With Boyle, the CDC demonstrated they are really masterful at covering up issues that are directly related to the public health, or issues that could have a negative impact on people's perception of a certain exposure.

The Link Between Thimerosal and Autism

To this day, most doctors will tell you the science is settled and there’s no link between vaccines and autism. In reality, the science is FAR from settled. In 2000, two secret meetings took place. The first one, in May, took place in Puerto Rico. This meeting covered aluminum adjuvants in vaccines. The second meeting took place in Simpsonwood⁵ three weeks later.

"In those meetings, they talked about how they all realized — the scientists within those meetings, from the CDC, from college institutions, from Big Pharma vaccine makers — all agreed that thimerosal is a problem, and aluminum is a problem. But they can't change overnight and lose that kind of money …

These two meetings produced results from foreign scientists, like Dr. Thomas Verstraeten out of Belgium. The CDC realized they had a major problem on their hands with the general public. They found thimerosal … is dangerous to the brain, especially of babies, infants and children."

The CDC desperately needed to prove there's no link between vaccines and autism, and Thorsen ended up being the guy hired to produce that evidence. Had the CDC not covered up the truth, we'd probably have an entirely different discussion on vaccines today.

As noted by Grundvig, some of Thorsen’s studies kept getting extended because the CDC simply wasn’t comfortable with the results; even with manipulation, they kept showing an association between the number of vaccines and the rise of autism.

“What’s amazing is Thorsen coming from Denmark. Thimerosal was banned in Denmark in 1991 — fully enacted in 1992. Vaccines today in Denmark have no thimerosal whatsoever. So, you have Thorsen agreeing to do whatever the CDC wanted to, which was manipulate the data, to lose data, to produce results that would favor [thimerosal],” Grundvig says.

Thorsen Colleague Caught Colluding With CDC to Cherry Pick Data

Thorsen worked at Aarhus University outside of Copenhagen, Denmark. At the university, he had a small research group he called the North Atlantic Neurological Epidemiology Alliance (NANEA). Part of that research group was a Ph.D. candidate named Kreesten Meldgaard Madsen.

Madsen was the principal investigator on at least two out of the five studies Thorsen did on behalf of the CDC. She came under fire when leaked emails⁶ showed she was coordinating with CDC officials "intent on fraudulently cherry picking facts to prove vaccine safety," according to a report by The Huffington Post.⁷

"They were under duress because the CDC was directly involved, with Diana Schendel going to Denmark several times to produce better results. These studies were done over and over again. In fact, there's one email from Coleen Boyle that basically went out to the Danes saying, 'What happens if we got rid of the 2001 data set completely? What happens to the line then? Does it flatten?' At the end of the day, that's exactly what they did," Grundvig says.

CDC Whistleblower Confirms Vaccine-Autism Cover-Up

In his book, Grundvig explains how, were the studies done properly using valid scientific criteria, they would have revealed some incredible insights. For starters, they would have shown that autism is in fact correlated with thimerosal exposure.
Brian Hooker is one of the researchers who has gone back to re-evaluate Thorsen's studies. In 2017, Danish scientists will again redo the studies, to hopefully settle the matter.

Thorsen was hardly the only manipulator of data at the CDC, however. Dr. William Thompson, a research scientist at the CDC's National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases (NCIR), is another. He co-authored four studies refuting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, as well as thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.

According to Thompson, one of the studies found that African-American boys who received the MMR vaccine before the age of 36 months had an increased risk for autism.⁸ He also maintains that other CDC studies have found a relationship between thimerosal and tics, which are associated with autism.⁹

Clearly, there's no way for the truth to get out unless we have skilled investigative journalists like Grundvig bringing us the full story. After that, it's a matter of sharing the information, because you can be sure this information will not appear in The New York Times or on your local news station. It's suppressed by design.

Thimerosal Is Still a Major Vaccine Ingredient

In the early 2000s there was a major push to remove thimerosal from vaccines, but it never took the form of law. Instead, vaccine makers were encouraged to reduce or eliminate thimerosal in their vaccines on a voluntary basis. Some did so, but according to Grundvig, even vaccines that claim to be thimerosal-free are not entirely devoid of it.

"If you read the labels, it says "thimerosal-depleted" … They remove [thimerosal] in the process. It's filtered out, but it's not filtered out 100 percent. There's still thimerosal in all of the thimerosal-containing vaccines as there were before, just a lot less. However, in the flu vaccine, it's full bore thimerosal.

It's the cheapest and fastest way to make it. I don't think that vaccine makers are interested in changing the 20th century recipe to making vaccines. It's cheap and fast. That's all they care about. They do not care about safety. They don't care about children's health. With poor children's health, they are able to take care of children, on the other end … with drugs and treatments and so forth. They continuously make money off every American citizen out there," Grundvig says.

Annual Flu Shots Are a Health Disaster in the Making

The flu vaccine is perhaps the most egregious example of this criminal activity. When I graduated from medical school, it was only recommended for health care workers, those over 55, and those with chronic diseases such as pulmonary diseases or cystic fibrosis. The target population was a relatively small percentage.

Now, it's recommended for every single individual in the United States, each and every year starting at the age of 6 months until death. It's truly beyond irrational. Not only is it ineffective, but it's perniciously toxic, thanks to the thimerosal. (For clarification, flu vaccines do not contain aluminum — a highly toxic adjuvant.)

"Even when they don't get it right — like last year, when they realized they didn't predict the strain properly [so] the flu vaccine was completely useless — they say, 'We admit it's useless. We were wrong, but take it anyway,'" Grundvig says.

And why wouldn't they? Drug companies, health officials and administering doctors are all completely insulated from lawsuits, so people suffering side effects have no impact on the bottom line. They have absolutely no incentive to urge you to weigh the risks and benefits. As long as you take the shot, they profit. And, if you're harmed, they continue to profit in other ways, since your treatment will undoubtedly involve medical care and drugs.

OTC Tapeworm Drug Kills Zika

At the end of the day, I believe it comes down to us — we all need to take the incentive to spread this information to our friends and family; make them aware of the corruption, fraud and manipulation occurring that is preventing them from understanding the truth about any given matter. Grundvig offers another example:

"The Florida State University [FSU] discovered that an off-the-shelf remedy [Nicolsamide, an FDA approved drug used to treat tapeworm] likely either suppresses or eliminates Zika. But did the press cover this? … You'd have to go to Florida State University¹⁰ and some other lesser blogs to actually find this story.

The reason for that is they do not want that to interfere with the CDC going to Congress and begging for $1.1 billion for a vaccine that no one's going to need. Ninety percent of that money will be for a vaccine for Zika …"

More Information

If you have an interest in vaccine safety and/or autism, you won't want to miss out on Grundvig's book, "Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC." It clearly reveals why we cannot blindly trust our federal health agencies.

We must educate ourselves and understand the political and financial dynamics that underlie the recommendations coming from these agencies. Failing to do so can quite literally be dangerous to your health. In this case, Grundvig has done a remarkable job of explaining the situation at the CDC that has allowed the claim that thimerosal-containing vaccines have no role in autism.

This is not to say that there are no other factors involved in autism. Evidence suggests Roundup and other glyphosate-containing pesticides may play a role. Ditto for other toxic exposures and electromagnetic field (EMF) exposures. Having an unbalanced gut microbiome also appears to influence the outcome. There are many variables that, when combined, can result in autism. Still, that does not mean we should give vaccines a free pass.

Projections suggest that within the next 25 years, half of all children will be autistic. There is no way a culture can survive with half of the population being in the autistic spectrum. We're looking at the collapse of society if the rise in autism isn't stopped or reversed, and that means addressing ALL known factors.