Danish Scientist Who Claimed Vaccines did not Cause Autism is Arrested by CDC Orders After Evading Justice for 14 Years

Danish scientist Poul Thorsen, MD, PhD, has been on the run for criminal charges by the CDC for over 14 years, and is part of the corruption that has happened in the CDC in years past regarding scientific studies that claim there are "no links" between vaccines and autism. We have covered the Poul Thorsen story many times over the past decade here on Health Impact News. Earlier this month (September, 2026), Poul Thorsen was arrested in Germany and then extradited to the United States to face charges for two counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering. In 2014 a CDC scientist who was a co-author on one of the main studies that supposedly "proved" that the MMR vaccine did not cause autism, admitted that some data was held back that was damaging to the MMR vaccine, particularly among black children. He made his admission to Brian Hooker. But nothing ever happened at the CDC, nor in Congress, to deal with this crime. Arresting Poul Thorsen is a great start to prosecuting criminal fraud regarding studies the CDC stated proved that vaccines did not cause autism, but Thorsen is mainly being prosecuted for money fraud. Will other criminals that participated in the "vaccines do not cause autism" fraud ever be arrested and convicted?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Exposes New Evidence of CDC Corruption Regarding Vaccines and Autism

In a new report released today, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his team outlined various criminal acts on the part of employees and consultants for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) whose questionable ethics and scientific fraud have resulted in untrustworthy vaccine safety science. Among other information, Kennedy has found additional evidence of criminal activity by the CDC consultant, Poul Thorsen, the author and principal coordinator of multiple CDC studies exonerating the mercury-based preservative thimerosal in the development of autism. The new evidence, recently uncovered by the World Mercury Project, shows that Thorsen and his collaborators did not obtain permission from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) to conduct their research, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002 and Pediatrics in 2003. In 2011, The Department of Justice indicted Thorsen on 22 counts of wire fraud and money laundering for stealing over $1 million in CDC grant money earmarked for autism research. The product of Thorsen’s work for CDC was a series of fraud-tainted articles on Danish autism rates that, today, form the backbone of the popular orthodoxy that vaccines don’t cause autism.

How a Fugitive’s Fraudulent Study is Behind the “Science is Settled” Claim that Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism

Did you know there is a fugitive from the U.S. Justice Department thriving openly in Denmark who created a fraudulent study used to eliminate autism claims from vaccines? His name is Poul Thorsen, and he is a psychiatrist who was contracted by the CDC to perform the notorious “Danish Study.” The Danish Study, published in 2003 by the journal Pediatrics asserted that autism rates in Denmark rose dramatically after mercury was no longer used in vaccines for children in the Netherlands, thus “proving” that there is no association with thimerosal (mercury) in vaccines to autism. The Danish Study became a major study quoted by the FDA, the IOM (The National Institute of Medicine) now renamed the National Academy of Medicine, and the CDC to “disprove” the dangers of thimerosal in vaccines and the MMR even without thimerosal. It became the cornerstone of all media and public denial of autism from vaccines. Even worse, it served as the legal basis for dismissing over 5,000 autism claims in The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program or “Vaccine Court” in 2010, and totally removing autism claims from vaccine injuries completely.