As history has proven, the love relationship between Schendel and Thorsen (which includes accepting personal gifts and private retreats) resulted in lack of objectivity and oversight regarding Thorsen’s research activities which, in turn, allowed violations of laws governing protection of human subjects. And, as the indictment shows, the embezzlement of millions of dollars from the CDC.

Previous investigations into Thorsen’s research document a questionable loss of research subjects from studies using the Denmark Psychiatric Registry for which he had access and control. The loss of research subjects skewed research findings toward no association between autism and the mercury-based preservative Thimerosal. Noted epidemiological autism researcher, Irva Hertz-Picciotto, said of the Denmark research in a presentation at the 2007 Institute of Medicine (IOM) Workshop Autism and the Environment, “It was a study looking at the removal of thimerosal from vaccines and the rates of autism before and after. What you can see from this time line, which was not necessarily obvious from the original paper, was that before thimerosal was removed, there was a period of time when only inpatients were in the database, and during part of the “after-removal” period, which covered all the way out to 2000 in this study, there was an interval when both outpatients and inpatients were included. This study, therefore, is not a rigorous design, because as you can see, you can’t really compare the before and after periods because of artifacts in how the database was constructed, and specifically, in how that changed over time.” (WMP emphasis)

The Thorsen Denmark CDC studies were the bedrock of science used to dismiss over 5000 “vaccine court” claims by families who watched their children regress after exposure to Thimerosal-containing vaccines. And, by not being completely transparent on the dangers of injecting thimerosal into infants, the Thorsen research has resulted in the continued widespread use of this dangerous, neurotoxic vaccine ingredient. Read more at WMP here.

It has now been six years now since Paul Thorsen was indicted for the alleged criminal acts of wire fraud, money laundering and a scheme to steal over $1 million in CDC grant money for critical research. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) also added him to the “Most Wanted” list. Yet Thorsen has been allowed to continue his work, business as usual, with no effort to prosecute him. There has also been no effort to restore the precious autism research dollars allegedly stolen that would help find solutions for families who desperately need answers for their autistic children.