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The Bolen Report is the
archive for the infamous "Millions of Health Freedom Fighters -
Newsletter," Health Care Crisis Management Consultant, and Consumer
Activist, Tim Bolen's RUTHLESS, but humorous, analysis of North
America's Health Care System.
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The Attack on Mark and David Geier...
Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen Saturday, May 21st, 2011 An attorney friend of mine, Bob Reeves, a mainstay in the mercury in health care wars, called me last April 28th, 2011 and asked me to look into some strange occurrences regarding Mark Geier MD and his son David Geier. As everyone knows, the Geiers are severe critics of the fact that Thimerosal (mercury - deadly toxic to humans) has NOT, despite false claims and misrepresentations from the vaccine industry, been removed from vaccines. Bob asked me, as a Crisis Management Consultant, to analyze the situation and give him, and the Geiers, my Opinion and make some Recommendations. This, below, is the Public Version. The Private Version is much grittier. Who are these Geier guys? In short, they are the nemesis of the world-wide vaccine industry. (1) Last January 27th, 28th, 29th, 2011 the Geiers, along with their colleague Lisa Sykes attended, by invitation as an official NGO, the United Nations Environment Programme - Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to prepare a global legally binding instrument on Mercury (INC2). There, they officially presented, to the shocked international delegates, convincing evidence that mercury in vaccines, HAS NOT actually been removed, and represents a serious threat to the people of Planet Earth. The Geiers have since been invited to present again at the next conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in October, 2011. (2) The Geiers have been a mainstay in the State legislative actions banning Thimerosal in vaccines across the US, and the world. More than half of the States are involved in Thimerosal ban legislation. Already, New York, Delaware, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, California, and Washington state have legislated those bans. (3) The Geiers, through their non-profit corporation CoMeD recently sued the FDA for, as attorney Bob Reeves say "The failure of the FDA to follow their own regulations and require testing for the safety of vaccines." (4) Press Releases - the Geiers, through their organizations, have issued Press Releases documenting mercury in vaccine issues. There are five of them. You can read them by clicking on each one: One, Two, Three, Four, Five. (5) Their peer reviewed studies, over a hundred, cover a broad range of Thimerosal caused issues including two extremely shocking revelations: (a) Thimerosal in vaccines is 300 times more toxic to the human brain than the bacteria in the vaccines it is designed to destroy, (b) there is a Thimerosal substitute that is twenty times more destructive to bacteria and it has NO affect on the human brain. You can find many of these published papers here. (6) Mark Geier MD testifies in Vaccine Court on behalf of brain damaged children. Article. (7) Both Geiers testified to the IOM on the problems of Thimerosal in vaccines. Testimony. (8) Both Geiers have been active attempting to force the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) to make vaccine adverse reaction data available to the public. The CDC will NOT let anyone see that data. Do you wonder why? Link. (9) David Geier was appointed by the Governor of Maryland to the Maryland Commission on Autism, and as such, has significantly effected the quality of treatment recommendations offered to Autistic children in the State of Maryland. (10) Mark and David Geier, because of their research into the question "Why do boys get Autism at a rate higher than girls," found that Thimerosal interacts with testosterone, increasing it in children, causing "precocious puberty." They then found that the use of the drug Lupron reduces those effects, and significantly reduces incidents of violence, and acting-out, in Autistic children, sometimes almost removing Autistic behavior. (11) The Geiers set up, with every health insurance company in the US, pre-approved protocols, using Labcorp testing, for the use of Lupron, and the payment for that testing and that drug, directly to the lab and pharmacies on a case-by-case basis. The Geiers, because of their activities, are a MAJOR thorn in the side of the vaccine industry. Major... The Attack... On April 27th, 2011, Mark Geier MD got a post-office delivered letter telling him that a secret hearing had been held by the Maryland Board of Physicians, and they had decided in that secret meeting (no records kept) that, suddenly, he was "a danger to the public," and that "because of that his license was being immediately suspended." A further, one hour, hearing was scheduled for May 11th, 2011 where neither Mark Geier MD, nor his attorney, would be able to examine any of the State's so-called witnesses (the State refuses to release the names), nor would they be allowed to produce any witnesses, nor testimony, of their own. More, at no time before either of the hearings, would the Maryland Board of Physicians tell Mark Geier MD what he was supposedly accused of. The Maryland Board did, of course, release the information to the media, including the usual quackbuster nutbags, with one major new edition not well known to the North American Health Movement - one I will tell you about below. Of course, one of my first questions was "Hasn't the State of Maryland ever heard of Due Process?" The answer, after a few weeks of investigation is "Yes, of course they have, but they are intentionally ignoring it." In short, the State of Maryland Board of Physicians has no case, what-so-ever, against the Geiers, and certainly without any doubt, there was no reason for any immediate suspension, nor a suspension of any kind, of Mark Geier's license to practice medicine. The charges that David Geier has been practicing medicine without a license are not well founded There is an organized scam going on here. This is an attempt to discredit the Geiers in a way similar to what was done to Andrew Wakefield MD in Britain. There are clear violations of "due process." So, what really happened?... As you can imagine, the Geiers have some critics (understatement of the year). Of course, Stephen Barrett has done an extra-nasty piece on them. Which means, that Barretts Parrots did the same. But Barrett, for once, is not the key character in this story, although some of Barrett's hangers-on make an appearance. There is one major player, and a whole host of interesting supporting roles. So let's get to the story. On August 14th, 2006 a woman named Lisa Randall filed a long, complicated, Board Complaint (attached) against Mark Geier MD, using, as the basis for her complaint, a series of articles about the Geiers written by another woman named Kathleen Seidel. Lisa Randall is the mouthpiece for the multi-million dollar funded vaccine promotional group Vaccine Safety Working Group. Kathleen Seidel is one strange bird - an apparently unemployed librarian(?) with no visible income, she claims on her blog/website that brain damage "is a gift" and that physicians, or parents, who claim otherwise, should be punished (play the Twilight Zone music here). She is, to me, a whack-job cyberstalker, who fits right in with the pseudo-skeptics I describe below. The Geiers made the mistake of NOT legally reining her in a long time ago. A second complaint was filed in 2006 by a doctor who had referred a patient to Mark Geier MD. This doctor didn't like the course of the treatment, but the patient's parents were completely happy then, and now. A third complaint was, I think, filed by a "plant." A woman brought her child into the clinic for evaluation in 2005. She was sent, with her child, to the lab. She never went. Three years later (2008) she's back in the office, claiming she wants to restart. Mark Geier MD ordered an ultrasound on the child, which a technician performed. Once again, the woman and her child were sent to the lab for tests. She went there but would only allow one of the tests. She was never heard from again until her name was identified on the third complaint. These were the only legitimately filed complaints. The first was filed in 2006, the last in 2008. There are no others on file, and no others were ever presented to Mark Geier MD. But, no one knows how many under-the-table complaints were filed. I suspect, however, that there were a steady stream - all filed, or instigated, by vaccine interests. On the basis of these three complaints the Maryland Board of Physicians subpoenaed a copy of EVERY lab report ever ordered by Mark Geier's Maryland clinic, including those ordered by other physicians in the practice. From those the board gleaned a very comprehensive list of Geier's patients, all of which, it seems, they called, fishing for any unhappy patients. They found none. In fact, they found the opposite. In five years of investigation no charges were ever filed. The Board representatives made it clear that the so-called charges were spurious, and that no action would be taken. And there were no new complaints - at least public complaints. So, what changed? On January 12, 2011 Joshua F. Scharfstein took over as the head of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The employees of the Maryland Board of Physicians are all completely under his authority. Scharfstein is openly, and publicly, a proponent of mercury in vaccines. He has, in the past, gone out of his way to act on behalf of vaccine manufacturers. His earlier actions show that he, personally, considers the Geiers to be Public-Enemy-Number-One. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a group completely financed by the vaccine industry.
Scharfstein, who you will remember, was
the number two person at the FDA, just
under Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D.
"A reputable publication has once
again recognized that FDA’s bungling of
the mercury amalgam rule is subverting
President Obama’s promised reforms of
the way Washington does business. The
President has expressed concern that "[e]xposure
to mercury leads to serious
developmental problems in children as
well as problems affecting vision, motor
skills, blood pressure, and fertility in
adults." The President also said, “More
than five million women of childbearing
age have high levels of toxic mercury in
their blood and approximately 630,000
newborns are born every year at risk.
The EPA estimates that every year, more
than one in six children could be at
risk for developmental disorders because
of mercury exposure in the mother’s
womb.” However, the two persons he
appointed to run FDA, Margaret Hamburg
and Joshua Sharfstein, give carte
blanche to the amalgam industry to sell
mercury fillings with no consumer
disclosures or warnings -- even to
market it under the deceptive term
“silver fillings.” Scharfstein, it has been noted, was known for his avoidance of scrutiny by Congress. Brown says of this: "FDA, too, is defying the President’s promise to bring transparency to government decisions. Last week, along with Freya Koss of the Pennsylvania Coalition for Mercury-Free Dentistry and Carol Ward, vice-president of Dental Amalgam Mercury Solutions (DAMS), I appeared at a hearing of FDA’s transparency task force. Ironically, it was chaired by the evasive Sharfstein who recently ducked out of a scheduled meeting with Congresswoman Diane Watson." More, one simple fact supports the rumors of Scharfstein's forced exit from FDA. He was completely, and diametrically opposed to his boss Margaret Hamburg's philosophy on mercury in amalgam fillings, and in vaccines. Quoting Charlie Brown again about Margaret Hamburg: "To your great credit, you were an activist New York City Health Commissioner. You were visibly condemnatory of mercury, calling any form of mercury exposure “highly poisonous to the brain and kidneys” (news release, June 18, 1991). Your views accord with all science on the subject – and with the regulations and policies adopted by all FDA Centers (except the Center for Devices), which (1) ban mercury in farm animals and pets, (2) warn against its consumption in fish, and (3) prohibit its use in topical applications and drugs for humans." Hamburg had appointed Scharfstein to head an FDA Transparency Commission. Hamburg had said: "Providing information to the public in a user-friendly and timely manner is critically important to the work of the agency and its credibility with the public. I have formed a Transparency Task Force, chaired by Principal Deputy Commissioner Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, to provide me with recommendations about how to make FDA and its processes more transparent to the public." As you can see from the text above, Scharfstein was, in fact, AVOIDING transparency. The fox had been put in charge of the hen house. So, how DOES the number two guy at the FDA end up in ,what in comparison to his former position, is a backwater, out-of-the-health-decision-tree position - as Secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene? Good question... The answer provides only two logical choices: (1) After Scharfstein's ejection(?) at FDA he found a MUCH lower level job in reach of his residence, or (2) Scharfstein's vaccine masters(?) ordered him to go after the job so as to be in a position to attack the Geiers (their worst nightmare). Regardless... A series of nothing Board Complaints against Mark Geier MD went nowhere for three to five years. Then in late February of 2011, about six weeks after Scharfstein took office, a secret meeting was held in the offices of the Maryland Board of Physicians, where, supposedly, a decision was made "by the Board," to declare an emergency over Mark Geier MD's medical license. I say "supposedly" because there does not appear to be any record of such a meeting. Could it be that the so-called meeting was just a staff meeting where Scharfstein, or his delegate, just gave that staff of the Maryland Board of Physicians their marching orders? Let's talk about the players in this game... On one side you have the Geiers, and the massive Autism movement demanding solution to their problems - a group of parents who followed the rules, took their child to the Pediatrician they trusted who vaccinated the child, and watched their child's mental functions disappear - only to be told by that same pediatrician "it wasn't the vaccines..." On the other side you have the vaccine industry teetering on the edge of collapse, looking, desperately, for a way to keep the profits flowing. They may make a lot of money, but their costs and overhead are massive. Can you, for instance, imagine what it costs, just in the US, to lobby 50 State legislatures constantly? Then there is the massive numbers of lobbyists they need to employ just for the Federal Congress. More, flying all those Pediatricians to conferences in Hawaii, Paris, etc. isn't cheap. Then there all those ex-cheerleaders (called Detail Men) they need to keep trained to arrange birthday parties for doctor's children. Of course, even though their manufacturing costs are low, they still have to pay to have those vaccines made in those, un-inspected by the FDA (or anyone), putrid hovels in China and the third World. But, more important for this story, there are the vaccine industry kiss-ups. Those that. perhaps, owe their very careers to the drug/vaccine industry. I will list them: (1) Of course, Joshua F. Scharfstein. His employment history, shown on the Maryland web page, is nothing but a series of relationships with the vaccine moguls. For instance, look at these jobs - ALL vaccine promotional: "Primary Care Pediatric Resident and Pediatrician, Latino Clinic, Boston Medical Center, 1996-2001. Primary Care Pediatric Resident, Dimock Street Community Health Center, 1997-99. Co-founder and Co-director, Docs4Kids Project, 1997-99. Part-time fellow, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 1999-2000. Researcher and writer, World Health Organization, 2000. Fellow, American Academy of Pediatrics, 2001-. Fast track physician, Emergency Department, Children's National Medical Center, 2002-05. Adjuvant staff, Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital, 2002-05. Board of Directors, Docsfortots, 2003-05; Reach out and Read, 2005. Member, Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice, Institute of Medicine, 2007-09." (2) Lisa Randall is the mouthpiece for the multi-million dollar funded vaccine promotional group Vaccine Safety Working Group. Need I say more? It is obvious how she fits into this story. You can find her commenting on Kathleen Seidel's blog. (3) Kathleen Seidel. I cringe when I see how much damage this one has done - and I never noticed her, for she focuses almost exclusively on the Geiers, cyberstalking them though the internet. It is obvious how she fits into this story. (4) The Skeptics (pseudo-skeptics). As individuals they fall into two groups: The leadership, which sometimes reveals their real identities, and the followers, who virtually never do. All of them maintain multiple internet identities with which to carry on conversations, backing themselves up, as it were, in arguments with opponents. Although not the brightest people in the world, someone has trained them in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, and they currently control Wikipedia health care articles. In a section below I will show you how they fit into the attack against the Geiers. But, let's look at the specific pseudo-skeptic players against the Geiers: (a) Steven Novella MD - head of the New England Skeptics. A personal friend of James Randi, who calls himself the "Amazing Randi." Novella's sub-group organizes the SEO plot (called Google-Bombing), pushing their own articles, including Kathleen Seidel's, to the first page of the search engines. "Novella has been on my radar for a while as I put together the pieces of who the 2011 quackbuster team really are. I graph how they operate. He fits, easily, into the usual quackbuster pattern of fake resume, crap career, and, like Stephen Barrett, a molten hatred for those in the health professions who, through their own education and abilities, accomplish positive things and get deserved credit for it.Novella claims to be a neurology professor at Yale University, and throws the name "Yale" around like he was throwing seed to the morning chickens - but, to me, that is an outright fabrication. Novella, evidence shows, works for a medical center that "rents" the name "Yale" from the University, who then, assuming the monthly payments are up to date, gets to claim that all their staff doctors are, in fact, professors at Yale (insert bad smell here)." The reality of Novella, easily found, is that he testifies for insurance companies, and that seems to be the extent of his practice." (b) David Gorski MD, who bills himself as "Orac" on Usenet Discussion Groups, and "MastCell" on Wikipedia, and his own blog "Respectful Insolence." Read the "Orac the Nipple Ripper" article to get a better feel for Gorski. Gorski is a co-conspirator with Novella and others to push Seidel's articles about the Geiers to the first pages of search engines. (c) The rest of the pseudo-skeptics - the people, with "fake names" who populate the "comments" section of Novella, Gorski, Seidel, and other's blogs, using the opportunity to call the Geiers "sociopaths, child murderers, dead babies everywhere, etc." all of which is, and was, designed to defame the Geiers. "Defamation is an act of communication that causes someone to be shamed, ridiculed, held in contempt, lowered in the estimation of the community, or to lose employment status or earnings or otherwise suffer a damaged reputation. "The efforts of the Skeptics, including Kathleen Seidel, are by definition, using defamation as a tool against the Geiers. The Courts have held that anyone who has editorial control over comments, and does nothing to control defamation, is just as liable as the author of the words. To me, Seidel's, and the other's, blog comments are a cesspool of defamatory comments designed to bring harm, including acts of violence, to the Geiers. Unveiling the plot... For years the usual quackbusters whined about the Geiers' activities - but their efforts went nowhere. The Geiers just went on producing excellent work. Even the formal board complaints did nothing. Then the Geiers got invited to speak at the United Nations conference on mercury I described above. There, at that conference, were the top scientific advisors to 150 nations of the world. After the Geiers spoke all hell broke loose for the vaccine industry. Whole countries are talking about banning Thimerosal vaccines, and those same countries found out they were lied to. More, the vaccine industry could see the handwriting on the wall over vaccines since the US State Department team at the conference declared, at the conference, that the US would lead the way in the removal of mercury. Then Joshua Scharfstein came on the scene and, suddenly, Mark Geier MD becomes "a danger to the public." I don't believe in coincidence. Then, of course, comes the media campaign - headed by the usual suspects in the "Skeptic" organization. Which brings us to today... What happens next? The Geiers' legal team is alive and well. They have made demands for information and are pointing out that the State must do certain things immediately. This week the State MUST deliver all information including the names of their so-called expert reviewers. Then the fun will began. My Recommendations to the Geiers and their legal team? I'm not telling you any of that. You're just going to have to guess - and, of course, keep reading my newsletter articles to see what's about to happen. As I pointed out to some Geier supporters "The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Look what happened to them." Stay tuned. There is more coming. Tim Bolen - Consumer Advocate
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