Against allopathy Alternative medicine |
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Clinically unproven |
Woo-meisters |
Mark Geier and David Geier are a couple of vultures[note 1] father-son team of American anti-vaccine advocates who specialize in quack cures for autism.
The Geiers are perhaps best known for their truly bizarre theories regarding androgens and mercury. In 2004, Geier advanced a hypothesis that testosterone increases the potency of mercury.[1] This led the Geiers to invent and patent a therapy regimen of chelation and Lupron,[2] an anti-androgen. Lupron is normally only given to children who show signs of precocious puberty,[3] so what the Geiers suggested was way off-label.[note 2] Their solution? Declare that all the children in their studies had precocious puberty.[4]
This regimen is, to put it mildly, controversial among actual scientists in relevant fields.[5] Fortunately, as of 2009 they no longer have access to Lupron,[6] so no more chemically castrating kids for them.
As of early May 2011, the Geiers' controversial "therapy" has been found to be a concern by the Maryland State Board of Physicians.[7] Fortunately, they have also decided that Mark Geier's therapies pose such a threat to children with autism that he was stripped of his medical license.[8] David Geier, his son, is not and has never been a doctor of any kind, and in the same case was charged with practising medicine without a license.