Ever since longtime antivax activist and crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. bent the knee to Donald Trump almost exactly two years ago during the 2024 Presidential campaign and, in return, was rewarded by being named Secretary of Health and Human Services by a year and a half ago, he has systematically engaged in the degradation and destruction of public health, in particular federal vaccine recommendations and programs. However, as I’ve been discussing ever since Trump assumed the Presidency for a second time, this administration’s attitude towards federal public health, science, medical, and biomedical research programs is very much like its approach to everything else, highly transactional, the idea being that federal grant programs to fund biomedical and other scientific research should be, more than anything else, a tool for patronage, in which grant money flows to scientists not on the basis of solid science and scientific promise, but rather on whether the work “advances administration priorities.” That is why I’ve taken to referring to the era of federal support for science that this administration wishes to usher in as “Lysenkoism 2.0,” the difference being is that Trofim Lysenko, the scientist whose ideological pseudoscience ruled (and ruined) Soviet agriculture and genetics for over three decades, was a rank amateur compared to these guys. After all, Lysenko turned only two branches of Soviet science into ideological pseudoscience, while the Trump administration is doing its damnedest to accomplish this for all federally funded science in the US, by hook or by crook.
Consider this Friday announcement from the National Institutes of Health to be yet another example of the flood of Lysenkoism unleashed by this administration:
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., announced the selection of John Gaitanis, M.D., as director of NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Dr. Gaitanis is set to begin his role on August 23, 2026.
As NICHD director, Dr. Gaitanis will shepherd the investment of NICHD’s approximately $1.7 billion annual budget, facilitating research to advance maternal, gynecologic, and child health, as well as the health of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. He will lead a staff of about 1,100 who either conduct research at NICHD or support some of the institute’s approximately 2,300 research grants and projects at organizations throughout the United States and internationally.
“With the burden of chronic disease on the rise, Dr. Gaitanis’s forward-thinking approaches for NICHD research will help us adapt to the realities of today,” Dr. Bhattacharya said. “We’re eager for research advances in prevention, precision, and systems-level understanding to pinpoint root causes of these conditions and yield transformative advances in clinical care to improve health for women, children, and people with disabilities.”
When I first saw that announcement, I didn’t recognize the name, but a quick search of the blog revealed that he had been one of the candidates that RFK Jr. had wanted to appoint to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) over a year ago, back when he had first fired all the qualified scientists, physicians, and public health experts on ACIP to replace them with grossly unqualified antivax cranks and antivax-adjacent or -sympathetic physicians and scientists. At the time, Dr. Gaitanis was mentioned in a story in The Washington Post:
Six of the seven people who appeared to be on the list did not respond to requests for comment. Pediatric neurologist John Gaitanis, who has been paid to be an expert witness on behalf of people alleging vaccine injuries, told The Washington Post he declined to serve because of “prior professional obligations.”
There’s the first huge red flag, that Dr. Gaitanis served as an expert witness arguing for “vaccine injury.” As you will see, it turns out that he was paid handsomely for his efforts in one case and also served as expert witness for the complainants in two other cases brought before the Vaccine Court.
But it’s even worse than that, as was pointed out on Bluesky:
With a response:
I note that Dr. Gaitanis also received an award to study this:
I could be wrong, but this sure sounds like facilitated communication to me. Actually, I’m not wrong. Spelled communication or “Spelling to Communicate” (S2C) is just rebranded facilitated communication, and facilitated communication is still pseudoscience.
Major red flags. Dr. Gaitanis is on the board of an organization that is the successor organization to Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!), which for decades was the premier (if you can call it that) organization promoting “autism biomed” quackery and “certifying” quacks who treat autism with quackery, many, if not all, of them rabidly antivaccine. I haven’t written about DAN! in a long time, which is why I saw this appointment as a good chance to discuss DAN!, how it became MAPS, what MAPS is and does, and who Dr. Gaitanis is and what he’s done. Suffice to say, Dr. Gaitanis is grossly unqualified to lead such a prestigious Institute at the NIH, so much so that I have a hard time wondering if his appointment is an intentional poke in the eye to the Kennedy family, which has rebuked RFK Jr. multiple times for his antivax crusade. Certainly, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, philanthropist that she was, must be doing backflips in her grave.
Lysenko is taking over NIH
I’ve long contended that the National Institutes of Health is arguably the greatest engine of biomedical research and discovery in history and that its status as such derives from how well it has, until recently, been protected from raw partisan politics, allowing it to fund what its scientist leaders view as the most promising and rigorous science. The NIH was, of course, not perfect. It not infrequently failed or even allowed pseudoscience into small sections of its campus, thanks to political interference by powerful legislators (e.g., the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health), but overall the NIH was about as insulated from raw political influence as a government agency can be and has long enjoyed strong bipartisan support. Moreover, this imperative to exert full political control over federal science and medicine comes from the top. RFK Jr., as bad as he is, has merely agreed to sell what’s left of his soul to be the instrument by which the Trump administration guts federal science, all in return for the ability to eliminate as many vaccines as he can, as I’ve been documenting since he was first nominated for HHS Secretary. He’s perfectly fine with Lysenko 2.0, even when it involves policies that he once opposed regarding the environment, as long as he can place his little Lysenkos in charge of everything else in HHS.
Although I was very much relieved to see that NIH Director Jayanta “Podcast Jay” Bhattacharya‘s pick to lead the National Cancer Institute was not someone like Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, who was a respected researcher but of late has ruined his reputation by endorsing the antivax pseudoscience blaming COVID-19 vaccines for a wave of “turbo cancers,” but rather a conventional and qualified pick, Dr. Anthony Letai, other picks have been more disturbing. For example, it has been reported that a lab leak conspiracy theorist whose—shall we say?—exaggerations and distortions of molecular biology I wrote about back in the day is going to be tapped to fill Dr. Anthony Fauci’s old spot as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Also, Bhattacharya picked a buddy of Vice President J.D. Vance, Kyle Walsh, to be Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), while Gaitanis’ second-in-command is a physician connected to Kennedy, endocrinologist Dorothy Fink, who iwas appointed deputy director and acting director of NICHD before Gaitanis was named.
Before I discuss Dr. Gaitanis, MAPS, and his expert witness work in depth, I can’t result doing a “Dug the Dog” seeing a squirrel and briefly mention another story that I consider highly relevant and that tells you all you need to know about this administration’s attitude towards federal scientific agencies. Specifically, I’m referring to the recent nomination of Dr. Heidi Overton to replace Dr. Marty Makary as FDA Commissioner. Dr. Overton, like Dr. Gaitanis, is grossly unqualified for the job for which she’s been nominated. She is, however, politically aligned with the Trump administration:
The first thing to understand about Heidi Overton is what she is not. She is not a career regulator. She has never run a drug approval division, managed a major scientific organization, or overseen a workforce of the scale that the FDA demands. What she does have is an MD from the University of New Mexico, a PhD in clinical investigations from Johns Hopkins, and—most importantly for this White House—a track record of political alignment that stretches back to her time as a White House Fellow during Trump’s first term.
The phrase “not a career regulator” is doing some heavy lifting. She has basically zero experience in drug regulation at all, serving prior to her nomination as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy at the White House and, reportedly, was one of the key drivers behind Trump’s recent executive order ordering a decrease in the number of CDC-recommended vaccines and increased research into links between vaccines and autism that our fearless leader called a “frontal assault on vaccines” and I called “gold-plated nonsense,” reported thusly:
Earlier in 2026, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule, cutting it from 17 recommended vaccines to 11. Medical groups sued, and a federal judge blocked the change in March. But the administration revived the fight with the executive order, and Overton was there, in the room, urging “blue states” to adopt the new recommendations into state law—recommendations that many doctors say are not supported by current science.
During the first Trump administration she served as a White House Fellow at the America First Policy Institute. In brief, her qualifications for the job of FDA Commissioner have nothing to do with a skillset necessary to actually do the job well, but, rather, are purely political, and she’s proven this with a quote that’s been going around:
Her full quote:
We need publications in academic journals that are conservative-based. We need research funding that is willing to say, “No, let’s fund these type of studies.” That’s not happening at the NIH. The FDA isn’t prioritizing those kind of decisions. The CDC certainly is not. So, all of those agencies have to be reformed in how they fund and prioritize.
Lysenkoism 2.0 indeed. While Dr. Gaitanis is, as far as I can tell, not a purely political appointee, he is an ideologically aligned appointee in that he has deep roots in the “autism biomed” community and basically zero qualifications to run an Institute at the NIH with a $1.7 billion budget. He is thus ideologically aligned with RFK Jr. and Donald Trump’s quixotic desire to be the President whose administration solves autism. But how? First let’s look at autism biomed, DAN!, and MAPS.
From DAN! to MAPS, “autism biomed” quackery over the decades
A little history is in order here. DAN! was a project of an organization called the Autism Research Institute (ARI), which was founded in 1967 by Dr. Bernard Rimland “to conduct and sponsor research aimed at finding the causes and developing treatments for autism.” To his credit, Rimland, who was a research psychologist, did a lot to dispel the long-held view that autism was caused by faulty mothering. Unfortunately, after dispelling one bad idea, came to embrace others. The ARI came to focus on “biomedical” causes of autism, whether justified by science or not, whether there were clinical trials showing safety and efficacy of its treatments or not, and ultimately became, in essence, an organization promoting quackery for autism. In the 1990s, as the idea that vaccines cause autism rose in prominence, ARI jumped on the bandwagon, with many of its treatments—shall we say?—evolving to embrace treatments for autism as “vaccine injury.” Indeed, Rimland incorrectly came to the conclusion that that autism was caused by vaccines and could be treated with “detoxification” and various supplements. A lot of this was based on parental surveys about what made their autistic children better, almost always without followup rigorous studies that actually tested whether these interventions were safe and efficacious.
Dr. Stephen Barrett, founder of Quackwatch, has provided a detailed history of DAN!, and describes how it was launched in the 1990s, began thusly:
In 1995, ARI sponsored a 3-day meeting that was attended by about 30 professionals who discussed what they were doing and what they believed had worked for them. These determinations were not derived from well-designed studies but were based on clinical impressions, observations reported by parents to the treating physicians, and responses to questionnaires that ARI had collected. The meeting generated a consensus document—co-authored by Baker and Pangborn—that was published in 1996 as Biomedical Assessment Options for Children with Autism and Related Problems, but was often referred to as the DAN! Clinical Manual” or DAN! Protocol.” In 2005, after undergoing five revisions, the report was extensively rewritten, revised once more, and published by ARI as a large book called Autism: Effective Biomedical Treatments. The original version of the book covered 41 pages. The 2005 version, which I own, has about 330 pages and measures 8.25 x 10.75 inches [7]. I estimate that it contains about 220,000 words.
The DAN! protocol was based on the idea that combination of lowered immune response; external toxins from vaccines (of course!), and other sources; and problems caused by certain foods, including:
- Nutritional deficiencies and special needs—these concern primarily Vitamins B6, B12, A and magnesium, calcium, selenium, zinc, and omega 3 fatty acids.
- Gut dysfunction due to multiple factors, including suboptimal nutrition, infections, antibiotics, and NSAIDs.
- Microbial overgrowth including viral infections in susceptible children after a) certain vaccines, b) intestinal parasites, and c) bacterial and yeast overgrowths in the gut.
- Toxins, such as PCB’s, and particularly heavy metals, such as mercury from environmental sources and certain childhood vaccines.
- Food intolerance, including intolerance of gluten and casein (found in grains and dairy), immunoglobulin-mediated food allergy (not always evident on skin-testing), intolerance of so-called Feingold foods and additives (phenolic compounds), and excitotoxins (certain flavor enhancers from the MSG family).
- Abnormalities in detox chemistry and immune function
- Benefits from secretin, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), transfer factor, colostrum, and special digestive enzymes in many individuals with autistic symptoms
The DAN! protocol was basically a plethora of quackery and antivax nonsense. However, it became very popular among parents of autistic children with tendencies to seek out alternative therapies, and the list of DAN! doctors was a big deal when I started blogging in 2004. Basically every one of these ideas behind autism causation and treatment are still popular today and, unfortunately, also very much embedded in the “make America healthy again” (MAHA) movement.
ARI was what we like to call a pseudoprofessional medical organization; in other words, an organization that is designed to appear to be a legitimate medical professional organization but in reality is an organization designed to promote quackery and pseudoscience, and, sometimes, a highly political position. DAN!, of course, was its more practical arm, which recruited and “trained” physicians to treat autism according to ARI’s pseudoscience. One example of a pseudoprofessional organization that I’ve been writing about since 2006 is the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), which promotes various quackery and pseudoscience, especially antivax quackery, combined with extreme libertarian views that proclaim Medicare to be unconstitutional and any regulation of the medical profession by government an affront to physician “autonomy.” Another example is the American College of Pediatricians, which is often mistaken for the legitimate pediatrics professional organization the American Academy of Pediatrics. It’s a small but loud organization that advocates abstinence-only sex education and conversion therapy, and opposes vaccines, vaccine mandates, pornography, abortion rights, and LGBT rights. It is virulently transphobic and antivax. The Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs (MAPS) is cut from the same cloth, and Dr. Gaitanis serves on its medical board.
So what happened to ARI and DAN! ARI, it turns out, is still around, but it has evolved. Dr. Rimland died in 2006, and a few years later, around 2011, ARI phased out the DAN! registry and discontinued the program. DAN!, however, did not die. Although I couldn’t find a detailed record of how DAN! became MAPS, become MAPS it did in 2012, thanks to an autism biomed quack called Dr. Dan Rossignol. The bottom line is that MAPS is a direct successor organization to DAN!, and it shares the same quackery.
Dr. Gaitanis is on the medical board of MAPS, but who else is on the board? Let’s go to the MAPS website:
Do any of those other names sound familiar? At least a couple of them should. Elizabeth Mumper, for instance, is rabidly antivax and has been featured in this blog before dating back to 2013. Here’s how the antivax blog Age of Autism described her:
The latest example comes from Lynchburg, Va., and the pediatric practice of Dr. Elizabeth Mumper. She noticed a frightening rise in autism in the 1990s. Concerned that vaccines and other medical interventions might be playing a role – concerned in other words that SHE was playing a role — Mumper changed course.
Fewer vaccines. Fewer antibiotics. No Tylenol. Breast-feeding. Probiotics. Good, pesticide free diets.
Since then, hundreds more children have been seen in her practice, Advocates For Children. But no more autism.
Unsurprisingly, RFK Jr. appointed her earlier this year to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee.
Notice something else. All of these docs on the medical board list themselves as FMAPS, or Fellow, MAPS. That’s because MAPS, like DAN!, offers “fellowship training” in autism biomedical quackery, and physicians who complete that “training” are awarded the title of Fellow. This is, as I will discuss shortly, a direct continuation of what the MAPS predecessor organization DAN! did “training” physicians and maintaining a list of “DAN! doctors” for parents of autistic children who wanted to use quackery to treat their children’s autism and/or thought the autism was caused by vaccines could seek out.
As for the others, the President of MAPS, Dr. Neuenschwander, is “board-certified in Emergency Medicine, Integrative and Holistic Medicine, as well as Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine and been known to appear on “vaccine skeptic” panels. He also offers CEASE therapy for autism, a therapy based on homeopathy, and IV vitamin C and chelation therapy as well. Similarly, Dr. Singh has long been an autism biomed quack, I’ve encountered her before being sued for a truly depressing and horrifying repertoire of autism biomed quackery. Her topic? Autism biomed quackery, of course:
Dr. Anju Usman is director of True Health Medical Center in Naperville, Illinois. She specializes in biomedical interventions for children with ADD, autism, and related disorders. She has been involved in research regarding copper/zinc imbalances, biofilm related infections, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. She serves on the boards for ASI, TACA, and Generation Rescue. She is board certified in family practice and in integrative and holistic medicine.
I’m not familiar with Dr. Nancy O’Hara, but I did a bit of Googling, and found that—surprise!—in addition to being an “integrative medicine” doctor, she’s a practitioner of the quackery known as “functional medicine,” or, as I like to describe it, reams of useless tests in one hand, a huge invoice in the other—plus pure quackery! She’s also very big into Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections (PANDAS), a condition that quacks frequently falsely attribute to vaccines, rather than its real cause, streptococcal infection.
If every single other member of the medical board of MAPS is an antivax quack, what does that make Dr. Gaitanis? I suppose it’s possible that he is the lone science-based physician among the sea of quacks. In one way, Dr. Gaitanis is somewhat interesting in that has a legitimate clinical academic track history, having previously served as Director of Pediatric Neurology at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School; before that, he was Director of Pediatric Neurology at Tufts Medical Center/Floating Hospital for Children from 2014 to 2022. He has over 30 academic publications on PubMed, although few as either first or last author, the positions indicating primary responsibility for carrying out a study. This part of Dr. Gaitanis’ bio is rather disturbing, because from my perspective being affiliated with a group like MAPS should be disqualifying to be director of any academic medical program—or even to be an academic clinical professor.
Dr. Gaitanis also co-founded a telehealth platform called Meadow Health with John C. Slattery and Candace McDonald.
Perusing the Meadow Health website, I found this statement about how Meadow Health operates:
Meadow Health is different because we are physician-led, not coaching-only. We focus on specific biological pathways that may be relevant to some children with autism, not just behaviors. We use peer-reviewed science to guide care, offer nationwide telehealth, provide access to a dedicated, high-quality supply chain for leucovorin free of additives, dyes, lactose, or other ingredients which can negatively impact children with ASD, and design care around the whole child, not a one-size-fits-all model.
This sort of language is very typical of “autism biomed” quackery, in which all sorts of biological pathways that have at times been implicated in the pathogenesis of autism and its symptomatology are supposedly “targeted” based on science, whether there exists a robust base of human clinical trials validating the treatment or not.
Of note, I also found a lot of promotion of Leucovorin at a cost of $249 a month that includes:
- Initial consultation, and if prescribed, monthly medication delivery
- Ongoing follow-up and dose adjustments
- Secure clinician messaging
It’s all self-pay, of course, cash (or credit card) on the barrelhead. My main reaction was that close to $3,000 a year is a rather steep price to be treated with a drug that at best has some evidence for efficacy treating cerebral folate deficiency (CFD), which is one potential contributor to autism spectrum disorders and at worst is unproven. One can see a link, though, in that President Trump, RFK Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz gave a press conference last September, where they announced FDA approval of Leucovorin to treat CFD and touted it as an autism breakthrough, described by Dr. Novella thusly:
They also wanted to use the news conference to announce a newly FDA approved treatment for autism – leucovorin. Taken in isolation, this is just weird – why would the president and HHS secretary make such an announcement? Obviously this is just propaganda, trying to create the impression that they are doing something about autism, even though neither of them or their policies have anything to do with this. Leucovorin may be a legitimate treatment, but only for a small subset of those with autism who have a folate metabolism disorder. It’s really a treatment for cerebral folate deficiency, one of the manifestations of which may be autism.
But more concerning – the FDA just gave approval for leucovorin for CFD without any new evidence. There was no new study, just a review of prior studies. The evidence is generally considered to be preliminary. All of this makes the timing – right before RFK’s big September deadline – highly suspicious. Others have also noted that Dr. Oz, who was standing with Trump and RFK, holds a position in a company that produces leucovorin, but this can be a coincidence.
It’s pretty obvious what is going on here. RFK needed something to announce in September regarding autism, so he or his flunkies scraped the literature for anything they can present as an identified exposure risk and a possible treatment.
I note that the largest study of leucovorin in autism was retracted in February due to data inconsistencies and statistical issues. No wonder Dr. Novella referred to this whole press conference as yet more Lysenkoism.
Of note, Dr. Gaitanis is also tight with the “make America healthy again” (MAHA) movement, in particular the MAHA Institute. Indeed, he participated in a MAHA Institute conference last September called Autism Roundtable: A National Call to Action (YouTube). In addition to Dr. Gaitanis, panelists included Tony Lyons, John Gilmore, Brian Hooker, Kim Mack Rosenberg, Katie Wright, Louis Conte, Mary Coyle, Sylvia Fogel MD, Honey Rinicella, James Lyons-Weiler, Richard Frye MD, Andrew Downing, Gabrielle Traub, Elizabeth Horn, Tracy Slepcovic. Seriously, if you appear in any conference with rabid antivax activists like Brian Hooker, Tony Lyons, Katie Wright, Louis Conte and James Lyons-Weiler, at the very minimum you are antivax-adjacent, if not antivax-sympathetic, if not outright antivax. No respectable scientist should, for instance, appear on a panel like this moderated by James Lyons-Weiler:
I found an Easter egg in there too. Nearly a year before Dr. Gaitanis was announced as the new Director of NICHD, antivax crank James Lyons-Weiler praised him thusly (timestamp 2:48):
Dr. John Gatanis, I don’t know what happened. I started studying autism in 2014 and I didn’t meet you until this year, and let’s just say I’m going to give you a commendation that was passed on to me. You should be in charge of a research program on autism within the NIH, sir.
Alrighty then. Dr. Gaitanis was apparently recommended for this position by James Lyons-Weiler. Not a good look for a science-based physician! In any event, Dr. Gaitanis’ part of the panel consisted mainly of promoting leucovorin as the cure for autism and attacking critics who said there wasn’t enough evidence, while touting the press conference announcing FDA approval of leucovorin to treat autism that had occurred a few days earlier.
But what about vaccines?
Is Dr. Gaitanis antivax? He’s at least antivax adjacent
In all the reading I’ve been able to find about Dr. Gaitanis, one thing that he’s been very careful about is making public statements on vaccines. Given the company he keeps and the organization whose medical board he serves on, it’s not at all unreasonable to wonder if he is antivax, given how much he buys into dubious autism treatments and works with people who are undeniably antivax, like Dr. Mumper. That’s why I was so interested in his expert witness work, reported here:
Gaitanis has also served as a paid expert witness in a federal court where families can claim neurological harm from childhood vaccines.
Just as Jeremy Berg said!
I really, really wanted to find his testimony to read. There are three cases that I could find for which he served as an expert witness for the complainants, with about all I could find about each:
- Hetrick v. HHS, No. 19-795V, 2025: “On May 30, 2019, Stephanie and Jonathan Hetrick (“petitioners”) filed a petition on behalf of their son, J.H., pursuant to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-10 et seq. 2 (“Vaccine Act” or “the Program”). Petitioners allege that the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (“MMRV”) and/or diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (“DTap”) vaccines J.H. received on May 29, 2018 caused him to suffer a Table encephalopathy, or alternatively, an off-Table injury of Febrile Infection-Related Epilepsy Syndrome (“FIRES”). Petition, ECF No. 1. Petitioners now seek an award of interim attorneys’ fees and costs.”
- Rich v. HHS, No. 18-353V, 2021: “On March 7, 2018, Brianna and Jeffrey Rich (“petitioners”) filed a petition in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program on behalf of their minor child, S.G.R.2 Petitioners alleged that as a result of a diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccine administered on April 17, 2015, S.G.R. suffers from localizationrelated epilepsy. Petition at 1-2 (ECF No. 1). On February 2, 2021, the parties filed a stipulation, which the undersigned adopted as her decision awarding compensation on the same day. (ECF No. 57).”
- Davis v. HHS, No. 18-784V, 2021: “On June 4, 2018, Adriane and Sylvester Davis (“Petitioners”) filed a petition on behalf of E.D., their minor child, for compensation under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-10, et seq. 2 (the “Vaccine Act” or “Program”), for injuries allegedly caused by the Hepatitis A, Varicella, and measles, mumps, and rubella (“MMR”) vaccinations E.D. received on June 24, 2016. ECF No. 1 (“Pet.”) at 1.”
I could not find any rulings or any expert witness reports, even with the help of friend of the blog Dorit Reiss. All we could find were judgments on compensation for attorneys’ fees, expenses, and expert witnesses (linked above), where I learned that, for Hetrick v. HHS, Dr. Gaitanis filed three initial reports plus one follow report and had testified once, for which he received $56,204.51 from the court. (He charged “$400 per hour for his work performed in 2020, 2021, and 2022; $500 per hour for work in 2023; and $550 per hour for work in 2024.”) For Rich v. HHS, the attorneys were awarded $13,521.56 in attorney costs, the bulk of which appeared to be for Dr. Gaitanis’ expert witness work, but it’s not listed how much Dr. Gaitanis himself received. For Davis v. HHS, attorneys received “”$48,753.00 for Dr. Gaitanis’ reports and participation in the entitlement hearing, and $990.00 for an ‘immunology consult.'”
Nice work if you can get it, but unfortunately, I have been unable to find any of Dr. Gaitanis’ actual reports or testimony for any of these cases. All that we could find were the rulings on attorney’s fees and expenses, including expert witness expenses, which, recall, are paid, win or lose, by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). I just know that he received $105,857.51 for two cases and might have received as much as $13,000 more for the third case, all in return, very likely, for coming up with a dubious idea of vaccine causation of the injuries reported. From this, I stick by my conclusion that Dr. Gaitanis is at least antivax-sympathetic or -adjacent and might be full antivax. He’s just very clever not to say anything publicly about vaccines.
Lysenko rules supreme
Given what this administration has done to federal science in the less than two years that it’s been in power, it’s difficult not to conclude that we are entering a new Age of Lysenko. I can easily see Dr. Gaitanis, now that he is in charge of NICHD, promoting an agenda of studying long disproven “autism biomed” quackery and dubious “theories” of autism causation, all because his ideology aligns with MAHA and RFK Jr. Maybe I’m being unfair to Dr. Gaitanis—although I think not given his associations and history—but one also can’t help but wonder if Dr. Gaitanis was put in charge of NICHD specifically to produce “evidence” linking vaccines to autism that RFK Jr. can weaponize in the future against vaccines.
Whatever the reasons for Dr. Gaitanis’ appointment, he is very much consistent with the new Age of Lysenko, or Lysenkoism, 2.0. He is ideologically in sync with the administration with respect to its dubious views and pseudoscience on autism. At the very least, he is not pro-vaccine, as no pro-vaccine advocate could work with the rabid antivaxxers on the medical board of MAPS, and he might well be antivaccine. He is utterly unqualified to helm an institute with a $1.7 billion budget, having never received an NIH grant nor published truly high impact science on autism or child health and development. Sadly, all of these “qualifications” mean that he’ll fit right in with the dismantling of science and medicine that RFK Jr. is doing at the bidding of his masters.