Geier Loses Missouri License

Previous posts have discussed Mark Geier.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Dr. Mark Geier, who directs autism clinics in St. Peters and Springfield, Ill., lost his medical licenses in Missouri and Illinois Friday following similar disciplinary actions in at least nine other states.

Geier has gotten into trouble for prescribing the testosterone-suppressing drug Lupron to children and teenagers with autism. The hormonal treatment plan has been called dangerous, abusive and exploitative by various medical boards.

Geier cannot reapply for his license in Missouri for at least seven years, the strongest possible discipline from the state Board of Registration for the Healing Arts. The Illinois board of professional regulation suspended Geier’s license indefinitely.

Geier has practiced in Missouri as recently as this summer, when a teenage boy with autism saw local pediatric neurologist Dr. Steven Rothman after being prescribed the Lupron and the diuretic Aldactone at Geier’s clinic in St. Peters. Rothman said there is no scientific evidence supporting the treatment plan for autism.

Lupron, which costs up to $6,000 a month, has been used to chemically castrate sex offenders and is typically prescribed for men with advanced prostate cancer and women with endometriosis.

In the last two years, Geier’s medical license has been revoked or suspended in California, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, Washington and his home state of Maryland. Only Hawaii maintains an active license for Geier, although the state has filed a complaint against him.

More Problems for the Geiers

Problems mount for the Geiers. The Washington Post reports:

The state panel that oversees doctors in Maryland has charged a man with practicing medicine without a license just weeks after his father’s license was suspended for allegedly putting autistic children at risk.

The Maryland Board of Physicians says David Geier worked with his father, Mark Geier, at the Rockville and Owings Mills offices of Genetic Consultants of Maryland, where they used a drug therapy that autism experts say is based on junk science.

The two have built a national following of parents who believe autism is linked to mercury in vaccines, a theory discredited by mainstream medicine. The Geiers developed a treatment using Lupron, a testosterone suppressant approved for prostate cancer and ovarian fibroids. Lupron also is sometimes used in the chemical castration of sex offenders.

In children, the drug is used for “precocious puberty,” which the board said Mark Geier over-diagnosed in autistic children.

J. Steven Wise, an attorney for the Geiers, said Thursday that David Geier “categorically denies the charges.” Mark Geier has appealed his suspension.

The Baltimore Sun offers an update:

Gov. Martin O'Malley removed David A. Geier from Maryland's Commission on Autism on Friday, telling his one-time appointee in a letter that "you do not at the present time qualify to serve."

O'Malley told Geier, who has only a bachelor's degree, that he does not qualify under Maryland law to serve as a "diagnostician," the title he held on the advisory commission. The governor also cited charges brought against him this week by the Maryland Board of Physicians.

"I regret that you were not willing to withdraw from the Commission and that this action is therefore necessary," the governor said.

The Maryland Board of Physicians charged Geier this week with practicing medicine without a license while working with his father, Dr. Mark Geier. The men operate a network of clinics, two of them in Maryland, where they treat children for autism using controversial Lupron therapy.

David Geier, through his attorneys, has said he works only in an "administrative" capacity in the clinics.

Attorney J. Steven Wise, said Friday he was unaware of the governor's action until contacted by a reporter. "David Geier denies the charges of the Board of Physicians, and we look forward to a full hearing on those charges," he said.

Geier, Blogging, & Neurodiversity

Jean Marbella writes at The Baltimore Sun:

If, like me, you don't know much about autism, let me explain where the cosmic justice comes in: One form of the wide-ranging developmental disorder, on the high-functioning, high-verbal end of it, is Asperger's syndrome, which among other things is characterized by a tendency to obsess on a single subject.

Geier happened to become that subject for Kathleen Seidel.

"I'm the kind of person once my brain kicks in, I just go hog wild," says Seidel, a blogger who lives in New Hampshire. "For me, it's like putting together a big puzzle."

Seidel has a college-aged child who was diagnosed with Asperger's, and considers herself on the spectrum as well. With a master's in library science, she tends to meticulously research her obsessions and, after seeing references to Geier's work on some autism-related websites, started to investigate him about five years ago.

...

Seidel's investigation resulted in a 16-part takedown of the Geiers on her blog, neurodiversity.com, that was widely circulated and drew renewed attention this week when the news hit that Maryland suspended his medical license.

...

For Seidel, the suspension of Geier's license — he has the right to an appeals process, starting with a hearing before the board on Wednesday — offers some vindication. She's tangled, at least through the media, with Geier and others who have dismissed her work, saying she's not a doctor.

No, she's simply part of the "Aspie" community. And indeed, even by phone, you see why interacting with them can be both engaging and somewhat tiring. Seidel speaks in whole paragraphs — footnotes even, if you can imagine that in an entirely verbal exchange — and calls back a couple of times to make what were already good points better.

"I'm grateful," she says of the Maryland board's action. "It's not just me out there saying this is awful. It's not just me, a blogger. The professionals have paid attention, a whole table-full of doctors putting their intellect to work."

See also the discussion at Left Brain/Right Brain.

The Geier Case

The Baltimore Sun reports:

A doctor nationally known for treating autism with a drug sometimes used to chemically castrate sex offenders has been suspended from practicing medicine in his home state of Maryland after state officials determined that he is putting children at risk.

Dr. Mark Geier allegedly misrepresented his credentials, misdiagnosed children and urged parents to approve risky treatments without fully informing them of the potential dangers, according to the Maryland Board of Physicians.

The board's order states that Geier "endangers autistic children and exploits their parents by administering to the children a treatment protocol that has a known substantial risk of serious harm and which is neither consistent with evidence-based medicine nor generally accepted in the relevant scientific community."

Geier told the Chicago Tribune in 2009 that he had treated hundreds of children with a testosterone suppressant called Lupron, which he called a "miracle drug." But a Tribune investigation exposed the treatment as a potentially dangerous therapy based on junk science and promoted by a physician not board-certified in any specialty relevant to autism or the use of hormone-disrupting drugs.

According to the Maryland Board of Physicians, Geier has licenses in 10 states. In Maryland, he's the president of Genetic Center of America, which has offices in Rockville and Owings Mills. In Maryland, the offices are called Genetic Consultants of Maryland, which he told the board offers genetic counseling to high-risk obstetric patients, evaluation of adults at risk for cancer and "genetic workups" of children with neuro-developmental disorders.

He also practices under the name ASD Centers LLC, and in 2006, the board said, he founded the Institute of Chronic Illness with his son, which offers the disputed autism treatment.

Geier is prominent in the world of alternative treatments for autism. His ASD Centers advertise "new hope for autism," and he has offices around the country.

The Maryland board found that in six of nine cases it reviewed, Geier incorrectly diagnosed children with autism with "precocious puberty" — the extraordinarily early onset of puberty — and prescribed Lupron, which is sometimes covered by insurance to treat that rare condition.

The same paper follows up:

A day after Dr. Mark Geier's medical license was suspended in Maryland over allegations of putting children with autism at risk, state officials were seeking to remove his son from a state commission that advises the governor on the disorder.

The officials were also struggling to explain why David Geier, who has an undergraduate degree in biology and does not have a medical license, was identified by the Commission on Autism as its "diagnostician." The commission's website had listed him as a doctor until Wednesday, which officials said was a clerical error. The commission's listing also includes the Geiers' company, ASD Centers LLC, whose website lists a corporate center in Silver Spring but is not registered in Maryland.

"Under the circumstances, we do not believe it's appropriate for David Geier to serve on the autism commission," said David Paulson, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which submitted 19 names to the governor, including David Geier's, for approval to the panel. "Unfortunately, he declined to resign his commission. ... As a result, we are considering the appropriate next steps."

Paulson said the state was aware of "the controversial nature of David Geier's views" when he was recommended for the position on the commission, which was formed by the legislature in 2009. But officials were looking for a "diverse" panel.

He also said that there was no legal definition of diagnostician.

The Geiers' views, spelled out in papers and by the state Board of Physicians that suspended the senior Geier, have been discredited by the Institute of Medicine and mainstream medical science in general. They connect autism to the mercury in vaccines. Among the treatments the Geiers say they've developed is one that uses Lupron — a drug that a host of autism experts have called dangerous for children.

See a 2010 post on Lupron.

Lupron

The Palm Beach Sun-Sentinel reports:

A Maryland medical group has started treating autistic children in South Florida with shots of a drug used for chemical castration, a therapy widely panned by mainstream experts.

The group gives children the cancer drug Lupron to stop their bodies from making testosterone, saying the drug helps expel toxic mercury and quells aggressive or sexually explicit behavior by kids with excessive levels of the male hormone.

A Boca Raton mother who just put her 18-year-old son on the drug said it seems to help.

But numerous physicians, researchers and therapists insist there's no proof mercury causes autism, that Lupron removes mercury or that autistic kids have excessive testosterone. What's more, the drug carries a risk of bone damage, stunted growth and heart trouble, and can render children impotent.

These experts contend that Lupron, costing about $5,000 a month but seldom covered by insurance, is one of many treatments that cash in on the desperation of parents trying to cope with an incurable condition for which medicine has few good answers outside of painstaking behavioral therapy.

"Not only is there no scientific backing whatsoever for Lupron treatments, there are several major concerns for the children's health," said neurologist BethAnn McLaughlin, an adviser to the Dan Marino Foundation autism group in Weston and the mother of two developmentally disabled children.

• See a sidebar on controversial treatments.
• See a 2009 Chicago Tribune piece on lupron.