CathInfo.com

Poul Thorsen, one of the key scientists whose research is used to “prove” that vaccines do not cause autism has been charged with 22 counts of fraud, including falsifying reports on vaccines.

By Louis Conte
AUG 24, 2026

According to published reports, Danish vaccine researcher Poul Thorsen will plead guilty on September 1, 2026 to federal charges that he stole over one million dollars in grant funding he received from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Thorsen is accused of using Centers of Disease Control and Prevention money, earmarked for autism research, for his own purposes; the Danish-born researcher was studying the possible link between vaccines and the rise of autism rates.

Charges against him raise questions about whether he was deliberately falsifying vaccine data to ‘prove’ that vaccines do not cause autism and have nothing to do with the rise of autism in the United States.

According to author and investigator James Ottar Grundvig, Thorsen’s guilty plea is “a huge victory for justice in the generation-long controversy.” He continued, “CDC hired mercenary scientists, here and abroad, to cook data on MMR and thimerosal studies, to erase the autism signals in vaccine research. They were desperate to keep the trust in the myth that vaccines are ‘safe and effective.’”

According to U.S. Attorney Hertzberg, the charges, and other information presented in court: From 2000 to 2009, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, awarded over $11 million to two governmental agencies in Denmark to study the relationship between autism and exposure to vaccines, between cerebral palsy and infection during pregnancy, and between childhood development and fetal alcohol exposure.

In 2002, Thorsen, who had worked as a visiting scientist at the CDC when it was soliciting the grant applications, became responsible for administering the research money awarded by the CDC.

Thorsen allegedly stole more than $1 million of the CDC grant money by submitting fraudulent docuмents to the Danish government, Aarhus University, and a Danish hospital where scientists performed research under the grant.

From February 2004 through June 2008, Thorsen allegedly submitted over a dozen fraudulent invoices, containing the forged signature of a CDC laboratory section chief, that falsely claimed a CDC laboratory had performed work and was owed grant money.