Two CDC-supported studies on Danish autism rates between 1995 and 2000 present contradictory findings: one claims an increase in autism cases after the mercury-based preservative thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines, while the other reports a steady decline.
Both papers cannot be correct. And the CDC will not come clean about the discrepancy between the studies. One researcher, former CDC employee Diana Schendel, was involved in both studies. She should be questioned under oath as to what happened.
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The following is a reproduction of an emailed newsletter from Autism Action Network.
Two CDC Danish Autism/Vax Studies; Two Opposite Conclusions; The Felon Says Mercury Is Safe
By Autism Action Network, 2 September 2026
Two US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) studies of the autism rate in Denmark in the 90s: the first one, produced by admitted felon Poul Thorsen, says the autism rate increased from 1995 to 2000, which was then used to claim there is no connection between giving infants mercury in vaccines and autism; the second study found that the autism rate in Denmark not only decreased from 1995 to 2000, but was more than 10 times higher than the rate claimed by Thorsen. At least one of these studies is bogus.
Thorsen was a Danish researcher hired by the CDC in 1999 to do a series of studies, including several on the role of vaccines causing autism. He was indicted for embezzling more than $1 million from the CDC and other crimes by a US federal court in 2011. He lived openly in Denmark, where he was an instructor at Aarhus University, but was finally arrested and extradited to the US in 2025. Yesterday he pleaded guilty.
The first study, ‘Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence from Danish Population-Based Data’, a widely publicised and highly influential study released in 2003, claimed that mercury in vaccines played no role in causing autism because the rate of autism in Danish children increased after mercury was removed from Danish-produced vaccines in 1992.
Another CDC study, ‘Recurrence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Full- and Half-Siblings and Trends Over Time: A Population-Based Cohort Study’, led by Therese K. Gronborg and released in 2013, however, shows the exact opposite: that the rate of autism in Danish children decreased after mercury was removed. And if the increasing rate of autism claimed in the earlier study showed that mercury had no role in causing autism, then logic would also require that the rate of autism going down, as shown in the current study, indicates that mercury in vaccines may very well have a great deal to do with causing autism.
Both papers were drafted in part by researchers at the University of Aarhus in Denmark with support from the CDC. Diana Schendel, a former CDC employee and intimate partner of Thorsen, participated in both studies. Both papers claim to have drawn their data from a national registry of health information that includes all children born in Denmark and another registry that records all psychiatric disorders among Danish children. Both studies looked at the time period from 1995 to 2000. Yet the two studies looking at supposedly the exact same data during the exact same time period have two completely different conclusions.
All the vaccine studies performed by Thorsen concluded there was no causal connection with autism. Thorsen’s studies absolving vaccines of any role in autism have had a decisive impact on American vaccine policy, autism research priorities and the dismissal in 2009 of almost all the 5,000 plus autism cases in the Autism Omnibus Proceeding, an administrative action similar to a class action suit that was before the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (the “vaccine court”).
The exact number of cases of autism in Danish children is difficult to discern in the 2003 Thorsen study. The actual numbers are not provided, as one would expect in a study performed by competent professionals, but a crude graph shows a rise in autism from 1995 through 1999. The numbers in the table below are estimates based on Thorsen’s graph. But even the 2003 Thorsen graph showed a decline in 2000. Numbers before 1995 are not reliable because only children diagnosed and hospitalised for autism are included in the national registries, which Thorsen identifies as less than 10% of all cases of autism in Danish children. Regardless, the authors concluded, “the discontinuation of thimerosal-containing vaccines in Denmark in 1992 was followed by an increase in the incidence of autism. Our ecological data do not support a correlation between thimerosal-containing vaccines and the incidence of autism.”
The 2013 Gronborg Danish study analyses the rate of autism in siblings and half-siblings of people with autism. It did not look at vaccines. And the rate of autism and direction over time is radically different than in the Thorsen 2003 study. This study shows a steady decline in the number of Danish children with autism every year from 1995 through 2000.
In 2003, when there was a great deal of urgency to show that mercury in vaccines had nothing to do with autism, the numbers went up. But in 2013, when the topic had nothing to do with vaccines, and Poul Thorsen was not involved, the numbers went down.
In the 2003 Thorsen paper, the claim is made that there were only 956 children diagnosed with autism in Denmark between 1971 and 2000. Yet the 2013 Gronborg study claims that from 1980 through 1999 there were 12,698 cases of autism spectrum disorders. How a more than 1,300% discrepancy could arise from researchers looking at the same data from the same database is difficult to imagine.
If the data from the 2013 Gronborg study are correct, it is possible that the 2003 Thorsen study was simply fabricated to arrive at a timely and politically expedient conclusion. Given the lack of raw data in the original study, the refusal of the CDC to release the data, the gross discrepancies with the later data which do not concern an explosively sensitive topic, the management of the 2003 study by an admitted felon and the lack of any studies to corroborate the 2003 study’s findings, falsification of the entire study could be a possibility.
The CDC certainly will not come clean on this issue. Perhaps a rigorous cross-examination under oath might frighten some CDC functionaries or others to tell the truth, but since there is no possibility of people involved in the vaccine industry ever facing a court-ordered subpoena due to the protection provided by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, the only option may be questioning under oath by Congress. Testimony under oath by researcher Diana Schendel, who worked on both papers, could potentially shine a good deal of light on how the two studies she participated in reached diametrically opposite conclusions about autism in Denmark.
About the Author
Autism Action Network is a US-wide advocacy organisation focused on public policy and legislation that affects people with autism, vaccine injuries and related developmental conditions. It was founded in 2005 as A-CHAMP by a group of parents of vaccine-injured children to stop mercury in vaccines and then expanded in 2008 and renamed to reflect a broader advocacy agenda.
Featured image taken from ‘What Is Thimerosal?’, WebMD, 25 July 2025
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