Antivaccine views have certainly gained populary in certain groups after Covid, but Theresa Deisher has been antivaccine for a long time, and remains as silly and nonsensical as ever to this day. Deisher is a proponent – perhaps the central popularizer (unless that’s Helen Ratajczak) – of the “aborted fetal DNA” gambit. Indeed, not only is aborted fetal DNA, which are not present in vaccines, immoral and toxic: it causes autism, as Deisher sees it.
Yes, the explanation for what Deisher falsely thinks is an autism epidemic isn’t thimerosal (which was, after all, removed from childhood vaccines without a budge in autism numbers); it is that vaccines contain (they don’t) aborted fetal DNA. And what magical property of aborted fetal cells is it that gives them the power to cause autism, you may ask? “It creates the potential for autoimmune responses and/or inappropriate insertion into our own genomes through a process called recombination”. No it doesn’t, and although Deisher implicitly admits to having no actual evidence for the claim, she does refer to “groups researching the potential link between this DNA and autoimmune diseases”. Those groups would be ones affiliated with Deisher’s own organization, Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute (SCPI) (which “promote[s] consumer awareness about the widespread use of electively aborted fetal material in drug discovery, development, and commercialization”). Never mind that the hypothesis makes little sense from a biological and genetic point of view. But she does have a correlation, doesn’t she? Well, as she sees it, the switch to vaccines produced using aborted fetal cells correlates with what SCPI concludes are ”dramatic” increases in the rates of regressive autism in children. Since there is no autism epidemic, there is no correlation either, of course; rather, the correlation SCPI claims to see is, at best, a correlation with changes in diagnostic criteria (https://rationalcatholicblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/the-problems-with-deishers-study-part-i-the-numbers/) and diagnostization of autism (but there is, to emphasize, absolutely no correlation between introduction of the vaccines Deisher complains about and changes in diagnostic criteria either). In short, assuming falsely that there exists an autism epidemic, Deisher adds the old and demonstrably false antivaccine idea that vaccines cause autism but concludes, without evidence, that the real culprit is aborted fetal DNA, which aren’t present in vaccines and couldn’t have caused autism if they were.
Deisher herself claims to be an “internationally renowned expert in the field of adult stem cell therapies and regenerative medicine”. For an internationally renowned expert, her scientific output is, to put it mildly, meagre. But the stem cell connection is probably significant – Desiher has “17 years of practice in senior scientific and corporate leadership positions concerning research, discovery, production and commercialization of human therapeutics”. Moreover, her scaremongering about vaccines should probably be seen in light of Deisher’s position as research and development director for the AVM Biotechnology, which promised to “offer ethical alternatives to some of the vaccines that currently rely on the use of fetal tissue form abortions”, marketed at “pro-life people who have been reluctant to use some vaccines because their development came as a result of the destruction of unborn children”. How convenient for AVM (which stands for “Ave Maria”) that such vaccines also cause autism, based on no evidence whatsoever.
Well, Deisher did produce a study in 2014 (with Ngoc V. Doan, Angelica Omaiye, Kumiko Koyama and Sarah Bwabye), one that was widely circulated in antivaccine circles (and promptly made it onto this list). It is an absolutely bonkers “study” with absolutely astonishing methodological errors that are hard to explain without citing motivated reasoning, as well as reliance on mechanisms that are, to put it diplomatically, biologically implausible. The study is criticized in some detail here and here (“the claims are so biologically and immunologically wrong that the entire letter is just a condensed list of fake claims and fear mongering that can be dangerous when read by someone that does not understand biology”). Why did it take so long for the study to appear, given that Deisher had already decided what the conclusion was going to be? Well, one hint can be found in noting that she had some trouble getting it carried out: a 2013 petition to have access to Vaccine Safety Datalink files to look for a connection between receipt of the varicella vaccine and autism was promptly denied because real scientists “found her proposed study to be critically deficient”.
Now, Deisher’s silly claims about DNA should at least make you seriously worried about the stem cell therapeutics she has been heavily involved in commercializing. And Deisher actually does have a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Physiology. She should know better, but she doesn’t. Indeed, with some of the same coauthors as in 2014, Deisher has followed up her paper with a series of “studies” that are even worse, like the one discussed here, and has even tried to use them in court – the courts were, unsurprisingly, not impressed. A couple of other, abysmal efforts are discussed here. At some point, it is hard not to suspect rank dishonesty.
And it is not like Deisher doesn’t have a history of rank dishonesty. As a staunch opponent of Planned Parenthood, she has been more than willing to use subversion to discredit that organization. Deisher was for instance instrumental in David Daleiden’s dishonest undercover sting operation in 2015 targeting Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue donation programs.
More recently, Deisher has, like so many antivaxxers, thrown her lot in with the MAGA crowds, and has made appearances at wingnut happenings like AMPFEST20 together with a long list of QANON promoters.
Diagnosis: We recognize that her antivaccine efforts have presumably been boosted by personal tragedies, but those tragedies had nothing to do with vaccines, so interpreting them as having a connection is the result of already existing unjustified assumptions. And no amount of personal tragedy justifies the dishonesty and misuse of science to try to undermine public trust in one of the most important measures we have for preventing suffering and death.
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