On the Bookshelf: James Grundvig’s “Master Manipulator” Shows that Poul Thorsen’s Crimes Extend Far Beyond Fraud
Grundvig's book tracks how scientist Poul Thorsen falsified data on behalf of the CDC and Big Pharma, 'proving' vaccines don't cause autism.
In Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC, journalist James Ottar Grundvig presents a detailed account of data manipulation, biased research, and scientific dissembling centered on Danish researcher, Poul Thorsen.
Thorsen was a fugitive from American justice for fifteen years before he was finally arrested and extradited to the United States on May 7, as reported here.
In Master Manipulator, published by Skyhorse in 2016 with a foreword by Sharyl Attkisson and an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Grundvig argues that Thorsen’s activities exposed deep problems at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He writes of studies poorly managed and research ethics severely compromised, especially investigations of the connection between vaccines and autism.
Grundvig traces Thorsen’s rise from relative obscurity to prominence through his access to Denmark’s extensive national health registries – comprehensive databases covering virtually all citizens’ medical histories. Denmark has one of the oldest, most comprehensive, health registries. As a researcher with Danish citizenship, Thorsen had access to the Danish health data that American scientists are not permitted to access.
Why would Danish health registry data be more useful for someone trying to disconnect vaccination as a cause for autism? Because Denmark mandates fewer vaccines and has a lower incidence of autism than the U.S.
Denmark’s autism rates are estimated to be between .26% to 1.47%. According to the CDC, autism rates in the United States are 3.2%.
Twenty years ago, CDC officials were well aware of the trends in U.S. autism data. They understood that using data from Denmark was likely to give them the results that favored their position that vaccines do not cause autism.
On the other hand, CDC officials were fearful of what American health data would reveal.,Thorsen understood the CDC’s fears and leveraged his access to Danish health data for financial gain and increased professional prestige.
And besides, no American researcher would ever be allowed to access the raw data that Thorsen, as a Dane, could access. By creating research based on data no one could independently verify, Thorsen became the man who saved the vaccine industry with research that exonerated vaccines from causing autism.
As Grundvig reveals in his book, Thorsen used Danish data – even though the countries have very different vaccination rates – to claim that there was no causal link between children taking vaccines and their developing autism. He expected Big Pharma, via the CDC, to contract him and to pay him well. They did both.
Thorsen established the North Atlantic Neuro-Epidemiology Alliance (NANEA). The research papers produced by NANEA were enormously valuable to the CDC and Big Pharma in the late 2000’s.
Why? Because over 5,000 families filed cases against Health and Human Services alleging vaccine injuries resulting in autism. They did so in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, commonly referred to as the ‘Vaccine Court.’ As a result, the U.S. government and Big Pharma faced billions of dollars in compensation payments in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings (OAP) in the ‘Vaccine Court.’
Thorsen knew that he could create research papers that, using Danish data, could reach conclusions that CDC and Big Pharma desperately needed in order to defend themselves in the OAP.
Thorsen collaborated with CDC scientists on influential epidemiological studies in the early 2000s, most notably the 2002 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) paper on the MMR vaccine and autism, and the 2003 Pediatrics paper on thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in vaccines.
According to mainstream medicine and legacy media, both studies concluded there was no causal link between the MMR and the incidence of autism.
That was and still is the official narrative.
However, when one digs deeper, as Grundvig did in his book, the official narratives built upon these papers collapse.
According to a peer-reviewed analysis of the MMR paper by Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., the research is corrupted by whacky statistical analysis to such a degree that the ‘Numbers Literally Don’t Add Up.’ Even worse is the fact that it is not possible to replicate the NEJM study’s findings because the raw data the researchers used are not available to other researchers.
Let that sink in: the raw data in the research that mainstream medicine asserts, data that proves vaccines do not cause autism, is still not available to American scientists to analyze.
The ghost of Thorsen haunts Danish science – much like the ghost of Hamlet’s father haunts Shakespeare’s Denmark-based classic.
In 2014, Kennedy exposed the flaws of Thorsen’s thimerosal research – and documented real science – arguing for the removal of mercury from vaccines in Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak. In chapter 15, Kennedy calls out Thorsen’s and the CDC’s reliance on flawed European studies.
A series of decisions by the Special Masters, who adjudicate cases in Vaccine Court, all came out flatly against the families in Omnibus Autism Proceedings. Grundvig’s son’s case, for example, was dismissed.
One can feel Grundvig’s personal stake and drive for justice burning through Master Manipulator as he documents his hunt for Thorsen, the man who falsified data that caused his case against the government to fail.
Grundvig found Thorsen living openly in Denmark. He traveled about freely, without a care in the world, as though everyone else in the Danish scientific community had also stolen U.S tax dollars.
Thorsen purchased a home in Sweden and practiced gynecology in nearby Middelfart, Denmark. He lived as though the 22 counts of wire fraud that the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General pinned on him were of no consequence.
Why did Thorsen commit fraud after already making good money from CDC grants? Perhaps as the man responsible for saving the vaccine industry, Thorsen felt that he was entitled to a few extra million dollars.
Maybe some people in the CDC and federal government felt the same way. Is that why he comfortably avoided arrest for so long?
But Grundvig never stopped pursuing Thorsen.
Grundvig knew that Thorsen’s crimes were more than just fraud; they were crimes against America’s children and families.
Had the truth about the link between vaccine injury and autism not been suppressed – and Thorsen’s science helped suppress it – people would no longer treat vaccines as medicine’s sacred cow. And here might be fewer young people with autism. We might also have seen a different public health approach to the Covid pandemic.
I caught up with Grundvig a few days ago and asked him questions, which are edited below for clarity and length.
The MAHA Report: You describe Thorsen as a master manipulator. Why? Why do you believe he is anything more than just a common criminal?
Grundvig: Thorsen was the quintessential “accidental” foreign visiting scientist at the CDC in 1999-2000. When he learned about the CDC’s vaccine-autism problem, Thorsen leveraged his knowledge of Danish health data to give CDC what they needed. And Thorsen knew that they needed him because only a member of the Danish scientific community could get access to Danish health registry data.
Beyond the 22-count indictment of money laundering and wire fraud, Thorsen manipulated his employees at NANEA, at Aarhus University in Denmark, at the CDC, and beyond.
The MAHA Report: Thorsen established NANEA. Give us background on that organization. Why did it serve as a template for the research that was conducted on autism and vaccines?
Grundvig: Dr. Poul Thorsen’s dream of turning his neuro-epidemiology startup into a hub for science research, solving the CDC’s problems of not doing double-blind placebo clinical trials by mining the Danish Health Registry, must have looked brilliant at the time. But Thorsen’s ego, thirst for money and fame, and lack of moral clarity derailed those plans.
As Dr. Madsen told me in a July 2015 interview, “Thorsen was a used car salesman.” To me that signaled Thorsen was neither a topflight scientist nor a businessman fit to grow and scale a scientific research startup. He might have been a “rainmaker” to keep CDC money flowing into Denmark scientific institutions and universities, but he did not have the ability to raise investor capital or manage a team of employees.
The MAHA Report: Do you believe that Thorsen had inside help in perpetrating his fraud? Wasn’t he supposed to be supervised by CDC staff?
Grundvig: Yes. In order to conduct the embezzlement, Thorsen needed inside help. As a foreign visiting scientist, he did have a CDC Credit Union bank account. But I doubt he used his own personal account. I believe he may have had help from his mistress, a former CDC administrator who was supposed to supervise Thorsen’s grant activities and her boss, Dr. Coleen Boyle.
For falsified invoices to work, he needed a CDC email address that was not his as well as CDC letterhead, so that bills could be sent from the CDC to [the Danish] Aarhus University health department. Then, money wired to the CDC Credit Union bank account would not raise suspicion.
That money conduit worked for a while and Thorsen lived the high life. It worked all the way into the 2008 financial crash—his last two withdrawals came on Halloween 2008—when governments and the programs worldwide came under stress, review, audit, and belt-tightening.
You could say that one silver lining to the 2008 great recession not only exposed the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, but also Thorsen’s theft of U.S. taxpayers’ money.
The MAHA Report: What did Thorsen do at Aarhus University? Why was he let go from that university?
Grundvig: Fallout from the 2008 financial crash exposed fault lines in the finances of Aarhus University. By spring of 2009, a new dean was tasked to run financial audits on past expenditures. It was during that time period that the university was tipped off about Thorsen’s and NANEA’s improprieties.
It took a while for the new dean to come to understand the full scope of Thorsen’s crimes. On January 22, 2010, the dean wrote an unusual, three-page public statement disassociating all ties with their former rainmaker, Thorsen.
Just like the U.S. Department of Justice, Denmark began investigating Thorsen and his debris field of financial crimes.
The MAHA Report: Do vaccine advocates like Paul Offit claim to minimize Thorsen’s impact on the science his organization produced?
Grundvig: I met Dr. Paul Offit at the fall 2016 Advisory Commission on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting at the CDC headquarters. I approached him with a copy of my book, Master Manipulator. Offit threw his hands up in the air as if the book was radioactive.
I was amused. I said, “Look, Paul, the introduction is by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., I autographed it for you, and it’s the story about the other Poul.”
Offit snapped, “Get that shit out of here.”
Offit, like others at the CDC, like Diana Schendel and Danish institutions – they all spew the same lie and say they stand by their science.
The MAHA Report: What impact did Thorsen’s studies have on cases in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings?
Grundvig: Unfortunately for my son’s case and the 5,400 other cases, none of their injuries and claims were ever heard. That also impacted millions of other vaccine-injured children with autism during that time and afterwards.
The U.S. government, in particular the old guard at the CDC and the Obama Justice Department, committed more than fraud. They destroyed a major swath of the millennial generation by being criminally complicit with scientific fraud.
The MAHA Report: Do you believe Thorsen would have been brought to justice without the work of RFK Jr?
Grundvig: Denmark would never have extradited fugitive and rogue scientist Poul Thorsen under any circumstances. It would have opened a much bigger Pandora’s box than a few million missing dollars. It would have triggered an investigation into Denmark’s stellar reputation in epidemiology research and the way it leverages its world-renowned health database.
HSS Secretary Kennedy understood this and moved swiftly to have Interpol arrest Thorsen in Germany at a conference in June 2025. This was done with the assistance of the U.S. State Department and with the blessing of President Trump. All kudos to Secretary Kennedy and the rest of the U.S. government for making it happen.
The MAHA Report: What do you think will ultimately happen to Thorsen now that he’s in U.S. custody in Atlanta – what do you hope will happen to him?
Grundvig: I believe Thorsen has no more cons left to pull. At age 65, he’s looking at 22 counts that each carry over one year of jail time. He is looking at dying in jail so I am sure he’s looking to cut a deal to get the sentence down to something like five years.
I wonder if he might have some bad blood with CDC executives. He wouldn’t have any problem throwing them under the bus.
It’s time for Poul Thorsen to start singing.
These people, i.e., everyone associated with these phony and falsified studies, are guilty of, at the very least, crimes against humanity and should be punished accordingly.