Paul Offit | |
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Born | Paul Allan Offit March 27, 1951 [1] |
Education | Tufts University (BA) University of Maryland, Baltimore (MD) |
Known for | Developing a rotavirus vaccine, public advocacy for vaccines |
Medical career | |
Profession | Pediatrician and infectious disease doctor |
Institutions | Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania |
Sub-specialties | Vaccinology |
Awards |
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Website | www |
Paul Allan Offit (born March 27, 1951) is an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine. Offit is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, former chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases (1992–2014), and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Offit is a member of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee; [3] a board member of Every Child By Two; [4] a founding board member of the Autism Science Foundation (ASF); [5] and a former member of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. [6]
Offit has published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety, [7] and is the author or co-author of books on vaccines, vaccination, the rejection of medicine by some religious groups, [8] and antibiotics. He is one of the most public faces of the scientific consensus that vaccines have no association with autism. As a result, he has been the frequent target of hate mail and death threats. [7] [9] [10]
In 2023, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. [11]
Offit grew up in Baltimore, the son of a shirtmaker. He went to his father's sales meetings and reacted negatively to the tall tales told by salespeople, instead preferring the clean and straightforward practice of science. [12] When he was five years old, he was sent to a polio ward to recover from clubfoot surgery; this experience caused him to see children as vulnerable and helpless, and motivated him through the 25 years of the development of the rotavirus vaccine. [7] [13]
Offit decided to become a doctor, the first in his family. [14] Offit earned his bachelor's degree from Tufts University and his M.D. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. In 1980, he completed his residency training in Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. [15] [16] That year, he began a fellowship in infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. [16] One of his mentors was Maurice Hilleman, who developed many of the major vaccines in use today. [12]
In 1990, Offit married Bonnie Fass-Offit, who is also a pediatrician. [17] They had two children. [18]
By 2008 Offit had become a leading advocate of childhood immunizations. He was opposed by vaccine critics, many of whom believe vaccines cause autism, a belief that has been rejected by major medical journals and professional societies. [19] [20] [21] He received a death threat and received protection by an armed guard during meetings at the CDC. [7] His 2008 book Autism's False Prophets catalyzed a backlash against the antivaccine movement in the U.S. [9] He donated the royalties from the book to the Center for Autism Research at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. [22] Offit served on the board of the American Council on Science and Health until 2015 when he resigned from the group, accusing them of crossing the line for their promotion of e-cigarettes. [23] In 2015, Offit appeared in a vaccine awareness video created by Robert Till in which he advocated teenage vaccinations. [24]
Offit worked for 25 years on the development of a safe and effective vaccine against rotavirus, which is a cause of diarrhea, [10] and which kills almost 600,000 children a year worldwide, about half as many as malaria kills; most deaths are outside the West. [9] His interest in the disease stemmed from the death of a 9-month-old infant from rotavirus-caused dehydration while under his care as a pediatric resident in 1979. [10] [13]
Along with his colleagues Fred Clark and Stanley Plotkin, Offit invented RotaTeq, [14] a pentavalent rotavirus vaccine manufactured by Merck & Co. Since 2006, RotaTeq has been one of two vaccines currently used against rotavirus. [25]
In February 2006, RotaTeq was approved for inclusion in the recommended U.S. vaccination schedule, following its approval by the FDA. [25] [26] Premarketing studies found that RotaTeq was effective and safe, with an incidence of adverse events comparable to placebo. [27] RotaTeq has been credited (by Peter Hotez) with saving hundreds of lives a day. [7] Offit received an unspecified sum of money for his interest in RotaTeq. [12] Offit was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, in 2015. [28]
In 2002, during a period of fears about bioterrorism, Offit was the only member of the CDC's advisory panel to vote against a program to give smallpox vaccine to tens of thousands of Americans. He later argued on 60 Minutes II and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that the risk of harm for people getting the vaccine outweighed the risk of getting smallpox in the U.S. at the time. [14]
In December 2013, Sarah Erush and Offit declared the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has a moratorium on the use of dietary supplements without certain manufacturers' guarantee for quality. [29]
Offit defines alternative medicine as quackery when it involves unappreciated harm and replacement of conventional therapies that work, with alternative therapies that do not. His books and articles warn against the expense and risk to health for recipients of alternative therapies. In 2013 he wrote the book Do you believe in Magic? – The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine. [30] Offit states that the purpose of the book "is to take a critical look at the field of Alternative Medicine – to separate fact from myth" and that "There's only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't."(p. 6) One of Offit's concerns is the scare tactics he says proponents of alternative medicine will often use, in a 2010 podcast with the Point of Inquiry Offit stated "it is very difficult to unscare people when you scare them." [31]
Offit has said that the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 should be overturned to provide proper oversight and action against supplement providers. [32]
Offit is a recipient of numerous awards, including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the 2013 Maxwell Finland Award for Scientific Achievement and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. [22] In 2018, Offit was awarded the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal from the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington, DC for his work on the oral rotavirus vaccine and his leadership in promoting immunization. [33]
In 2011 Offit was honored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization with the 2011 Biotech Humanitarian Award. [34] Offit donated the award's $10,000 prize to the Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. [35] Also in 2011, Offit was elected to the Institute of Medicine at the group's annual meeting. [36] In 2013 Offit was presented with the Robert B. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) for Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine. "Offit is a literal lifesaver... educates the public about the dangers of alternative medicine, may save many, many more." [37]
Michael Specter wrote that Offit "has become a figure of hatred to the many vaccine denialists and conspiracy theorists." Specter reported that Offit had often been threatened with violence by anti-vaccine advocates, necessitating precautions such as screening Offit's packages for mail bombs and providing guards when Offit attends federal health advisory committee meetings. [38] At a 2008 vaccine activism rally in Washington, D.C., environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. criticized Offit's ties to drug companies, calling him a "poster child for the term 'biostitute'." [12] Curt Linderman Sr., the editor of the Autism File blog, wrote online that it would "be nice" if Offit "was dead". [14]
Such criticism has provoked statements in Offit's defense. Peter Hotez, a professor and vaccine researcher at George Washington University, has been quoted in a Newsweek article:
Offit has written or co-written several books on vaccines, vaccination and the public, and antibiotics, as well as dozens of scholarly articles on the topic. Isabelle Rapin, a neurology professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, wrote in Neurology Today about Autism's False Prophets :
In "The Cutter Incident" (see Cutter Laboratories incident), Offit describes fallout relating to an early poliovirus vaccine tragedy that had the effect of deterring production of already licensed vaccines and discouraging the development of new ones. Offit advocates for the repeal of religious exemptions to vaccine requirements, saying that such exemptions amount to medical neglect. [40]
He has also written books on the instances where science generated harmful ideas (Pandora's Lab) and the history of religious opposition (in some groups) to modern medicine (Bad Faith).
In 2021 Offit released You Bet Your Life, which is a history of medical innovations with a particular focus on how some degree of risk is always present in medical innovation. [41]
External videos | |
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After Words interview with Offit on You Bet Your Life, November 14, 2021, C-SPAN |
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating the body's adaptive immunity, they help prevent sickness from an infectious disease. When a sufficiently large percentage of a population has been vaccinated, herd immunity results. Herd immunity protects those who may be immunocompromised and cannot get a vaccine because even a weakened version would harm them. The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified. Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases; widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the elimination of diseases such as polio and tetanus from much of the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccination prevents 3.5–5 million deaths per year. A WHO-funded study by The Lancet estimates that, during the 50-year period starting in 1974, vaccination prevented 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children under age 5. However, some diseases have seen rising cases due to relatively low vaccination rates attributable partly to vaccine hesitancy.
Rotaviruses are the most common cause of diarrhoeal disease among infants and young children. Nearly every child in the world is infected with a rotavirus at least once by the age of five. Immunity develops with each infection, so subsequent infections are less severe. Adults are rarely affected. Rotavirus is a genus of double-stranded RNA viruses in the family Reoviridae. There are nine species of the genus, referred to as A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I and J. Rotavirus A is the most common species, and these rotaviruses cause more than 90% of rotavirus infections in humans.
Stanley Alan Plotkin is an American physician who works as a consultant to vaccine manufacturers, such as Sanofi Pasteur, as well as biotechnology firms, non-profits and governments. In the 1960s, he played a pivotal role in discovery of a vaccine against rubella virus while working at Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Plotkin was a member of Wistar’s active research faculty from 1960 to 1991. Today, in addition to his emeritus appointment at Wistar, he is emeritus professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. His book, Vaccines, is the standard reference on the subject. He is an editor with Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, which is published by the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, D.C.
Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal, of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain about their use, or using certain vaccines but not others. Although adverse effects associated with vaccines are occasionally observed, the scientific consensus that vaccines are generally safe and effective is overwhelming. Vaccine hesitancy often results in disease outbreaks and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. Therefore, the World Health Organization characterizes vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten global health threats.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a United States program for vaccine safety, co-managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS is a postmarketing surveillance program, collecting information about adverse events that occur after administration of vaccines to ascertain whether the risk–benefit ratio is high enough to justify continued use of any particular vaccine.
The 2000 Simpsonwood CDC conference was a two-day meeting convened in June 2000 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), held at the Simpsonwood Methodist retreat and conference center in Gwinnett County near Norcross, Georgia. The key event at the conference was the presentation of data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink examining the possibility of a link between the mercury compound thimerosol in vaccines and neurological problems in children who had received those vaccines.
Saul Krugman was a physician, and later pediatrician, whose studies of hepatitis, rubella, and measles resulted in the development of vaccinations for these debilitating diseases. The results of these studies were acquired through unethical medical practices involving experimentation on disabled children, which came to light during the Willowbrook State School scandal of 1987.
Concerns about thiomersal and vaccines are commonly expressed by anti-vaccine activists. Claims relating to the safety of thiomersal, a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines, are refuted, but still subject to fearmongering, notably claims it could cause neurological disorders such as autism, leading to its removal from most vaccines in the US childhood schedule. This had no effect on the rates of diagnosis of pervasive developmental defects, including autism. Extensive scientific research shows no credible evidence linking thiomersal to such conditions.
Neal A. Halsey is an American pediatrician, with sub-specialty training in infectious diseases, international health and epidemiology. Halsey is a professor emeritus of international health and director emeritus of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Maryland. He had a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and serves as co-director of the Center for Disease Studies and Control in Guatemala.
The rotavirus vaccine is a vaccine used to protect against rotavirus infections, which are the leading cause of severe diarrhea among young children. The vaccines prevent 15–34% of severe diarrhea in the developing world and 37–96% of the risk of death among young children due to severe diarrhea. Immunizing babies decreases rates of disease among older people and those who have not been immunized.
The Immunization Alliance is an American vaccine advocacy consortium, assembled under the auspices of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in May 2008. The Immunization Alliance has called for a governmental information campaign, ongoing research into vaccine safety and efficacy, balanced media coverage, and restoration of confidence among parents due to vaccine hesitancy and the related controversies in autism.
Peter Jay Hotez is an American scientist, pediatrician, and advocate in the fields of global health, vaccinology, and neglected tropical disease control. He serves as founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also Director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Endowed Chair in Tropical Pediatrics. He also serves as a University Professor of Biology at Baylor University.
Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure is a 2008 book by Paul Offit, a vaccine expert and chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The book focuses on the controversy surrounding the now-discredited link between vaccines and autism. The scientific consensus is that no convincing scientific evidence supports these claims, and a 2011 pharmacotherapy journal article described the vaccine-autism connection as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years".
Robert William Sears, known as Dr. Bob, is an American pediatrician from Capistrano Beach, California, noted for his unorthodox and dangerous views on childhood vaccination. While Sears acknowledges the efficacy of vaccines—for instance, he supports the claim that Chicken pox, measles, whooping cough, polio, diphtheria have all disappeared because of vaccines—he has proposed alternative vaccination schedules that depart from accepted medical recommendations. His proposals have enjoyed celebrity endorsement but are not supported by medical evidence and have contributed to dangerous under-vaccination in the national child population. While he denies being anti-vaccine, Sears has been described by many as anti-vaccine and as a vaccine delayer.
Frank DeStefano FACPM is a medical epidemiologist and researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he is director of the Immunization Safety Office.
In the United States, an alternative vaccination schedule is a vaccination schedule differing from the schedule endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). These schedules may be either written or ad hoc, and have not been tested for their safety or efficacy. Proponents of such schedules aim to reduce the risk of adverse effects they believe to be caused by vaccine components, such as "immune system overload" that is argued to be caused by exposure to multiple antigens. Parents who adopt these schedules tend to do so because they are concerned about the potential risks of vaccination, rather than because they are unaware of the significance of vaccination's benefits. Delayed vaccination schedules have been shown to lead to an increase in breakthrough infections without any benefit in lower side effect profiles.
Horace Louis Hodes was an American pediatrician and infectious disease researcher. He was the first to isolate rotavirus, he demonstrated that the Japanese encephalitis virus is transmitted by mosquitoes, and he discovered that vitamin D increases intestinal absorption of calcium. He spent his early career at Johns Hopkins Hospital and later became the chief of pediatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Extensive investigation into vaccines and autism spectrum disorder has shown that there is no relationship between the two, causal or otherwise, and that vaccine ingredients do not cause autism. The American scientist Peter Hotez researched the growth of the false claim and concluded that its spread originated with Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 paper, and that no prior paper supports a link.
H. Fred Clark was an American veterinarian, medical scientist, and social activist. He served as a research professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as holding the position of adjunct professor at the Wistar Institute. He is recognized for his work with Paul Offit and Stanley Plotkin developing the rotavirus vaccine RotaTeq. For this work, Clark, Offit, and Plotkin received the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Gold Medal in 2006. He received a degree in veterinary medicine from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University at Buffalo.
Trudy Virginia Noller Murphy is an American pediatric infectious diseases physician, public health epidemiologist and vaccinologist. During the 1980s and 1990s, she conducted research at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas on three bacterial pathogens: Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Murphy's studies advanced understanding of how these organisms spread within communities, particularly among children attending day care centers. Her seminal work on Hib vaccines elucidated the effects of introduction of new Hib vaccines on both bacterial carriage and control of invasive Hib disease. Murphy subsequently joined the National Immunization Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where she led multi-disciplinary teams in the Divisions of Epidemiology and Surveillance and The Viral Hepatitis Division. Among her most influential work at CDC was on Rotashield™, which was a newly licensed vaccine designed to prevent severe diarrheal disease caused by rotavirus. Murphy and her colleagues uncovered that the vaccine increased the risk of acute bowel obstruction (intussusception). This finding prompted suspension of the national recommendation to vaccinate children with Rotashield, and led the manufacturer to withdraw the vaccine from the market. For this work Murphy received the United States Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Award for Distinguished Service in 2000, and the publication describing this work was recognized in 2002 by the Charles C. Shepard Science Award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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