Ask anti-vaxxers which doctor they hate the most, and their most likely answer would be Philadelphia pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit.
Head of the infectious diseases division at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Offit is perhaps the most-quoted advocate for childhood vaccines in the United States, especially in recent weeks as measles cases have multiplied around the country.
Offit co-invented a widely used rotavirus vaccine, wrote a book about how vaccines don’t cause autism, and started a vaccine information center at the hospital.
But an online search of his name yields much more than just quotes in news reports. He is vilified all over the Internet by anti-vaccine activists.
For example, he’s called a “shill for the vaccine industry” by Joseph Mercola, an alternative medicine doctor who sells dietary supplements on his popular website Mercola.com. Age of Autism, a group claiming vaccines cause autism, attacks him in numerous online posts. So does Suzanne Humphries, a doctor who runs the anti-vax International Council on Vaccination.
“It is my understanding that Paul Offit is making sure that views such as those that I have, should not be heard,” Humphries wrote in a recent email to the Washington Examiner.
In an interview with the Examiner, Offit responds to the attacks and explains how he became interested in infectious diseases in the first place. A lightly edited transcript of the conversation follows:
Washington Examiner: Every leading medical expert agrees with your pro-vaccine stance. So why do you think you’ve become anti-vaxxers’ main target?
Offit: I think I probably was in the media earlier than other doctors who stood up [for vaccines]. We created our vaccine education center in 2000, right around the time the MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] vaccine had come under target. I guess I was an early spokesperson. I had written books about this and I took a definitive stance that vaccines don’t cause autism.
I think from their standpoint I’m the perfect confluence of evil or whatever, because I’m the co-inventor of a vaccine and I had a patent on a vaccine — even though my hospital owns me, so they technically own the patent. But in their minds I’ve made money off this, so I’m evil. I would argue that making a vaccine is good thing, but they see this as an unhealthy collaboration between doctors and pharmaceutical companies and the government.
Examiner: Are vaccines usually developed in hospitals by doctors like you?
Offit: “You don’t see vaccines typically developed in hospitals. I don’t think I can count on three fingers the number of times. Typically the research is done by industry. [But] I say to people all the time, what should I have done, what should have been done differently? We wanted children’s lives to be saved. I know I’ve done the right thing.
Examiner: What kinds of threats have you received?
Offit: I get hate mail and the usual Nazi and God references. I’ve had a couple death threats, three to be exact. I don’t believe them. I think they do it to scare me, I think they do it get me to stop. I don’t like to be bullied. If anything, that makes me do the opposite. What really upset me — what gave me pause and I really did consider stopping — is when my children were threatened. I sat down with my wife and said I’ll stop doing this if you want, but she was brave.
Examiner: Any death threats recently?
Offit: I haven’t had them lately — I guess I’m losing my touch.
Examiner: What sparked your interest in infectious diseases?
Offit: I was in a polio ward when I was 5 and that Image never left me. I was in the hospital for a couple months [for club foot] and that was back in the days when they had like one visiting hour a week and I was in a room with children who had polio. I think I saw them as something that needed to be protected.
Examiner: Critics often bring up your profit from drug makers. You hold a $1.5 million research chair at Children’s Hospital, funded by Merck and the patent on the rotavirus vaccine. How do you defend yourself against claims that your medical advice is influenced by drug companies?
Offit: I make as much money off the sale of rotavirus as you do — I’m owned by my hospital.
Examiner: But didn’t you make money off the initial sale of the vaccine?
Offit: Initially I did. I’m sorry if that offends people. The work from doing the research was never financial. It was like winning the lottery, it was nothing I ever really thought about. You never think you’re going to make a vaccine, you keep plugging away and hope it goes somewhere.
Examiner: In your opinion, what will it take to quell the anti-vaccine movement?
Offit: I think the anti-vax movement was born of the smallpox vaccine in the 1800s, because people were mandated to get it. I think if you asked the anti-vax people what would make them stop, I think they would say make vaccines voluntary.
Examiner: But aren’t vaccines essentially voluntary today because nearly every state offers exemptions?
Offit: It’s harder because you do have to do something. It’s a little work. You have to get a form and check a box, [but] if you’re motivated you can get out of vaccines.
Examiner: Do you think the recent measles outbreak will affect public opinion?
Offit: Yes, I think this year’s outbreak has been a tipping point. Look at all the legislation that’s been introduced [to limit exemptions]. People don’t like it that other people are making decision not just for their own children, but for other people’s children. When I was in 10th grade, there was boy who had leukemia. I can’t imagine any of our parents sending us in unvaccinated.
All you have on your side is reason and data, so you try to frame the reason and data in a compelling way. But with all the education we’ve tried to do over the years, nothing educates like the diseases themselves.
Examiner: Do you have a position on whether the government should mandate vaccines? Or should vaccine rates be improved just by educating parents?
Offit: I think mandates have played a role and will continue to play a role. When you look at when we got measles vaccinations up it was because we finally enforced school mandates. But then there was pushback from people … they see this as a matter of an individuals’ rights, but I disagree.
Examiner: You’ve been sued, unsuccessfully, by leading anti-vax advocate Barbara Loe Fisher. What do you think of her?
Offit: The thing about Barbara I find so contradictory is she argues parents should be informed, but if they go to her website, they’ll be informed about all the things vaccines don’t cause. It’s just so duplicitous to on the one hand say I think parents should be informed and one the other hand engineer a massive marketing campaign to misinform them. I think she’s a bad player. She believes her son received the pertussis vaccine and received permanent brain damage. I believe she believes it, I don’t think she’s lying. But she was wrong and she continues to convince other people that she was right.
Do I think parents who have caused an erosion of herd immunity and allowed people to suffer months unnecessarily, do I think they should be demonized? You bet I do, because they have put their own children at risk and they put other people at risk. Parents don’t own their children — they have a certain responsibility to their children.
Examiner: How do you have time to practice medicine and speak so frequently to the press?
Offit: I get up early, I’m rarely asleep after 4 a.m.
Examiner: So you’re a superhuman who doesn’t need sleep?
Offit: I also go to bed to early, I’m still human. I’m asleep after 9:30 p.m. I enjoy the work I do. My retirement plan is being dragged out of my office feet first. I plan to do this as long as I can still think straight.
