The Dangers of Anti-Vaccine Movement

Q&A from Time.com with Dr. Paul Offit provides some perhaps much-needed perspective on this entire vaccines issue.


Childhood inoculations protect us against deadly infectious diseases like measles, whooping cough and polio. But they are also the source of near constant conflict — most recently in the Feb. 22 Supreme Court decision which ruled in favor of a vaccine manufacturer over the family of a disabled girl. In recent years, some parents have begun to refuse vaccination for their children, influenced by fringe activists who believe it causes autism, brain damage and other ailments. Dr. Paul Offit, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, has seen the consequences: preventable childhood deaths, community outbreaks of outdated diseases and misinformed, angry parents. In conversation with TIME and in his recent book, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, Offit describes the origins of our squeamishness with inoculation and why we should fight against it.

Huffington Post: The Real Health Care Scare

In all of the white-hot vitriol being spewed over a national health care plan, very little attention is being directed at the pharmaceutical companies and the potential conflicts of interest involving the doctors doing their research. In America, we are generally of the belief that by the time a drug or vaccine has made it into the marketplace there has been enough testing conducted by the FDA and objective physicians and researchers that we can trust its safety. Frequently, we are wrong.
The internecine relationships between drug companies and researchers and their institutions deserve constant scrutiny. As an example, the highest-profile proponent of vaccines like the MMR for children, Dr. Paul Offit has been made a wealthy man by Merck, the pharmaceutical giant that manufactures MMR. Offit did not conduct the research on the MMR (Measles-Mumps-Rubella) vaccine but sold a patent to Merck for a vaccine against rotavirus, which causes diarrhea in children.
Offit is not known to be in the midst of a Merck revenue stream, his opinion can hardly be considered unbiased when speaking about the company's MMR product. None of this is ever disclosed when the media frequently run to interview Offit as a vaccine expert on MMR. In fact, during a recent broadcast on NBC Dateline, "A Dose of Controversy," it was the first time Offit was asked in an interview about the millions he had earned on his rotavirus vaccine royalty. However, no mention was made of Merck by either NBC's Matt Lauer or Offit.

And, click here to read a piece from Reuters on the doctor's failure to disclose this relationship.