Paul Offit
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"Paul A. Offit" is an United States/American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that has been credited with saving hundreds of lives every day. Offit is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He has been a member of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Offit is a Board Member of Every Child By Two and a Founding Board Member of the Autism Science Foundation (ASF).

Offit has published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety, and is the author or co-author of books on vaccines, vaccination, and antibiotics. He is one of the most public faces of the scientific consensus that vaccines have no association with autism, and has, as a result, attracted controversy and a substantial volume of hate mail and occasional death threats, but also support for his position.

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The problem was, the earlier vaccines didn't cause long-lasting immunity, ... Frequent boosting was required.

What makes you vulnerable is the virulence, the dangerousness, of the virus, and the 1918 virus was one dangerous virus, ... Avian flu, too - when it infects, it kills. That's why people are scared, and reasonably so.

The problem with the original vaccine is when given to kids over 7, it caused some pretty severe reactions.

Unsurprisingly, politicians spout sound bites about their unwillingness to remove 'consumer protections' from the equation, but they have it all wrong, ... The only real way to 'protect' consumers is to keep them alive. We must move fast and we must move now. The clock is ticking.

God knows we need a vaccine against traveler's diarrhea. This approach is very straightforward and seems to work.

Rotavirus basically affects everybody by the time they are 5. If we took blood samples of all people, it would be rare to find someone who has not had rotavirus.

The question becomes, which is the conservative and which is the radical decision? I think the more radical choice, frankly, is not to give the vaccine.

The virus is clearly not highly contagious among mammals, and I don't think it's going to become so.

Even if bird flu isn't the culprit, there almost certainly will be a disastrous pandemic of some sort in the next 20 years, ... And if we continue on our present course, the U.S. will not be prepared to handle it.