The unjustified abuse of Paul Offit
Dr Gordon is aggrieved
Over at Respectful Insolence, Science Blogger, Orac has been visited by Dr Jay Gordon in the comments section of his blog, Dr. Jay Gordon: No vaccines needed, just quit eating cheese and ice cream. Dr Gordon, you will remember, is a paediatrician to the children of the rich and famous, including Jenny McCarthy’s son Evan. He appeared with her on the Larry King Show when she tried to shout down Dr Tayloe of the American Association of Pediatrics. He appeared with her on the platform of the Green Our Vaccines demo which was actually an anti-vaccine campaign, as evidenced by the slogans on many of the banners. He enjoys being feted on a yahoo group devoted to Jenny McCarthy and her ideas. Recently he used this group to make disparaging remarks about Paul Offit, which reappeared in the comments section of Respectful Insolence
“From: Jay Gordon
Date: Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 7:44 PM
Subject: [JennyDCAutismRally] I’M TIRED OF THE DISRESPECT FOR DR PAUL OFFIT
To: JennyDCAutismRally@yahoogroups.com
Dr. Offit is a tireless advocate of vaccination and a respected medical authority.
I am tired of hearing people refer to Dr. Offit as a “shill” and a dishonest profiteer willing to lie repeatedly. I tired of hearing people on this list imply that he lacks integrity, hides his profits and is a disgustingly disingenuous man.
Actually, I’ve decided I’ll never tire of people say those things about Dr. Offit. Carry on!!!”
Dr Gordon appeared on Orac’s blog to complain that he was not anti-vaccine; that he was a good man and a good doctor and we should not be mean to him by countering his off beat ideas with hard science and evidence based medicine. His message can be summarized thus;
Don’t be mean to good people. They are only trying to help and what if they are right and you are wrong?
Well I have news for Dr Gordon. Asking for hard evidence is not being mean. And if we ask and you come back with the same old nonsense while still failing to provide any evidence, you will get laughed out of court. If you were a worried parent or even an ill-informed journalist we would probably give you more of our time and patience and try and explain things to you. But you are a doctor, a national media figure with a following amongst parents of autistic children. When giving health advice it is your job to check the facts and get it right. What are we to make of this, where Orac quotes you from an interview you recently gave to Cookie Magazine?
I think that the public health benefits to vaccinating are grossly overstated. I think that if we spent as much time telling people to breastfeed or to quit eating cheese and ice cream, we’d save more lives than we save with the polio vaccine.
I also happen to think that Dr Offit is good people. He is trying to help and doing a very good job with the rotavirus vaccine he helped to develop that is now saving lives. What if Dr Offit is right and Dr Gordon is wrong? Both have years of clinical experience. Dr Gordon somehow thinks his clinical experience entitles him to disregard the collective experience of his fellow pediatricians at the AAP. His clinical experience even trumps the evidence from clinical trials. Dr Gordon may be right to have such unbridled regard for his own professional judgement. But we have the right to a better justification than, “because I say so.” He may also be right to ask for a respectful hearing and for people not to be rude. In which case he ought to apologize to Dr Offit for his own rudeness in maligning him behind his back, in a forum where he had no right of reply.
Dr Offit is abused
Unfortunately this sort of behaviour, maligning people with whom you disagree instead of engaging in a respectful discussion or debate about the issues, seems to be a standard response from some of the more vocal purveyors of anti-vaccine propaganda linked to autism. David Kirby, writing on the Huffington Post, described Amanda Peet as
a well-meaning but grossly misinformed actress who is guided by a doctor who will likely make money from his own work helping to develop a childhood vaccine.
Amanda Peet was worried about vaccines. She did her research, not like that other “grossly misinformed actress,” Jenny McCarthy, who googled autism and clicked on an advert for quack autism treatments. Ms Peet asked her paediatrician brother-in-law. He arranged for her to speak with Dr Offit whose explanations eased her concerns. And what sort of a slur is that supposed to be on Dr Offit? He gets paid for helping to develop a life saving vaccine and of course that equals conflict of interest. Is David Kirby conflicted because of his close ties to advocacy groups like Generation Rescue? Should we disregard the message he brought on his recent visit to London because that trip was sponsored by anti-vaccine organizations? Or should we question him on the strength of his argument and his knowledge?
Jay Gordon agreed with Kirby on Orac’s blog and held up an execrable piece of journalism that has been roundly condemned by my fellow bloggers Orac, Kev and Autism Newsbeat as evidence.
I would find it easier to take Dr Gordon seriously if he was at least consistent and publicly condemned the slurs and character assassinations that are regular repeated about good people like Dr Offit. I expect he knows JB Handley (known as “Brad” to his friends). They would have met up at the Green Our Vaccines rally. Brad helped to set up the organization, Generation Rescue, that sponsored the rally and has recently added Jenny McCarthy to its board. Generation Rescue always had money for full page adverts in national newspapers. Now that Jenny and boyfriend Jim Carrey are attracting stars like Britney Spears to Generation Rescue fundraisers they are branching out and adding to their web presence. Brad already has a track record for cybersquatting but the latest antic by Generation Rescue is both puerile and malicious.
They have set up a website, PaulOffit.com that traduces the man’s motives and his reputation. Perhaps not enough people were reading Brad’s rants against Offit on his Age of Autism website, the anti-vax alternative to the Autism Hub. I wonder how long a similar site, BradHandley.com would stay up before Handley’s lawyers intervened. Kev was almost forced to stop blogging with Left Brain Right Brain when threatened by the long arm of Brad Handley’s legal department. The “offending” material has now been removed and Kev had to apologise. That’s the way to settle an argument about autism. Use your wealth to try and bankrupt a fellow parent who disagrees with you.
Still, if all the rumours are true and Paul Offit is indeed a multimillionaire from the proceeds of his “vaccineering” and has the power and money of the drug companies at his disposal, perhaps he will put it to good use and sue the pants off his detractors. Somebody ought to.
Footnote
Friends have suggested that my tone in this post is angrier than usual. I apologize for the tone but I am angry with journalists who curry favour with anti vaccine groups and distort the evidence to suit their purpose. I am even more angry with doctors who play up the risks of vaccines and downplay the risks of vaccine preventable diseases.
According to The Measles Initiative in 2000 757,000 children died from measles. A mass vaccination campaign has reduced that figure to 242,000 children. In Africa there has been a 90% reduction in deaths from measles but there is still a lot to do in parts of Asia.
According to the CDC
Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe acute gastroenteritis among infants and young children, accounting for an estimated 527,000 deaths among children aged <5 years worldwide in 2004 (1,2). In the United States, rotavirus causes few deaths (20–60) each year, but remains a substantial cause of morbidity among children, resulting in approximately 55,000–70,000 hospitalizations, 205,000–272,000 emergency department (ED) visits, and 410,000 physician office visits (3). In the continental United States, rotavirus activity follows a distinct winter-spring seasonal pattern (4). In winter months, approximately 50% of hospitalizations and ED visits and 30% of outpatient visits for acute gastroenteritis among U.S. children aged <3 years are caused by rotavirus (5).
Dr Offit’s vaccine, Rotateq, is already having an impact on those figures and has the potential to prevent a lot of those estimated 527,000 deaths among children aged <5 years worldwide. The hate campaign against him does make me very angry and on second thoughts I do not apologize for the tone of this post. According to Aristotle,
”Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not easy.”
