Patent Nonsense
Last month Dr Paul Offit, the chief of Infectious Diseases and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was invited to throw out the first ball at a major league baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Arizona Diamond Backs. Moreover, he was invited as a representative of the Immunization Coalitions of South Eastern Pennsylvania. The Philllies were honouring Dr Offit and lending themselves to the promotion of the vaccine program.
Dr Offit is with Phillie Phanatic, the team mascot. Perhaps this is what Jenny McCarthy meant with her “Green Our Vaccines” campaign. Dr Offit brought along his own mascot, Bee Diddy, from the Bucks County Immunization Coalition. Bee is no stranger to Citizens Bank Park, the home of the Phillies. Here s/he is last year promoting adult vaccination awareness at one of their games.
It is good to know that there are organizations actively promoting immunization in the US and that they have the support of mainstream society. The anti-vaccine groups that make so much noise in and around the autism community are very much in the minority. They ought to be an insignificant minority. After all there is plenty of evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines and the science points against any connection between vaccines and autism. Even the vaccine court, which is predisposed to support claims for vaccine injury, has thrown out recent test cases for an autism vaccine connection because the evidence was overwhelmingly against it. One special master even said that the parents had been seriously misled by their physicians.
However, with the help of some well placed political representatives, celebrity endorsements and cheerleaders in the media, they have been an effective lobby. They persuaded government that they had legitmate concerns and millions of research dollars where diverted into investigating the putative link between vaccines and autism. Their representatives have been invited to participate in governmernt committees and to contribute to the design of part of the research program.
This means that their pronouncements are often widely disseminated. Take a recent press release from the grandly named National Autism Alliance. It was distributed by the PRNewswire service and was taken up by Reuters.
Bizarrely entitled, Offit’s Failure To Disclose Financial Interests on Dateline Jeopardizes Swine Flu Vaccine, its thinly diguised message is that anyone with a connection to the vaccine industry has to be a pharma shill and hence cannot be trusted. These people are outraged because Dr Offit is one of their fiercest critics. The author of Autism’s False Prophets, a doctor who has devoted his life to the welfare of childen and speaking up for the safety and efficacy of vaccines committed the ultimate sin in their eyes. Not only does he defend vaccines, he invented a vaccine against the rotavirus and received a substantial financial reward when the Children’s hospital of Pennsylvania sold the patent rights for 182 million dollars.
NAA believes that Dr Offit’s share was between 29 and 50 million dollars and that this somehow compromises his independence. Seriously, if I had even one million dollars that would not compromise my independence. IT WOULD GUARANTEE MY INDEPENDENCE. And how does Dr Offit use his financial independence? He does what he always does and turns up for work at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia every day. He was not in it for money when he went into medicine. He was not in it for the money when he spent 20 years developing a vaccine. He is not in it for the money now. He is in it for the children and I say he deserves every penny he gets.
As it happens, Dr Offit made around 5 million dollars for his 20 years of work on the Rotateq vaccine. Not that it is anybody’s business but his own. But the ridiculous amounts cited by the anti-vaccine lobby were beginning to take on the power of an urban myth.
Meanwhile back to baseball. Even at five million dollars Dr Offit is not the most expensive pitcher to step out for the Phillies. Starting pitcher Cole Hamels started his 2009 season by signing a 3-year, $20.5 million deal with the Phillies.
Blog reactions to NAA’s press release.
Left Brain Right Brain
Autism News Beat
Confutata
Countering Age of Autism
