CHOP Doc: Don't Let Fear Get in the Way of Vaccinations

Paul A. Offit, M.D., didn’t mince words when he spoke to a crowd at Holy Redeemer Hospital yesterday.

His message was clear—get yourself and your child vaccinated.

Offit, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, addressed and debunked myths about vaccinations to a crowd of about 30 people, many of whom were parents and physicians.

Offit said emphatically that vaccines don’t cause diseases like Alzheimer’s or autism. With regard to autism, Offit said there have been 14 studies on three continents involving over 100,000 people—the studies consistently show that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

He added that the doctor who first proposed the idea in 1998 has since been disgraced. He also pinpointed, to the day, when vaccines first started to be vilified (see the video).

Offit said not getting vaccinated is tantamount to selfishness.

“When you choose not to get a vaccine, you make the choice for others,” he said.

According to Offit, the rare cases in which a patient shows symptoms of a disease after receiving a vaccine are easily explained—and he gave two examples.

“The Hepatits B vaccine is recommended for adolescents and young adults, (and) that’s when they first get symptoms of multiple sclerosis, and so there were people who got the vaccine and had developed symptoms of multiple sclerosis,” Offit said. “Could the vaccine have done it? Study after study showed that, no, it didn’t do it.”

And his second example involved his wife, who is a pediatrician.

“She’s pulling the vaccine up into a syringe. While she’s pulling that vaccine up into a syringe, the child has a seizure, and then goes on to have a permanent seizure disorder—epilepsy,” he said. “The mother had had a history of seizures. If my wife had given that vaccine five minutes earlier, there was no amount of statistical data in the world that would have convinced that mother of anything other than ‘That vaccine called epilepsy.’”

Why is there a movement against vaccines?

Fear, Offit said.

“Anecdotes are very emotional—and we’re wired to be scared,” he said.

Offit is the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine RotaTeq that has been credited with saving hundreds of lives every day. His most recent book, “How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All,” addresses the relevance of immunizations in modern-day America.