Skip to content
Home » Paul Offit » Page 2

Paul Offit

pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine

Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine – FDA approves emergency use authorization

On 10 December 2020, the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was reviewed by the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) in advance of an emergency use authorization (EUA). Unless you were avoiding the internet (and hence, you wouldn’t be reading this), you would know that the review went well, and VRBPAC “approved” the vaccine. On the evening of 11 December, the FDA gave approval for the EUA, the first COVID-19 vaccine available in the USA.

This article will quickly review the major points about the VRBPAC discussion, a review of some of the data, and finally a summary of what we know and don’t know about the Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. 

Read More »Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine – FDA approves emergency use authorization

Dr. Jim Meehan

Dr. Jim Meehan is another anti-vaccine physician who lacks credibility

This article about Dr. Jim Meehan was written by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco, CA), who is a frequent contributor to this and many other blogs, providing in-depth, and intellectually stimulating, articles about vaccines, medical issues, social policy, and the law.

Professor Reiss writes extensively in law journals about the social and legal policies of vaccination. Additionally, Reiss is also a member of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines, a parent-led organization that supports and advocates for on-time vaccination and the reduction of vaccine-preventable disease. She is also a member of the Vaccines Working Group on Ethics and Policy.

An anti-vaccine doctor from Oklahoma, Dr. Jim Meehan, wrote an online post about why he would no longer vaccinate his children. It’s pretty clear that his post is not so much a discussion of his own children (most of whom are adults) as an attempt to deter other parents from protecting their children from preventable diseases. His post is basically a set of claims trying to convince parents that vaccinating is very dangerous.

His claims are nothing new – they are strictly out of the anti-vaccine playbook. But the post has received some attention in the anti-vaccine world and was shared several thousand times, likely because many people treat an MD as an authority on the subject. So I decided to take a few minutes to explain why his claims are not good reasons to reject expert opinion and not protect children from disease.

Since then, Dr. Jim Meehan has become one of the go-to anti-vaccine doctors who is trotted out to dismiss the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Furthermore, he has become a COVID-19 denier, testifying against the use of face masks and claiming that the disease isn’t dangerous. Furthermore, Meehan was forced to settle a libel suit filed by Dr. Eve Switzer.

Dr. Meehan’s claims fall into several categories (which will be discussed individually below):

  1. The diseases we vaccinate against are not dangerous, and it’s okay, even good, to encounter them naturally.
  2. Vaccines have toxic ingredients.
  3. Vaccines are dangerous to children.
  4. The science behind vaccines is corrupt because the pharmaceutical industry controls it and then corrupts it.
  5. We should listen to him because he is a doctor and knows what he is talking about.

Note: Dr. Jim Meehan’s post doesn’t present these claims in that order. I have changed the order because I want to address the claims in a logical order, that is, first his claims about vaccine safety, then the conspiracy theory that underlies them, and finally, his appeal to authority. Read More »Dr. Jim Meehan is another anti-vaccine physician who lacks credibility

coronavirus vaccine warp speed

Coronavirus vaccine warp speed – Scotty screaming at Captain Bonespurs

The coronavirus vaccine warp speed project from old Bonespurs, aka President Trump, is causing Scotty to yell, “Aye, the haggis is in the fire now for sure.” Operation Warp Speed is moving ahead at full power with not a single Starfleet Officer of note on board.

Not on board with the Star Trek metaphors?

Well, the coronavirus vaccine warp speed operation is President Bonespurs’, I mean Trump’s, new task force that will bring us a new vaccine in a matter of months. That’s not going to happen in any case, especially when the President Bonespurs, OK, Trump, didn’t add any of the country’s top vaccine researchers to the task force. 

Instead, he opted for industry hacks who have made some curious choices on the top vaccine candidates to support. Let’s take a look at the coronavirus vaccine warp speed directive.Read More »Coronavirus vaccine warp speed – Scotty screaming at Captain Bonespurs

coronavirus vaccines

Coronavirus vaccines – massive list of vaccine candidates for COVID-19

Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the interest in coronavirus vaccines has been quite high (to say the least). I have been keeping an updated list of vaccine candidates in another article, but it was becoming so cumbersome to update, and I wanted to make information clearer to read, I decided to completely rewrite it.

This article about coronavirus vaccines will also be regularly updated, so stay tuned.Read More »Coronavirus vaccines – massive list of vaccine candidates for COVID-19

COVID-19 vaccine

COVID-19 vaccine research for coronavirus – updated 26 March 2020

This article about COVID-19 vaccine research has been completely updated and can be found here. The comments section for this article has been closed.

Because the development of a potential COVID-19 vaccine is of massive interest currently, and because I have a passion for vaccine research and development, this article will a guide for vaccines involved with the coronavirus. It will be updated regularly, and I will post to social media when it is updated.

Right now, there are several COVID-19 vaccine candidates being developed by large and small pharmaceutical companies. Of course, social media will make it sound like they are all just around the corner, and they will all work.

It doesn’t work that way, so let me keep you updated with this guide to COVID-19 vaccine research and development.Read More »COVID-19 vaccine research for coronavirus – updated 26 March 2020

vaccine policy

Improving Vaccine Policy Making: A Dose of Reality – Dorit R Reiss and Paul A Offit

This post is a preprint of an article to be published in Vaccine entitled “Improving Vaccine Policy Making: A Dose of Reality.” The authors are Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Ph.D., Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco, CA), and Paul A. Offit, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Disease, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, The Perelman School at the University of Pennsylvania.

This article’s full citation is:

Reiss DR, Offit PA. Improving Vaccine Policy Making: A Dose of Reality. Vaccine. 2020 February 5. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.01.036.

This preprint (see Note 1) is being published here, with permission from Professors Reiss and Offit, as a public service because it is an important part of the discussion on vaccine policy. Read More »Improving Vaccine Policy Making: A Dose of Reality – Dorit R Reiss and Paul A Offit

TETYANA OBUKHANYCH

Tetyana Obukhanych – another anti-vaccine appeal to false authority

The old Skeptical Raptor took a bit of a break to recharge their batteries to tackle all of the pseudoscience that will be coming out in 2020. In lieu of new content, I will be republishing the top 10 most read articles on this blog during 2019. Here’s number 1 – the queen of the false authority of the anti-vaxxers – Tetyana Obukhanych. 

One of their favorite pseudoscientists of the anti-vaccine religion is Tetyana Obukhanych, someone who appears to have great credentials. Unfortunately, once you dig below the surface of her claims, there is no credible evidence in support. 

One of the most irritating problems I have with the anti-vaccine movement is their over-reliance on false authorities – they overrate publications (often in worthless predatory journals) or commentary from someone who appears to have all of the credentials to be a part of the discussion on vaccines, but really isn’t close to being a real vaccine scientist.

Nevertheless, credentials don’t matter – an “authority” on vaccines must follow the evidence that vaccines are safe and effective unless those “authorities” can provide robust, peer-reviewed, published evidence that vaccines aren’t. Someone like Tetyana Obukhanych almost never does.

For example, Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic, two researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia, have, for all intents and purposes, sterling credentials in medicine and science. However, they publish nonsense research (usually filled with the weakest of epidemiology trying to show a population-level correlation between vaccines and adverse events) in low ranked scientific journals.

Following in the footsteps of Shaw, Tomljenovic, James Lyons-Weiler, and Christopher Exley, let’s take a look at the background and education of the anti-vaccine hero, Tetyana Obukhanych.Read More »Tetyana Obukhanych – another anti-vaccine appeal to false authority

anti-vaccine conspiracies

Anti vaccine conspiracies – the Skeptical Raptor is Paul Offit delusion

Here we go with another set of anti-vaccine conspiracies from crackpots running a vaccine denier website. Once again, the old feathered dinosaur (modern or Cretaceous) is part of a broad conspiracy that includes Paul Offit, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, UC Hastings College of Law, and Kaiser Permanente. Because anti-vaccine conspiracies are only more hilarious when they get more complicated.

Because I am amused by all of this, I must, according to the rule of scientific skepticism, snarkily debunk it. Now, science isn’t good at “proving the negative,” like trying to “prove” that I am not, nor have ever been, Paul Offit. On the other hand, I cannot prove that I am not Barack Obama. Or Tom Brady. Or Elvis. You just never know.Read More »Anti vaccine conspiracies – the Skeptical Raptor is Paul Offit delusion

robert sears vaccine

Dr. Robert Sears vaccine info misleads parents about measles

This article about Dr. Robert Sears and his vaccine beliefs is by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco, CA), who is a frequent contributor to this and many other blogs, providing in-depth, and intellectually stimulating, articles about vaccines, medical issues, social policy, and the law. 

Professor Reiss writes extensively in law journals about the social and legal policies of vaccination. Additionally, Reiss is also a member of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines, a parent-led organization that supports and advocates for on-time vaccination and the reduction of vaccine-preventable diseases.

Dr. Robert Sears’ vaccine info is false and misleading. On January 16, 2015, Sears, who refers to himself as Dr. Bob, is a California pediatrician and author of a controversial book on vaccines (critiqued here, pdf, or here by the fine folks at Science-Based Medicine).

He wrote in his Dr. Bob’s Daily and published on his Facebook page that measles is only rarely fatal in developed countries and that serious complications are rare. (In the likely event that Dr. Sears decides to delete his misleading comments, it’s archived here permanently.) 

And they were irresponsible. In a way that can put people – including children, including his patients – at serious risk. This is not the first time Dr. Bob Sears has made inaccurate claims about a vaccine-preventable disease, but in the background of the current measles outbreaks, the risk from his behavior is more imminent and more obvious. It is appropriate to react.

Read More »Dr. Robert Sears vaccine info misleads parents about measles