Sigma: 2019-09-10

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The Vaccine Wars

Dr. Paul Offit

September 10, 2019 at 7:30 P.M. at the Virginia Air and Space Center in downtown Hampton, Virginia

Abstract

Vaccines are a victim of their own success. As a consequence, outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases are a yearly occurrence. Measles, which was eliminated from the United States in 2000, has now come roaring back, with children hospitalized in New York City, Detroit, and Baltimore. Dr. Offit will discuss the anti-vaccine movement from its inception to the present and offer suggestions on how we can best convince parents to do the right thing for their children.

Speaker

Paul A. Offit, MD is the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as well as the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and a Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recipient of many awards including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Disease Society of America, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Offit has published more than 160 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC; for this achievement Dr. Offit was honored by Bill and Melinda Gates during the launch of their Foundation’s Living Proof Project for global health. Offit is also the author of eight medical narratives including Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All (2011), which was selected by Kirkus Reviews and Booklist as one of the best non-fiction books of the year, and Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine (2013), which won the Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking from the Center for Skeptical Inquiry and was selected by National Public Radio as one of the best books of 2013.

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