Paul Offit Unwittingly Exposes Scientific Fraud of FDA’s Vaccine Licensure

Introduction

Many parents today are naturally concerned about the number of vaccine doses their children are exposed to by following the schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To many parents, it makes sense to avoid vaccinating their children unnecessarily, and to this end a blood test can be done to determine an antibody titer, or the level of antibodies in the blood. If a child already has a protective antibody titer, indicating immunity to a given infectious disease, then there would be no reason for the child to undergo the risks associated with vaccinating against that disease.

To persuade parents that this is wrong thinking, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has published a video in which Dr. Paul Offit argues that such blood tests are of little practical use, and that the best thing for parents to do is just to get their children all of the vaccinations strictly according to the CDC’s schedule.

Offit’s argument, however, is fallacious.

Moreover, the nature of his argument reveals how advocates of existing public vaccine policy rely on deception in order to persuade the public to comply with the wishes of the bureaucrats and technocrats who determine that policy.

In fact, properly understood in its context, Offit’s argument undercuts the case for public vaccine policy inasmuch as it highlights how, in order to get vaccine products to the market, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) colludes with the pharmaceutical industry in what is arguably scientific fraud.

Offit’s Argument

In the video, Paul Offit introduces himself as coming from the so-called “Vaccine Education Center” at the CHOP. Then he acknowledges parents’ concern about unnecessary vaccinations:

One thing that parents worry about, or wonder about is, do I really need a vaccine if I’ve already had one or two doses? Do I really need to finish out the schedule, for example? Or maybe I’ve already been exposed to a virus or bacteria, so I don’t really need to even get vaccines at all.

So instead, how about if I just have my blood tested to see whether or not I have a protective immune response already against that particular virus or bacteria.

But, Offit argues, this is “not as easily done as you would think” because antibody titers are not necessarily indicative of immunity.

He names the hepatitis B virus and the Haemohilus influenzae type B bacterium as examples of pathogens for which a certain quantity of antibodies in the blood is equivalent to immunity.

This is not the case, however, for other pathogens, including the measles virus; rotavirus; and the pertussis bacterium, which causes whooping cough.

With measles, having a certain antibody titer does correlate with immunity, but a lack of antibodies isn’t necessarily indicative of a lack of immunity. In Offit’s words (bold emphasis added):

However, there was an outbreak of measles in the late 1980s, early 1990s that swept through the United States that caused more than 50,000 hospitalizations and caused about 120, children mostly, to die from measles.

When people looked back at that outbreak, you found that there were many people who had been vaccinated, but who didn’t have antibodies against measles who were still protected. The reason they were still protected is they had something called memory cells. Memory immunological cells, like B- and T-cells, which then when they were exposed to the virus became activated, differentiated, made antibodies, which then protected them. So even though they didn’t have circulating antibodies in their bloodstream, they still have these memory cells in their immune system that could then respond when they were exposed. So, if you looked at those people and saw they didn’t have antibodies, you would have falsely concluded they weren’t protected when they were.

In short, just because someone doesn’t have a protective level of antibodies doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t immune. One can still be immune to a disease due to what is known as cell-mediated immunity, which is a different branch of the immune system from humoral, or antibody, immunity.

Conversely, Offit continues (bold emphasis added):

Sometimes you can have antibodies in your bloodstream and not be protected.

So, for example rotavirus or pertussis bacteria affect really just the mucosal surfaces. So, rotaviruses just infect the lining of the small intestine. Pertussis or whooping cough infects sort of the lining of the trachea or windpipe and the lungs. That virus and that bacteria don’t really spread into the bloodstream and cause a systemic infection. They’re so-called mucosal infections. So when you look at immunity in the bloodstream, that doesn’t necessarily predict whether or not there’s going to be adequate immunity at that mucosal surface.

In short, just because someone has a high antibody titer doesn’t mean that they are immune. Cell-mediated immunity and mucosal immunity—or both—may also—or instead—be required to provide adequate protection against disease.

Offit summarizes by saying that “titers are difficult” and “not a perfect predictor” of immunity, concluding that “the best way of knowing that you’re protected is to get the vaccines that are recommended at the time they are recommended.”

Thus, Offit dismisses the idea of trying to avoid vaccination with a blood test as practically useless while characterizing vaccination as the best guarantee of immunity.

But this argument is neither logically valid nor honest.