Did Paul Offit Vote to Add a Vaccine to the Schedule That Benefited His Own Patent?
Reality - It's just more propaganda from Secretary RFK Jr.
Why do some folks think that Paul Offit voted to add a vaccine to the immunization schedule that benefited his own vaccine patent?
The usual suspects…
Did Paul Offit Vote to Add a Vaccine to the Schedule That Benefited His Own Patent?
In this case, the propaganda about Paul Offit is coming from the Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr!
RFK Jr claims that Paul Offit voted to add Rotashield, a rotavirus vaccine to the immune schedule, and then later sold the patent to his own rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, making $186 million.
Not surprisingly, none of that is true!
And that’s easy to see if you look at a timeline of the events he is talking about.
1998 - Rotashield approved by the FDA and added to the immunization schedule by ACIP
1998-2003 - voting member ACIP
2006 - RotaTeq FDA approved
2018-2027 - voting member of VRBPAC
But wait, there does seem to be some overlap of when the Rotashield vaccine was added to the schedule and Paul Offit was a voting member of ACIP!
Maybe, but the thing is, Paul Offit was not even at the ACIP meeting that added the Rotashield vaccine to the immunization schedule!
That’s easy to see if you simply take a look at the transcript of the June 1998 meeting when they voted to add Rotashield to the immunization schedule.
And also note that the discussions about adding the rotavirus vaccine to the immunization schedule had been going on for years, long before Paul Offit was added to the ACIP committee.
Offit was also always very clear that he was developing another rotavirus vaccine
It was never hidden.
Lastly, Paul Offit didn’t make $186 million from the rotavirus vaccine he helped to develop!
“He acknowledges that he got a "small percentage" of the $182 million Children's Hospital of Philadelphia received when it sold its interest in future royalties for the vaccine RotaTeq. (He won't give a precise amount, but says "it's like winning the lottery.")”
Dr. Paul Offit: Debunking the Vaccine-Autism Link
He made a small percentage of that, as the institution he worked for owned the great majority of the patent.
So basically, like most everything else RFK Jr and his disciples say, these claims about Paul Offit weren’t true.
References
Dr. Paul Offit: Debunking the Vaccine-Autism Link https://www.newsweek.com/dr-paul-offit-debunking-vaccine-autism-link-91933
RFK Jr. criticized CHOP vaccine expert Paul Offit in a Fox News interview. Here’s how he responded. https://www.inquirer.com/health/rfk-jr-paul-offit-philadelphia-chop-vaccines-20250613.html
The Irony of RFK Jr.’s Conflicts of Interest Gambit https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/the-irony-of-rfk-jrs-conflicts-of
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices June 24-28, 1998 meeting verbatim transcript. United States. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/76563
If I recall, CHOP received around $150 million for the patent after deduction of various fees.
10% is payable to the inventors of the vaccine, of which there were three individuals, so Offit received about $5 million.
I don’t know who the others were.
It strikes me that $5 million is reasonable recompense for researching and developing a vaccine over a decade, one which has saved tens, if not hundreds of thousands of children’s lives.
Hi,
I really appreciate the work you are doing.
But Please, Please, Please! - Do something about the layout and editing of your posts!
The voices keep changing from content to commentary to quotes to support requests with very little indication of the context, making it very difficult to read...