Over at Age of Autism today, financial whizz Mark Blaxill subjected Paul Offit’s finances to his usual searing intellect. I can’t quote from his post because its just to smart for me to understand!
Anyway, his conclusion has drawn the following response from Paul Offit in an email:
Just for the record: I no longer financially benefit from the sales of RotaTeq. My financial interests in that vaccine have been sold out by either The Wistar Institute, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or me. I will, however, continue to stand up for the science of vaccines because unfounded fears about vaccines have hurt children. That is why I do what I do and why I have always done it. And I will continue to closely follow the distribution of rotavirus vaccines because these vaccines have the potential to save as many as 2,000 children a day, which is why I joined the research team at Children’s Hospital.
Seems pretty clear to me 🙂
Thanks for getting this comment, Kev. You’ve probably saved me about 30minutes that it would take to find out the status of the licensing myself. I started to do this earlier, as Mr. Blaxill’s response to “Deadly Choices” was pretty obvious. But I decided to give myself a Christmas present: I stopped reading AoA for a while and, with that, so went this project.
Mr. Blaxill gives his colleagues way too much credit–and spends too much time doing it. I doubt that sales of Rotateq are in any way affected by their activities.
I wish he had included how much the frivolous law suits they have instigated against Dr. Offit cost his colleagues. Can’t have been cheap.