Paul A. Offit > Quotes

“History is the error we are forever correcting.” —Anthony Marra, The Tsar of Love and Techno”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“On January 18, 1897, Indiana state representative Taylor I. Record argued in favor of changing the value of pi. Pi, which can be rounded to 3.14159, is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Tyler believed that the number was inconveniently long; in House Bill 246, he asked that it be rounded up to 3.2. The bill passed the House but was defeated in the Senate when the chairman of Purdue University’s math department successfully pleaded that it would make Indiana a national laughingstock. The value of pi in Indiana remains the same as in every other state.”
― Paul A. Offit, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine

“Barbara Loe Fisher failed to note that many scientists before Wakefield had published papers proving the rare tragic consequences of vaccines without risking their career—for example, William Sawyer, who showed that a yellow fever vaccine had been contaminated with hepatitis B virus; Neil Nathanson, who showed that a polio vaccine wasn’t properly inactivated, causing children to become paralyzed and die; and Trudy Murphy, who showed that an early rotavirus vaccine caused intestinal blockage, killing one child. Scientists and public health officials didn’t marginalize Wakefield because he had challenged the belief that vaccines are absolutely safe; they did it because he was wrong—clearly and inescapably wrong.”
― Paul A. Offit, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

“(“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little,” wrote Mark Twain, “it’s that they know so many things that ain’t so.”)”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves, but it does not follow that they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children.”
― Paul A. Offit, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

“Any group that allows children to die unnecessarily is sinister. And if these groups invoked the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster instead of God, their children would likely be put in foster care and their adults in an institution. But because they claim to act in the name of God, public officials often turn a blind eye. Another”
― Paul A. Offit, Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine

“While Galileo was a rebel, not all rebels are Galileo”—”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“Merck first distributed the Moraten strain in 1968. Since then, it has been the only measles vaccine used in the United States. Between 1968 and 2006, hundreds of millions of doses have been given. As a result, the number of people infected every year with measles in the United States has decreased from four million to fewer than fifty. Worldwide, the number of people killed by measles every year has decreased from eight million to about five hundred thousand. Measles vaccines save more than seven million lives a year. And the descendants of Kimber Farms’s original flock of chickens, still maintained on the grounds of Merck, are used to make vaccines today.”
― Paul A. Offit, Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases

“Mice lie and monkeys exaggerate,” says University of Pennsylvania vaccine researcher David Weiner.”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“IN 1925, MADISON GRANT’S The Passing of the Great Race was translated into German where it was read by a disgruntled corporal who had recently been sent to prison for his part in a riot against the government in Bavaria: Adolf Hitler. After reading the book, the 36-year-old revolutionary sent a fan letter to Grant: “This book is my Bible,” he wrote. During his nine months in prison, Hitler had read several books by American eugenicists, calling his prison stay “his university.” Hitler would soon launch a national movement that would forever damn the field of eugenics to the lower reaches of hell. But, despite popular belief, what was about to happen in Germany didn’t start on a rallying stand in Munich; it started in a law office in New York City.”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“On January 1, 2004, Denmark introduced legislation to restrict trans fats to no more than 2 percent of the total fat in any food. Consumption of trans fats fell from 4.5 grams a day per person in 1975 to 2.2 grams in 1993 to 1.5 grams in 1995 to almost 0 grams by 2005. By 2010, the incidence of heart disease and related deaths in Denmark had dropped 60 percent.”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“Almost two years after the outbreak in Philadelphia subsides, CDC investigators submit their final report. The Faith Tabernacle Congregation and the First-Century Gospel Church were at the center of an outbreak in Philadelphia that affected more than 1,400 people. Among church members, 486 people were infected and six were killed by measles. Among non-church members, 938 people were infected and three were killed. All nine fatalities were children. Because they hadn’t been vaccinated, the attack rate among church members was a thousand times higher than that in the surrounding community.”
― Paul A. Offit, Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine

“Clearly the use of a vaccine in the present does not cause the one who is immunized to share in the immoral intention or action of those who carried out the abortion in the past. Human history is filled with injustice. Acts of wrongdoing in the past regularly rebound to the benefit of descendents who had no hand in the original crimes. It would be a high standard indeed if we were to require all benefits that we receive in the present to be completely free of every immorality in the past.”
― Paul A. Offit, Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases

“On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn’t. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer.”
― Paul A. Offit M.D., Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine

“Today, however, anti-vaccine activists go out of their way to claim that they are not anti-vaccine; they’re pro-vaccine. They just want vaccines to be safer. This is a much softer, less radical, more tolerable message, allowing them greater access to the media. However, because anti-vaccine activists today define safe as free from side effects such as autism, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots—conditions that aren’t caused by vaccines—safer vaccines, using their definition, can never be made.”
― Paul A. Offit, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

“Subjects were given vitamin E, beta-carotene, both, or neither. The results were clear: those taking vitamins and supplements were more likely to die from lung cancer or heart disease than those who didn’t take them—the opposite of what researchers had anticipated.”
― Paul A. Offit, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine

“In 1999, Daniel Salmon and co-workers from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that the risk of contracting measles in five- to nine-year-olds whose parents had chosen not to vaccinate them was one hundred and seventy times greater than for vaccinated children.”
― Paul A. Offit, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

“Four states prohibited the marriage of alcoholics, 17 prohibited the marriage of epileptics, and 41 prohibited the marriage of those deemed feebleminded or insane. By the mid-1930s, America was the world leader in banned marriages. (Marriage restriction laws weren’t declared unconstitutional until 1967.)”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“— PAULING’S ADVOCACY GAVE BIRTH TO a vitamin and supplement industry built on sand. Evidence for this can be found by walking into a GNC center—a wonderland of false hope. Rows and rows of megavitamins and dietary supplements promise healthier hearts, smaller prostates, lower cholesterol, improved memory, instant weight loss, lower stress, thicker hair, and better skin. All in a bottle. No one seems to be paying attention to the fact that vitamins and supplements are an unregulated industry. As a consequence, companies aren’t required to support their claims of safety or effectiveness. Worse, the ingredients listed on the label might not reflect what’s in the bottle. And we seem to be perfectly willing to ignore the fact that every week at least one of these supplements is pulled off the shelves after it was found to cause harm. Like the L-tryptophan disaster, an amino acid sold over the counter and found to cause a disease that affected 5,000 people and killed 28. Or the OxyElite Pro disaster, a weight-loss product that caused 50 people to suffer severe liver disease; one person died and three others needed lifesaving liver transplants. Or the Purity First disaster, a Connecticut company’s vitamin preparations that were found to contain two powerful anabolic steroids, causing masculinizing symptoms in dozens of women in the Northeast.”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“At least fifteen studies have now shown that vitamin C doesn’t treat the common cold.”
― Paul A. Offit, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine

“In 1996, investigators from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle studied 18,000 people who, because they had been exposed to asbestos, were—like those who smoked cigarettes—also at greater risk of lung cancer. Participants were given large doses of vitamin A, beta-carotene, both, or neither. The study ended abruptly when the safety monitors realized that those taking megavitamins had a dramatically higher rate of lung cancer (28 percent greater than those not receiving vitamins) as well as heart disease (17 percent greater).”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn’t. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. “It’s been a tough week for vitamins,” said Carrie Gann of ABC News. These findings weren’t new. Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements.”
― Paul A. Offit, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine

“To say that Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race had influenced Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf would be an understatement; in some sections, Hitler had virtually plagiarized Grant’s book. For example, in The Passing of the Great Race, Grant wrote, “It has taken us fifty years to learn that speaking English, wearing good clothes and going to school and to church does not transform a Negro into a white man.” In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote, “But it is a scarcely conceivable fallacy of thought to believe that a Negro or a Chinese, let us say, will turn into a German because he learns German and is willing to speak the German language.”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“Eugenicists argued that the country would need to sterilize the lower 10 percent of the population and to continue to sterilize the lower 10 percent until the gene pool was pure. Their initial goal was to sterilize 14 million Americans. When the dust settled, 65,370 poor, syphilitic, feebleminded, insane, alcoholic, deformed, lawbreaking, or epileptic Americans in 32 states had been sterilized. California alone was responsible for more than 20,000 of them. Few, if any, Americans rose in protest. It was one of the darkest moments in American history.”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“In March 1942, the Office of the Surgeon General noted a growing incidence of jaundice (yellowing of the skin caused by liver disease) among US Army personnel stationed in California, England, Hawaii, Iceland, and Louisiana. All of those jaundiced had recently received a yellow fever vaccine, which, in addition to containing yellow fever vaccine virus, contained human serum as a stabilizing agent. On April 15, 1942, the surgeon general ordered that yellow fever vaccination be discontinued and that all existing lots be recalled and destroyed. Shortly thereafter, manufacturers made a yellow fever vaccine with water instead of serum, but it was too late. The serum used to stabilize the yellow fever vaccine had been obtained from nurses, medical students, and interns at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, several of whom had a history of jaundice and one of whom was actively infected at the time of the donation. By June 1942, fifty thousand US servicemen had been hospitalized with severe liver disease, and 150 had died from what would later be known as hepatitis B. Of the 141 lots of yellow fever vaccine provided to the army, seven were definitely contaminated. Among those who received one of those seven lots, 78 percent became infected. When the dust settled, 330,000 servicemen had been infected and one thousand had died. This was then and remains today one of the worst single-source outbreaks of a fatal infection ever recorded.”
― Paul A. Offit, You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation

“But when Samuel Berkovic finally found the answer to the question of what had actually caused the problem, no one noticed. Not a single newspaper, magazine, or radio or television program carried the story.”
― Paul A. Offit, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

“These small quantities of mercury aren’t harmful. Only large quantities are harmful. If small quantities of mercury were harmful, we’d have to move to a different planet.”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“This finding meant that there were at least two different types of polio virus, and infection with one type didn’t protect against disease caused by another type.”
― Paul A. Offit, The Cutter Incident: How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis

“Nurse Ratched,”
― Paul A. Offit, Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

“Landsteiner wasn’t finished. In 1919, he left Vienna and traveled to New York City to work at the Rockefeller Institute. While there, he took blood from rhesus monkeys and injected it into rabbits and guinea pigs, which allowed him to identify yet another protein on the surface of red blood cells called Rh (for rhesus monkey). This finding helped explain why some blood transfusions thought to have been with the right type of blood had still caused serious reactions. People with Rh negative blood can’t receive blood from someone who is Rh positive (about 85 percent of people are Rh positive). This is especially a problem during pregnancy when mothers who are Rh negative are carrying a baby who is Rh positive. The Rh-negative mother can react against her baby’s blood while the baby is still in the womb, with occasionally fatal results. This problem was so severe that until a solution could be found—inoculation of mothers with a product called RhoGAM—couples were prohibited by law to marry if the woman was Rh negative and the man was Rh positive.”
― Paul A. Offit, You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation