Vaccine Hall of Shame

Hall of Shame

1. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Centers for Disease Control According to the CDC�s website, "the ACIP consists of 15 'experts' in fields associated with immunization who have been selected by the Secretary of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide advice and guidance to the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary for Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the most effective means to prevent vaccine-preventable diseases." The ACIP is responsible for expanding the number of required vaccines for children from 10 in 1983 to 36 in 2007 (see a comparison here), without ever ensuring that the schedule was tested in combination or that appropriate monitoring took place for delayed onset conditions. The ACIP was the topic of a document titled Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Policy Making written by the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Government Reform which highlighted the conflicts of interest present between ACIP members and pharmaceutical companies manufacturing vaccines. 2. Julie Gerberding Director, Centers For Disease Control Ms. Gerberding has served as the Director of the CDC since 2002. A complete description of the cover-up by the CDC of the autism epidemic can be viewed at PutChildrenFirst, our sister website, including many previously unreleased emails from CDC employees and this Statement of Charges spelling out the laws broken by CDC. 3. Paul Offit Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Mr. Offit appears to be the pharmaceutical industry�s go to Doctor to speak to the press about the safety of the current vaccine program. He is also the patent holder for the new rotavirus vaccine, recently added to the Immunization Schedule, and a past member of the ACIP (See #1). Among his many outrageous statements, Mr. Offit wrote in the journal of Pediatrics that a child�s immune system could handle 10,000 vaccines: "A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time...then each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time." Regarding Thimerosal in vaccines: "In some instances I think full disclosure can be harmful. Is it safe to say there is zero risk with thimerosal, when it is remotely possible that one child would get sick? Well, since we say that mercury is a neurotoxin, we have to do everything we can to get rid of it. But I would argue that removing thimerosal didn't make vaccines safer -- it only made them perceptibly safer." On potential conflicts of interest as a vaccine patent-holder: "I am a co-holder of a patent for a (rotavirus) vaccine. If this vaccine were to become a routinely recommended vaccine, I would make money off of that. When I review safety data, am I biased? That answer is really easy: absolutely not." Speaking to a journalist: "You did more harm than good in sort of quote/unquote allowing the parent to be fully informed [regarding the presence of mercury in vaccines]. There�s no politically correct way to say this, but being fully informed is not always the best thing. You can take that out of context and make me look like a jerk, but you know what I�m saying."

If you would like to nominate someone for our Hall Of Shame, please write to: info@generationrescue.org.