Dr. Paul Offit gets it completely backwards. Again.
Highly influential vaccine proponent, Paul Offit, regards himself as the modern day Galileo who spoke truth to power four centuries ago.
Readers of this newsletter are aware that I have frequently criticized Dr. Paul Offit for his increasingly desperate approach to frame any skepticism of vaccine safety as unfounded and dangerous.
This morning Offit let us know how distorted his perspective is. He published this article on his substack platform titled “And Yet, It Still Moves”:
In his article, Offit reminds us of Italian mathematician and astronomer, Galileo Galilei, who was confined to house arrest for refusing to recant that there was proof, accessible to all who had the eyes to see, that the Catholic Church was wrong about some big things. Namely, the Earth was not the center of the solar system, let alone the universe; it was just one of several other planets orbiting our Sun.
Offit tells us of this poignant moment which encapsulates Galileo’s courage:
“Legend has it that after bowing to his inquisitors, he [Galileo] looked back and said, Eppur si muovo, “And yet, it still moves.” In other words, the Roman Inquisition can force me to say that the earth doesn’t revolve around the sun, but that doesn’t change the fact that it does.”
Dr. Offit seems to think that he is the lone voice of reason speaking out against a powerful and irrational “antivax” movement, hoping that he will be eventually vindicated like Galileo was (preferably not posthumously).
I think it is comical.
Offit is the de facto spokesperson for an immensely powerful lobby that has exerted its influence over its own regulatory bodies and legacy media by purchasing hundreds of millions of dollars of TV ads, i.e. positive coverage.
In other words, the obvious reality is that Offit actually is playing the role of an operative of the Papacy who sought to silence, through character attacks and claims of moral and scientific high ground, the voices of Galileo and his predecessors who earnestly and firmly advocated for transparency and an open examination of what can be observed.
In order to validate this twisted interpretation of the current state of affairs, Offit once again must resort to distorting RFK Jr.’s position on many things. He makes a series of accusations in a single paragraph:
“No matter how many times Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says that vaccines cause autism, or that “no vaccine is safe and effective”, or that the “polio vaccine killed many, many, many more people than it saved”, or that the Covid-19 vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made,” or that SARS-CoV-2 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese, or that Blacks should receive a different vaccine schedule than Whites because “their immune system is better than ours”, or that unpasteurized milk is safe, or that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, or that the measles outbreak in Samoa was caused by a defective measles vaccine, or that the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was caused by the influenza vaccine (which wasn’t invented until the late 1940s), it doesn’t matter.”
I have left Offit’s citations intact so that if interested, one may confirm the validity of his sources. Some are from “Factcheck.org”, some misquote Kennedy, some are taken out of context and others exaggerate and cherry pick.
Briefly:
Yes. Vaccines can cause autism. Here’s Dr. Offit admitting that one cannot say that they don’t:
No vaccine is 100% safe or 100% effective. That’s a fact that we all should be able to accept. So is it fair to say that vaccines are safe and effective? It depends. Let’s say a vaccine prevents a single death from a disease for every 1000 people inoculated. If that vaccine causes a death one in 10 thousand times, one could say that it was “relatively safe and effective”. On the other hand if that vaccine causes a death for every hundred people who got it one could say that it is “not relatively safe nor effective”.
Those of us who have looked into the history of polio and the polio vaccine will readily admit that there is a ton of uncertainty around this unicorn of vaccine science. Polio deaths were in decline before the vaccines were introduced. Diagnostic criteria for polio was overly broad prior to the vaccine and very narrow afterwards (resulting in fewer cases). Environmental toxins in wide use at the time were clearly the cause of some polio-like syndromes. There were horrific polio outbreaks and deaths linked to the vaccine (see The Cutter Incident).
Is there any doubt that the Covid-19 mRNA shots were the deadliest vaccine ever made? No further comment necessary
Unpasteurized milk is safe if it comes from healthy cows.
Kennedy never said that the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 was caused by the flu vaccine (check Offit’s own reference).
Perhaps the most vicious accusation Offit levels against Kennedy is claiming that Kennedy believes that SARS-COV2 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. Kennedy was referencing a study that does show that the spike protein has differing binding affinity for the ACE2 receptor depending on a person’s ethnicity. As proof, Offit refers the reader to an article published in the NY Post that specifically quotes Kennedy as saying, “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact”.
Interestingly, in one instance, Offit refers us to a short video highlighting the work of a diligent young researcher who has written code to parse through many hours of recordings of Kennedy’s appearances to count how many times he has mentioned his skepticism around the safety of vaccines.
Wow. Good for her. Who has the time to do something like that?
To his credit, Paul Offit permits all readers to leave comments. I included the comment I left on his post below. In it I only addressed the most controversial of Dr. Offit’s accusations.
Please consider offering your support of it. Perhaps it may encourage him to respond:
Paul, what fascinates me the most about you is that I still have not been able to tell if you actually believe what you are writing and saying or whether you are using increasingly desperate arguments to hide what is in plain sight.
In this very interesting historical analogy, which I agree offers fascinating insight into what is happening on the planet right now, you have gotten it completely backwards. Galileo was encouraging the powers that be, the Papacy, to reconsider their axiom that the Earth was the center of the solar system. By using his rudimentary telescope it was obvious (to anyone who bothered to look) that the moons of Jupiter orbited the giant planet and not the Earth. It was also very clear that the phases of Venus could only be explained by the fact that our sister planet orbited the Sun and not Earth.
The Catholic church, who commanded immense influence and power, was threatened by his simple observations. They were able to cling to their power and their status as the sole arbiter of truth by simply dismissing his proof as inconsequential. Do you really expect that four tiny dots circling a pale disc, the planet Jupiter, would be enough to relegate the Earth in its exalted place as the center of Gd’s creation to just another rock tumbling around the Sun like other planets? Of course not! These were mere exceptions to the rule. Framing it otherwise was heretical.
There were other anomalies as well. The retrograde motion of the planets. Stellar parallax. The mysterious appearance and disappearance of constellations on an annual cycle. All of these observations could be easily explained by Galileo’s model. Yet they were all dismissed. Why? Because Occam’s Razor is not a method of proof. All the weirdness was a feature of Gd’s mysterious creation. Stop questioning authority!
The point here is that one could never prove the Church wrong from observations from the surface of the Earth alone. The world was stuck. It took another amazing insight which came by way of Sir Isaac Newton five decades later. Newton showed the world that we could reliably predict the motions of objects with mass. His theory of gravitational attraction fit perfectly with Galileo’s model and exposed the Church’s position for what it was: wishful thinking.
So in your analogy, RFK Jr. is the Galileo figure and you are the agent of the papacy, who must use misdirection and frank mendacity to keep the world looking away from the obvious. The power and influence have been on your side for decades. Mr. Kennedy refuses to recant, and yet the so-called “anti-vax” movement advances.
Eppur si muovo, if you will.
In this piece, you are once again distorting Kennedy’s position. In his letter to the PM of Samoa in 2019 he called for a deeper investigation. How many of the measles cases were of vaccine strain and not the wild-type? What were the ages of the sick? If they were infants, why did they succumb if their mothers’ had been vaccinated? How many of the cases happened in people who were fully vaccinated?
Why aren’t scientists like you interested in such questions?
The HIV/AIDS connection is very thin. The HIV hypothesis fails Koch’s postulates frequently. In other words, there are many people who die of AIDS-like syndromes who don’t have HIV in their bodies. There are many people who are completely healthy who do have HIV. This has been hidden by the way we diagnose AIDS, which was done arbitrarily. To be diagnosed with AIDS one has to have a certain opportunistic infection or malignancy, have a low CD4+ T-Cell count AND test positive for HIV.
This is not some crazy idea peddled by Kennedy. His position is supported by renowned virologist, Peter Duesberg and Nobel Laureate Luc Montaigner. Even Robert Gallo, the purported discoverer of the HIV/AIDS connection conceded that there was a more likely suspect: Human Herpes Virus 6 (HHV6) which, unlike HIV was known to be cytotoxic to CD4+, CD8+ lymphocytes as well as other elements in our immune systems.
We both know that the spike protein of SARS-COV2 has different affinity for the ACE2 receptor across ethnicities. Kennedy was specifically citing this research but you are framing him as a racist for pointing this out. What does it take for someone of your stature to stoop so low? Are you really doing all of this to protect children, or do you have something else to protect?
Kennedy isn’t saying that vaccines are the sole cause of autism as you insinuate. He is saying that it could be the cause in some cases. Why? Because there are many, many children who receive a series of vaccinations at around two years of age and suffer an immediate deterioration of their physical and mental capacities within hours.
Package inserts for many vaccines list encephalopathy as a rare but known side effect. It isn’t referring to a brain infection. It’s an inflammatory encephalopathy. Vaccines are pro-inflammatory. It is incredibly short-sighted to ignore the reality that this will happen when you give these products to tens of millions of children yearly.
Over 20 medical associations wrote, in a joint amicus briefing to the SCOTUS, that we needed a National Vaccine Injury Compensation fund because many vaccine injured children were falling through the cracks because they didn’t have the means to hold vaccine manufacturers accountable. Your work was specifically cited.
You yourself have candidly admitted that one can never say that vaccines can’t cause autism but, “you have to get used to saying that when talking to the media”.
Just as the peasants and ruling class looked to the skies and scratched their heads at the strange motions of certain celestial bodies and wondered why the Church was so intransigent in their position, going so far as to confine Galileo, a brilliant mathematician who held professorships at major Italian universities to house arrest, today the public is also puzzled at the explosion of chronic diseases which occurred concomitantly with the expansion of the CDC’s immunization schedule and the frenzied attacks leveled at anyone who points out the obvious connection between the two.
While Kennedy is not a doctor or expert in vaccine science, he is pointing out the obvious. We need to look harder at the science. If it is too expensive for vaccine manufacturers to pay for the damages their products can cause, they need to make better products. At the very least, we shouldn’t be mandating vaccination to receive a public education if the people making these vaccines have no skin in the game but a profit motive.
Despite the clear evidence that their axiom was wrong, it took the papacy nearly two centuries to excise all mention of their Earth-centered notion from their communiques to their following. How long will it take for the medical orthodoxy and the immensely powerful and connected Pharmaceutical complex to relent with their attacks on people who want better studies and accountability?
As a person who has devoted his professional life to ensuring children’s health, you should be on Mr. Kennedy’s side. At the very least you ought to desist from these kinds attacks on him. Point out where he could be more effective in his role as Secretary of DHHS and stop lying about what his position is and has been.
Kennedy’s commitment to leave no stone unturned can only have two outcomes. It will expose safety concerns that many have had around the vaccine schedule which will result in safer products and more rigorous testing or it will confirm what you have been saying all along.
Either way, the public interest will be served.
The only people who obstruct greater transparency are the ones that have something to hide. That’s what the Galileo story told us.
You have a chance to play an important role here. Please don’t squander it.
Thanks for pointing out the hilarious absurdity of this guy posing as the "lone voice of reason" standing bravely, speaking truth to power, etc...There should be a term for this kind of cynical posturing. Inadvertent jester? Devious sellout? Oblivious tool?
I have forced myself to watch offit. I have been familiar with him for years and never cared for him. I have had doubts and questions about vaccines long before rfk jr became concerned with their safety. Although my children didn’t have severe reactions to their shots, I have always believed parents who said theirs did. I am sure that there are financial motives for the shot in every arm mentality but i think it is also underpinned by utilitarianism. If a few children are harmed universal vaccination is still worth the price. If it was a truly robust and honest system, it would require so many front men that exaggerate and dissemble. Most of the paradigm rests on injection which is an unnatural way for the body to encounter the diseases being vaccinated for excepting for tetanus. Given the immune system’s complexity and our limited knowledge of it, one would think there might be more reservations about the method of administration even discounting the ingredients. Doctors and scientists are prone to overestimating their understanding and many are loathe to admit error. The mRNA vaccines are a perfect example of this