Peter. Paul. We're Wary.
Attorney Aaron Siri recently published a detailed critique of Dr. Paul Offit’s position on the safety of childhood vaccines. Please bookmark and read it.
Peter Hotez, MD, PhD and Paul Offit, MD are two experts in the field of Vaccinology who find themselves in a losing battle over public trust. Both have enjoyed years of unwavering support of the medical establishment. This has allowed them to pursue their careers free of any real scrutiny and suspicion. But both have been in the public eye as of late as coherent challenges to vaccine safety have been leveled by Attorneys Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Aaron Siri.
Hotez is a Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine. Offit is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s also a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
In other words, they are regarded not only as experts by the medical orthodoxy but as heroes by the public at large. They save kids from dreaded diseases. Who would have a problem with such stand-up citizens?
I do. My issue with these two doctors is that they believe they are beyond any reproach, so much so that Hotez, despite being offered several million dollars to simply appear on the Joe Rogan podcast to have a discussion with RFK Jr. about vaccine safety, has chosen not to engage. Instead, Hotez frames such a discussion as a debate and as he stated in a recent interview with the American Medical Association’s Chief Experience Officer, Todd Unger, “we don’t typically debate science”.
This is not what a person of integrity would do. The Rogan audience is probably biased against Hotez, but that should be a reason to appear, not duck. If he is truly interested in addressing vaccine hesitancy, why not speak to them and not to his choir? Why not, in the interest of children’s health, dismantle the arguments of the founder of Children’s Health Defense, an organization that Hotez believes spreads misinformation, in front of tens of millions of viewers?
In the same interview with the AMA, Hotez believes a conversation with Kennedy would be “an exercise in frustration” because in the past Kennedy “would continually move the goalposts on what his beef about vaccines was.”
Hotez has proven to be quite adept at moving goalposts himself:
The Offit-Siri “Debate”
Offit has his own problems with another attorney, Aaron Siri. They too are in disagreement around the same question: How do we know that vaccines haven’t caused as much or more harm than good?
Siri’s argument is identical to Kennedy’s: we cannot know if vaccines have been a net benefit if they have never been tested against saline placebos. Drugs are; why aren’t vaccines?
My children have received all the vaccines on the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule. I did not question the safety of vaccines at the time. I do now. Like many people (including physicians that I know personally), I never thought to confirm anything until three years ago when suddenly the medical establishment moved in lock-step with legacy media and our authorities to urge everyone to receive their Covid-19 mRNA shots so that we could go back to our happy lives.
It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at the problem. You simply cannot conduct two-year safety trials in two months or less. It should be no surprise that this remarkable endeavor was called “Operation Warp Speed”. Yes, it was an Operation, and yes, it was “Warped”.
I am unable to write dispassionately about this. I am writing as a person who has realized that he has been burned. I don’t blame anyone but myself. I can understand why the layperson would trust the system, but as a doctor why didn’t I do some more research before wrapping my arms around my son every time the kind-hearted nurse drove a needle into his arm when he was just a toddler?
I am also writing as a person who gave up a promising career as an engineer and software developer to serve humanity as a doctor twenty five years ago. If I was so interested in helping, why did it take me so long to actually do the research?
It also doesn’t help that Hotez and Offit sit in the Ivory Towers of Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania, the very same institutions where I received my medical education and training in anesthesiology.
The question at hand is a pivotal one. Offit believes vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule have been proven safe. Siri and Kennedy disagree. If Offit is correct, Siri and Kennedy can be blamed for stoking vaccine hesitancy at considerable cost to public health.
On the other hand, if Offit is wrong, Siri and Kennedy ought to be commended for their efforts, and our agencies of public health, professional medical associations and vaccine manufacturers should be held accountable for their role in spreading misinformation. How can we be certain that vaccines that we inject into our children aren’t harmful if they haven’t been tested appropriately?
This should be an easy question to answer, yet judging from the heated exchanges between Siri and Offit on Twitter (now X) the issue is apparently still unresolved. Last month Offit decided to put an end the controversy by publishing this response on Substack titled “The Casual Cruelty of Placebo-Controlled Trials”:
Aaron Siri published a response on his own Substack this week. In it he lays out the context of the disagreement and how it has moved from tweets to more substantiative explanations. Unlike Dr. Offit, Siri’s essay is loaded with citations from reputable sources and original trial data. I highly recommend reading it and bookmarking it for future reference:
To summarize Offit:
Saline placebos are not required to test for safety because the FDA says that they aren’t required. “...a wide range of placebos have been used in vaccine trials. These placebos might contain buffers, stabilizing agents, emulsifying agents, or adjuvants, like aluminum salts. They might contain sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, sucrose, or polysorbate-80. The dose of these chemicals when used as a placebo has been deemed safe by the FDA.”
It is also reasonable to compare harm with other licensed vaccines to prove safety because the benefit of such vaccines is so great that it would be unethical not to.
Saline, which is a solution of salt dissolved in water at a concentration that closely matches our plasma, can also be dangerous, so it doesn’t count as a substance that is harmless.
Offit concludes by reminding us of Jonas Salk, who thought it unethical to give saline to the control group because of all the kids who were at risk from the devastating sequelae of Polio. Offit writes:
“ [Salk] couldn’t conscience giving a saltwater shot to young children when as many as 50,000 were paralyzed by polio and 1,500 died every year.”
And when the polio vaccine was proven safe and effective:
“Church bells rang out; synagogues held special prayer meetings; department store patrons stopped to listen to the results of the trial over loudspeakers.”
I will refrain from offering a detailed critique of Offit’s defense of the vaccine industry. Siri does an impressive job of that (see his linked essay above). However it should be clear even to the casual reader that if a vaccine manufacturer is ever brought to court in a liability case (which is presently not possible due to the provisions in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986) they should probably choose a different expert witness than Dr. Offit.
Offit believes that because the FDA says that small amounts of aluminum salts, buffers, stabilizers, emulsifying agents, or polysorbate-80 are harmless, they must be harmless. How does the FDA know? How could they have proven this? They would have to compare such mixtures with something else that we know is absolutely safe. There is no safer substance than saline, the substance used in medication trials as control. To my knowledge, there is no such study.
This is of no surprise. Why would anyone conduct such a study that is designed to identify potential harm with no benefit? The only ethical way to answer this question practically is in a vaccine trial that uses saline as the placebo. Sadly, as even Offit tacitly acknowledges, this has yet to be done.
Offit tries to dodge this by suggesting that saline could be potentially dangerous too. However, he doesn’t make the obvious mistake of saying that saline itself is dangerous .
Instead he tells us that too much salt or too much water can be dangerous. This is true, but a solution of salt water is incredibly safe. He knows this. He’s a pediatrician. He knows that IV (intravenous) medications are diluted with saline. The very first intervention given to a child who is sick enough to be in a hospital is to start an IV and start a saline drip at an appropriate rate for the child’s weight and hydration status.
The other absurdity in Offit’s argument is around “the casual cruelty” of denying trial participants any protection from the disease the vaccine in question targets. But what about the millions of children who are not in the trial? They’re not getting any potentially effective vaccine either. Aren’t they at as much risk as the control group in a trial?
Moreover, if the trial proves a benefit from the vaccine being tested, was it thus unethical to deny the “placebo” group the vaccine? By following his reasoning it seems like he is advocating for the elimination of safety trials altogether.
Of note, throughout his essay, Offit deigns to ever mention Aaron Siri by name. Though responding directly to Siri’s points, Offit refers to him as “a lawyer working for an anti-vaccine group ICAN” nine times. ICAN is the Informed Consent Action Network.
Interestingly though ICAN advocates for informed consent, Offit opens with a misrepresentation of ICAN, Siri and other vaccine safety advocates like myself:
“Anti-vaccine activists often tell the same story…Government officials, pharmaceutical companies, public health agencies, scientists, and doctors are lying to you about vaccines. They are covering up safety problems. We, on the other hand, by pulling back the curtain on this conspiracy, will tell you the truth. Trust us. Not them.”
Neither ICAN, Siri nor I are “Anti-vaccine activists”. Neither are we asking anyone to trust us or anyone else. Use your own logic. Find and read the citations. Read the comments in both of the articles. That’s the only way to make up your own mind. Get informed before consenting.
Although in the minority, I do know lay people, like myself, who saw through the insanity and refused the Covid jab. As costly as it was (job loss), I don’t regret it.
Please, don’t be too hard on yourself. The vaccination spell cast by Edward Jenner set a very deep tap root that has infected the thinking of almost everyone. Charles MacKay said it best with his observation that we humans think in herds, go mad in herds, and gain good sense slowly, one by one. A broad awakening will take a while.