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Ep. 42 — A voiceless young clubfoot patient grows into one of the most outspoken and renowned vaccine advocates in the world / Dr. Paul Offit, Professor of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. When Dr. Paul Offit was five years old he got surgery for clubfoot and was sent to recover at a chronic care facility in Baltimore which was also a polio ward. He spent six lonely weeks there, feeling like a prisoner, with virtually no distractions, recreation, or visitors like many of the polio patients in that ward. "It was hell. This was the mid-1950s, it was a polio ward, people were scared of polio. There was one visiting hour a week on Sundays from 2:00 to 3:00. My mother was pregnant with my brother and had a complication, so she was unable to visit. My father who traveled often as a salesman, he tried to visit me actually on one of the hours that wasn't permitted, and from then on he wasn't allowed to visit me,” remembers Dr. Offit. "As a consequence, no one visited me, and you know, I just remember that ward, my bed was right next to a window that looked down onto the front door of the hospital. I just remember staring out that window waiting for somebody to come and save me." That formative childhood experience put Dr. Offit on the path to becoming one of the most renowned vaccine advocates in the world. The recipient of many honors and awards, Dr. Offit is Professor of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a co-inventor of the #rotavirus vaccine, estimated to save hundreds of lives of children every day. Offit has published more than 180 papers in medical and scientific journals and is a prolific author of medical narratives including Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure which put him in the cross-hairs of the powerful, well-connected, and well-funded anti-vaccine coalitions. His willingness to publicly take on the anti-vaxxers has made Offit the frequent target of intimidation and regular death threats. Offit currently is a member of an NIH-led #COVID-19 vaccine innovation group. The sweeping public private partnership between federal researchers and 16 pharmaceutical companies is called Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines or ACTIV. Offit believes there will be several #coronavirus vaccines soon and that the virulence of this virus will upend the traditional long FDA drug approval process, with both good and bad consequences. "So I think this is going to play out in one of two ways. There will be a vaccine. I think there will be a vaccine soon. I think not a vaccine, I think there's going to be several vaccines, or many vaccines, used in countries throughout the world. Then we'll learn about it, after it's already out there, I think then we'll learn about it. It'll play out one of two ways, it'll be remarkably effective, stop the spread of this awful virus. That is the only way to stop the spread. I mean population immunity will only be achieved by a vaccine. It's not going to be achieved by natural infection, because it never is,” says Offit. "Either the vaccines will be a hero, much as in the movie Contagion, when the vaccine was the hero of that movie. Or because things have been compressed and pushed quickly, there will be a side effect that will be severe that people hadn't anticipated, and that could make people question whether we have done this the right way." Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: When Dr Paul Offit was five years old he was sent to a polio ward to recover from clubfoot surgery. He spent six weeks in the ward surrounded by young children suffering from polio. That formative childhood experience put Dr Offit on the path to becoming one of the most renowned vaccine advocates in the world. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory,