Wall Street Journal Apparently Doesn’t Care About Blatant Medical Conflicts of Interest

Syringe and paper moneyDr. Paul Offit has written another pro-vaccine screed for this powerful publication without one word about all the money he has made as a vaccine developer. Action Alert! The opinion piece, published this week, talks about respiratory infections “making a comeback” (had they really gone away?) and lays the problem at the feet of “low vaccination rates”—as discussed by a most prestigious journal: the Hollywood Reporter! That’s right, Paul A. Offit, MD, professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, reaches for a magazine dedicated to Hollywood news and entertainment gossip for his medical statistics. What the mini-bio at the bottom of the WSJ article doesn’t disclose is Dr. Offit’s massive conflict of interest. Paul Offit is the inventor of the rotavirus vaccine RotaTeq, which is now recommended for universal use among infants by the CDC. He makes untold amounts of money from vaccines. He is entitled to his opinion, but it is shameful that the prestigious Wall Street Journal has not insisted on a full disclosure of his financial interest. Did the paper not know? Did it not care? This does not speak well for current journalistic practice or ethics. Offit also mentions the rise of whooping cough, mumps, and measles infections, which he attributes to inadequate vaccination. But the mumps vaccine is proving to be ineffective, and an even bigger problem, as we reported last year, is that the DTaP vaccine—for diphtheria, tetanus (lockjaw), and pertussis (whooping cough)—has uncertain risks. One element of the vaccine, for whooping cough, can be dangerous, potentially causing inflammation throughout the body. Moreover, it also may not be very effective: Dr. Mercola cites a study showing that whooping cough outbreaks were in fact higher among vaccinated children rather than unvaccinated! Naturally Dr. Offit does not mention the failure of the government to study vaccinated children, to see what actually is and isn’t working. It simply assumes that the vaccines are effective and that any cases are in unvaccinated children, when it is possible that many are in vaccinated children. As might be expected, Offit also denounces any possible autism–vaccine link. But neither he—nor the WSJ in any of their other articles, for that matter—make any reference to the recent CDC whistleblower story that revealed the government’s deliberate concealment of the link between the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) and a dramatically increased risk of autism, particularly in African American boys. Why is the mainstream media refusing to cover this dramatic story? We don’t know. But we do know that much of the mainstream media would collapse without PHARMA advertising. Could there be a connection? Action Alert! Write to the Wall Street Journal and tell them they should have disclosed Dr. Offit’s financial tie to vaccines! Take-Action1