Dr. Paul Offit

As a medical student, Dr. Paul Offit took an interest in infectious diseases. He studied many of the great epidemics and was determined to make a difference. Because of his determination and desire to save lives, he has had a 30-year career full of achievements.

Today, Dr. Paul Offit is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Offit is also the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, and a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is a recipient of many awards and has published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recently recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC.

Dr Paul Offit is the author of four books titled Vaccines: What You Should Know (Wiley, 2003, 3rd Edition), Breaking the Antibiotic Habit (Wiley, 1999), The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to Today’s Growing Vaccine Crisis (Yale University Press, 2005), and, most recently, Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases (HarperCollins, 2007). A fifth book titled Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure will be published by Columbia University Press in the fall of 2008.