Dr. Paul Offit

Paul Allan Offit is a pediatrician who specializes in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology and virology. He is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.

Offit is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the former chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, serving from 1992 to 2014, and currently serves as director of the hospital’s Vaccine Education Center.

He is a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, a board member of Every Child By Two, a founding board member of the Autism Science Foundation and a former member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Offit has published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals on rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the author or co-author of several books on vaccines, vaccine hesitancy, religious objections to medicine and antibiotics.

He is a prominent advocate for vaccine safety and has publicly emphasized that vaccines are not linked to autism. His stance puts him at odds with parents who question the substantial quantity of vaccines recommended for babies and small children.

In 2023, Offit was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Offit has written or co-written several books on vaccines, vaccination and the public, and antibiotics, as well as dozens of scholarly articles on the topic.

In "The Cutter Incident," Offit describes fallout relating to an early poliovirus vaccine tragedy that had the effect of deterring production of already licensed vaccines and discouraging the development of new ones. He advocates for the repeal of religious exemptions to vaccine requirements, saying that such exemptions amount to medical neglect.

He has also written books on instances where science generated harmful ideas ("Pandora's Lab") and the history of religious opposition in some groups to modern medicine ("Bad Faith").

In 2021, Offit released "You Bet Your Life," a history of medical innovations with a particular focus on how some degree of risk is always present in medical advancement.

In 2023, he started a newsletter called "Beyond the Noise." With "This Week in Virology" host Vincent Racaniello, he posts video versions of the newsletters on YouTube.

In 2024, Offit published his memoir of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout called "Tell Me When It’s Over: An Insider’s Guide to Deciphering COVID Myths and Navigating Our Post-Pandemic World."