Vaccines Under the Gun

Speakers

Organizer

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

Perri Klass, MD

New York University

Perri Klass, MD, is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University. She graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed a residency in pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital. She is the author of several books about medical training, A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student, Baby Doctor: A Pediatrician's Training, and most recently Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor, as well as other works of fiction and nonfiction. She writes regularly about issues of medical practice, pediatrics and children's health, literacy, and medical experience in numerous publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine and The New York Times Science Section. She is the National Medical Director of Reach Out and Read, a national program which promotes early literacy and reading aloud through pediatric primary care providers. She has received the American Academy of Pediatrics Education Award, the Women's National Book Association Award, and a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for Magazine Writing on Diet, Nutrition and Health. In 2010 she received a Doctor of Medicine Honoris causa from the University of South Florida School of Medicine.

Paul Offit, MD

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Paul A. Offit, MD is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In addition, Dr Offit is 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 including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Disease Society of America, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. Dr Offit has published more than 140 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, recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC; for this achievement Dr Offit received the Jonas Salk Medal from the Association for Infection Control and Epidemiology, the Luigi Mastroianni Clinical Innovator and the William Osler Awards from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the Charles Mérieux Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases; and was honored by Bill and Melinda Gates during the launch of their Foundation’s Living Proof Project for global health. In 2009, Dr Offit received the President’s Certificate for Outstanding Service from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr Offit was a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation, and is the author of three medical narratives: The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to Today’s Growing Vaccine Crisis (Yale University Press, 2005), Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases (HarperCollins, 2007), for which he won an award from the American Medical Writers Association, and Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure (Columbia University Press, 2008). A fourth book, titled Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, will be published by Basic Books in December 2010.

Dan Thomasch

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP

Dan Thomasch is a graduate of Columbia Law School and a litigation partner in private practice in New York City. He specializes in litigating pharmaceutical and biotech cases involving complex scientific evidence, and has been handling trials and appeals of product liability and patent cases concerning childhood vaccines for more than 25 years. Since 2002, Dan has led a team of litigators serving as national counsel for Wyeth (now Pfizer) in more than 350 cases involving claims that childhood vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal have caused some children to develop “autistic-spectrum disorders”. In that capacity, Dan won a two-week Frye hearing in a Maryland state trial court — the first such hearing nationally that challenged the admissibility of scientific evidence purporting to link thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism — and argued and won the first preemption motion ever decided under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Dan argued and won the appeals in both actions, and served as the lead writer for Wyeth's briefs in the Bruesewitz case in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trine Tsouderos

Chicago Tribune

Trine Tsouderos is an award-winning science and medical reporter at the Chicago Tribune. Tsouderos and colleague Patricia Callahan spent a year investigating alternative treatments for autism, leading to a series of stories that deemed them risky and unproven. After the series ran, medical boards in two states launched investigations into physicians featured in the stories, one dubious product was pulled from store shelves and the FDA sent warning letters to companies selling dubious chelating drugs to the public. Last year, Tsouderos wrote about Dr. Mehmet Oz, chronic fatigue syndrome, medical marijuana, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the dubious medical diagnosis and treatment of chronic Lyme disease. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she got her start covering rural health at The Wilson Daily Times and later reported for The Tennessean. For their stories on alternative treatments for autism, she and Callahan were awarded First Place in the Association of Healthcare Journalists' Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism and received an Honorable Mention in the prestigious Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. She lives in Oak Park, Ill., with her husband and two kids.