Video Montage of Third Annual Odyssey Awards Gala Featuring Governor Mitch Daniels, Montel Williams, Dr. Paul Offit and CMPI president Peter Pitts

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels


Montel Williams, Emmy Award-Winning Talk Show Host


Paul Offit, M.D., Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for Leadership in Transformational Medicine


CMPI president Peter J. Pitts


CMPI Web Video: "Science or Celebrity"

   

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The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) released Science or Celebrity? an online video that dispels the pseudo-science anti-vaccine myths currently being spread by celebrities and politicians. Science or Celebrity? is part of a CMPI educational campaign calling attention to the scientifically-proven safety of vaccines, and to the very real danger of discouraging immunization.
 

“Despite the hysteria of celebrities and politicians, science clearly shows vaccines are safe,” said Peter J. Pitts, CMPI president and former FDA Associate Commissioner. “As CMPI’s Science or Celebrity? makes clear, the anti-vaccine pseudo-science has been thoroughly discredited.”

Unfounded fears about vaccines have led to a decline in immunization rates and outbreaks of measles, whooping cough and meningitis in Bachmann’s home state of Minnesota. In countries where anti-vaccine hysteria has gone furthest, such as Britain, rates of once-conquered diseases such as measles are now on the rise.

By alleging that vaccines cause autism, retardation and other disorders, celebrities and politicians are taking a page from discredited groups as Andrew Wakefield’s Generation Rescue, which still defend the now-debunked claims that vaccines cause autism. The Lancet, one of the world's most respected medical journals, decertified Andrew Wakefield’s “study” last year. This year, the British Medical Journal showed his research was bogus, and Wakefield recently lost his medical license.

The science on vaccines and autism is clear. Twenty-three studies have tested hundreds of thousands of children and found no link between autism and vaccines. The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, Institute of Medicine, and World Health Organization have released statements saying that there is no connection between vaccines and autism.

With regard to HPV vaccines, studies show that the side effects of both HPV vaccines are the same or lower than all other vaccines. And both vaccines have reduced the incidence of cervical cancer and pre-cancerous lesions as well as death from cervical and other forms of cancer.