DR. PETER HOTEZ, LATEST VACCINE PITCHMAN, CLUELESS ON VACCINE-AUTISM SCIENCE

Dr. Hotez has many reasons to support vaccines — I’m not sure I have ever seen a biography that was so vaccine-dependent. Amongst his many titles and affiliations, Dr. Hotez is the President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, and his research at the Baylor College of Medicine focuses on “developing vaccines for neglected tropical diseases.”

Lying about Measles and Herd Immunity

Call me old-fashioned, I think doctors who specialize in developing vaccines should tell the truth when they speak to the press, and Dr. Hotez clearly does not. Before I get to the point of this article — Dr. Hotez’s incredibly weak grasp of vaccine-autism science — I want to talk about the fear-mongering article he likely helped plant at CBS Austin that I posted above. Dr. Hotez makes two claims that are very easy to refute, which I feel compelled to point out to convince you that people in positions of authority with a partisan agenda (he develops vaccines for a living) shouldn’t necessarily be trusted:

1. Measles is not a “deadly and serious disease.” Sorry, Dr. Hotez, it simply isn’t. Ebola, yes. Black Plague, absolutely. Small pox, very dangerous. Measles is so NOT deadly and serious that the “cure” in case your child gets it sounds a lot like the common cold: “Since measles is caused by a virus, there is no specific medical treatment for it and the virus has to run its course. But a child who is sick should drink plenty of fluids, get lots of rest, and be kept from spreading the infection to others.” I must have missed the part about rushing your child to the hospital to save them from this deadly disease! In the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, when several years had spikes of measles outbreaks, the CDC reported the death rate of measles at 0.2%, and this is largely attributed to children who were already medically fragile. Healthy kids don’t die of measles, and there hasn’t been a death reported from measles in more than 10 years in the United States. Which makes Dr. Hotez either an exaggerator or a liar, depending on how you want to look at it.

2. The U.S. population is nowhere near herd immunity. Dr. Hotez thinks the scientific number for “herd immunity” is 90% vaccinated. What happens if we fall below that threshold? All hell breaks loose according to him, and “if you’re a mother or a parent with a young baby you have to be terrified about going into shopping malls or going into public libraries or any public space because you’re worried your baby is going to get measles.” The only problem with this ridiculous fear-mongering is that Dr. Hotez failed to mention that American adults are vastly under-vaccinated, as the CDC readily admits in this report from 2014:

“Despite longstanding recommendations for use of many vaccines, vaccination coverage among U.S. adults is low.”

How low you ask? 50% or less is the quick answer, which means any notion that the U.S. population has achieved herd immunity is a farcical myth, as this article from The Hill very clearly explains:

“the concept of herd immunity is largely myth — and completely misunderstood…if we look back over the decades and note the lack of rampant epidemics in our nation, while remembering that vaccine protection is in perpetual decline, the myth of herd immunity quickly unravels. Our society has never achieved this level of herd immunity, yet not a single major outbreak of disease has occurred.”

If only half of America is properly vaccinated, where are the epidemics?