As the recipient of many awards including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School, Dr. Paul Offit is also the target of anti-vaccine groups who are against the use of certain vaccines for children. Dr. Offit has also received the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institute of Health. Dr. Offit has written a book where he tries to address the concerns and doubts of his critics against the use of vaccinations in children. The book is called Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure and was published in 2008.

In the book, Dr. Paul Offit traces the history of the anti-vaccine movement all the way to England in 1998. During a news conference, a researcher named Andrew Wakefield stated that autism is caused by the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. Wakefield’s paper on these findings was published by Lancet, a very prestigious medical journal, giving credence to Wakefield’s assertions. Soon afterward, parents were bombarded with headlines warning them against the MMR vaccine. These headlines were counter to the resurgence of measles in the U.K. and Wakefield was hailed a hero for exposing the connection between vaccines and autism.