Paul Offit

Paul Allan Offit (born March 27, 1951) is an American pediatrician specializing 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, professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, former chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases (1992–2014), and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit was a member of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee from 2017 until September 2025, a board member of Every Child By Two; a founding board member of the Autism Science Foundation (ASF); and a former member of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Offit has published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety, and is the author or co-author of books on vaccines, vaccination, the rejection of medicine by some religious groups, and antibiotics. He is one of the most public faces of the scientific consensus that vaccines have no association with autism. As a result, he has been the frequent target of hate mail and death threats. In 2023, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.