Dr. Hotez’s personal life as the father of an adult daughter with autism provides him with a unique platform as a vaccination advocate against the effort to wrongly connect vaccines with autism, which inspired the title of his 2018 book, Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.”Dr. Hotez routinely writes for lay audiences and has been an incredibly prominent and plain presence on television, bringing science to the vaccination debate,” said Dr. Harmon, a South Carolina family physician. “His friendly demeanor and desire to advocate for vaccinations have made him a man for our times.”
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Dr. Hotez’s lab, which creates vaccinations that aren’t commercially feasible for pharmaceutical corporations, has been researching the coronavirus for over a decade. In December, India approved emergency use authorization for the lab’s COVID-19 vaccine, Corbevax.
Throughout his career, he has prioritized global health, notably the development of vaccines for neglected tropical illnesses. He successfully argued for more investment in managing these diseases in underdeveloped nations, despite the fact that pharmaceutical corporations have little motivation to produce new products. In 2016, he released the book “Blue Marble Health,” in which he argues that the traditional concept of underdeveloped vs. developed countries is out of date. Dr. Hotez’s most recent book is titled “Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in an Age of Anti-Science.”
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Inspiring Talks by Peter Hotez
Interview
Notable quotes
- “This is by far the king of transmissible Covid viruses. And Texas Children’s seeing unprecedented numbers of kids getting infected and going into children’s hospitals.”
- “It may be the case that in some school districts, where things are so raging right now in terms of Omicron for the next couple of weeks, and it may be prudent to delay things a couple more weeks, it’s going to be a very challenging time, people are going to have to be patient.”
- “There will be pediatric hospitalizations, and what’s going to be the other tough piece in the next weeks, keeping the schools open, because of this high transmissibility — especially if Peter Hotez starts seeing absences of school teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria staff.”
- “I wouldn’t do it now, you have got a screaming level of transmission in the Northeast, in New York City and Washington, D.C. Trying to open schools at this point, it’s hard to imagine how things will go well.”
- “If you’ve only gotten two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, even though that officially counts as fully vaccinated, we know that its impact on breakthrough symptomatic illness is close to zero.”
- “If there’s a dramatic drop, that’s one thing. If there’s a modest drop, it means that the third immunization will hold and we won’t need to make a specifically designed booster.”
- “It’s more of a theoretical concern, but it’s something to keep in mind, I think I would be concerned about taking this drug if I were pregnant.”
- “The big concern there is that it may not be as effective as it would be if they received it after six months.”
- “It is concerning they got a higher dose, and they have to be monitored, but they should do really well, there is a lot of data out there now in 5-year-olds and older.”
- “From the data from Israel, I come out strongly in favor of the boosters.”