>> and that lawyer thought to himself, what is this system

that with so mistreat it's workers? is this not a form of slavery? now this lawyer is someone who we have come to know since. does anybody know? she was in south africa, he was from india, does anybody know who this man was? >> gandhi? >> exactly. gandhi, who we came the call the great gandhi. why do we consider him the great gandhi? what is it that he did for us? anybody? >> he helped people that were working for the those to get their rights back. >> and how did he that? in what way, what with was

philosophy? >> he went and took the eye for eye is the whole world blind? >> wonderful. >> he went on strike. >> he went on strike. >> he was in favor of peace. >> he was in favor of peace. >> yes. eye for eye makes everyone blind. you go on strike. you march. he preached, he developed this idea of nonviolence. he developed the idea that you must be pure in soul. then is how we shall fight this injustice. and that is what we call [inaudible] was the name of the movement. which means truth forth, or soul force. and for year after year he

fought these poor people who were working, they marched with him and they managed to abolish the indentured system through this philosophy. >> and so gandhi succeeded in south africa. he brought his idea of nonviolence resistance to india, he brought india to independence, who studied the ideas of gandhi? who in america studied the ideas of gandhi? >> martin luther? >> martin luther king. martin luther king took -- saw that gandhi succeeded. so if we think back to sugar and we think back to the idea that a product can link you to the person that produced it, sugar is responsible, again, for the -- most of atlantic slavery, for

millions of death, for horrible brutality, for an indentured system that left many, many casualties. but sugar also was used by the abolitionist, led to the ending of slavery, the first in the world. and inspired gandhi to develop the concept of nonviolent resistance which would then be used in india and come back to america. so if you go now -- when you do and look at the label on the candy bar that you eat, or the cereal that you have in the morning, and it says sugar, you will know that in that one word is magic. is spice. is slavery. is freedom. is science. that history is right there. and it's there for you to know and it's there for you to know when you think today.

what am i using? who's -- what price am i paying? who's paying a price for what i enjoy? who links me to the people of the world? and i will tell you on the cover of our book, these children carrying sugar canes is now. this is in the dominican republic today. this is not 100 years ago. this is now. so when we talk about the price of the things that we enjoy, if we honor those people who ended slavery, and if we honor those people who fought for nonviolently for change, we can also think about the products we use, and what choices we can make to honor those who suffer to give us pleasure. and that's -- you know, martin luther king wrote in the letter from birmingham jail that we are all link the in a web.

we are all linked in a web. and we see that in this product. which we eat every day. and that was the story that we tried to tell in sugar changed the world. so i hope it's been useful for you. [applause] [applause] >> we have time for a few questions. >> sure. >> very well. what we have time for a few questions. three from academy and three from ms61 perhaps? >> sure. >> can you do the mike? >> yeah, go for it. >> ms. budhos, how did you feel when you went past where you use to work and it was a car place? >> oh where my family's home once was. he's referring to the story that i had always heard about my

beautiful, beautiful family house. that was built with my family's success right in these sugar lands. and the house is gone. it had been torn down. and, of course, i felt very, very sad because there was no house. and yet at the same time, there's two things. in the tropics, things fall down pretty quickly. they don't last as long as we think. we have houses of bricks that last forever; right? in the tropic, the wooden things come and go. but the other thing i had to accept is that was history. that was another time. my family did well. they had this house. and, in fact, my father wound up immigrating and coming to the united states. we do move on. and it was time for the next generation to do something with that plot of land. >> i should mention if you come to our web site, we have a link to something called google lit

trips, it's on google earth, and you can go to the village that marina, the village where marina's ancestral home is. >> right. >> in the region of guy ghiana. >> how were you able to link your lives to the story of sugar? >> we started with the story of my aunt and marina's family. that began us. then we started tracing all of the connections from there. >> what is the most significant thing that you guys learned from writing the book? >> you know, for me it was that 96%, i did not know that 96% of the enslaved africans went to the sugar lands. that really changed my view.

and i actually felt at that point, it's criminal that we don't know that. what other part of our life do we say let's study 4% and ignore 96%? no other part of our life. so that was true for me. >> i think what was true for me, i'd always known about the nonviolent movement. but i never realized it was linked to sue gash. -- sugar. we know about gandhi, we know about nonviolence. i never connected it to sugar. that was a revelation for me. >> i have a question for both of you y'all. what inspired you to write "sugar changed the world"? >> well, i think it was learning about our relatives. but also the thing is we're husband and wife. i'm mostly historian, marina is mostly a novelist. we wanted to combine our talents. we wanted to study something together. >> when you were researching,

did you come to a dead end? >> ah. good question. >> the one dead end i came to, i was looking for more information about the village, because i think it sounds fascinating. i had trouble getting as much information that i wanted. the other dead end is in the 1930s, people went to interview people who were still alive who had been enslaved in america. so we do have some interviews with people who worked in sugar slavery in louisiana. which we mention in the book. but we could not find the same voices for the sugar lands. we couldn't find people talking about what was it was like to live on a sugar plantation in haiti or brazil? >> it's mind boggling to think that 12 million came across to work and we don't have their voices. that is quite a dead end when you think about it.

which is what inspired us to do the web site where you can hear the music and the song and the rituals and the things that they were able to develop since, of course, they could not write their thoughts down about their experiences. >> do you plan to make this book into a movie or documentary? [laughter] >> someone wants to do it. we'd love to help. >> yes. >> how was it to write the book together with your different ideas? >> great question. well, as you know, as you heard, we still argue about the one paragraph and that one dent. i'm sure i wrote it. he's sure he wrote it. we actually really enjoyed it. when we went into the process, we knew that we are very different writers. marc training is as an

historian. i'm very interested in storytelling and narrative and texture and setting. but i do also love history. we went into it knowing that we each brought something different. you know, it's like having a meal. where you have the sweet part and then you have the sour part. we knew that we would bring different things to the table. >> marina is a professor in college. she teaches english. and she's a tough editor. so i would write something and she would criticize it. i would be angry. no, this is great. what are you talking about. a day later, i would say, you are right. we would go through it that way. >> this storytelling, the storytelling write the whole book? >> well, we tried wherefore we could to include personal stories. because as i said at the

beginning, this is so huge. it can be overwhelming. but we wanted to make it personal whenever we could. yes? this is being passed around. >> as an african american, i know that a part of my heritage is storytelling. is that what prompted you, is that a point that you tried to convey in the book? >> it is a sense in that we wanted to recover all of the stories. in particular, when we keep talking about the experience of the sugar lands, i mean one thing as you all know that's happening now is more and more people are coming to america from the caribbean. more and more people are coming to american that have a caribbean background. more and more people are coming to america that are hispanic. which means almost anything. but also can mean having this background. and wemented -- we wanted those stories to begin to be told. we are hoping that people who perform these music, bomba and

who dance [inaudible] will bring their arts into the school so that we can all share and experience the beauty that came out of so much pain. >> last question. >> when did slavery start to be about race? >> that's a great question. i happen to have written a whole other book on that. basically in the initial years when africans were sold into slavery, the europeans actually used one group of africans to guard another. because the africans had no sense of race. they just had their old, you know, i don't like the next group over. just like the europeans didn't like the next group over. it was only after hundreds of years that the sense of difference became attached to skin tone rather than language, religion, belief, kingship, geography, all of the other ways that we divide. so actually race in it's modern

sense, the way we think about it, was only invented in the late 1700s. it's a very, very late and new idea. >> let's give mr. aronson and mr. budhos another run of -- round of applause. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. >> and the teachers for bringing you today. please. [applause] [applause] >> for more information about "sugar changed the world" and the books authors visit sugarchangedtheworld.com. up next, a look at anti-vaccine movement in the united states. dr. paul offit, chief of the infection diseases at children's hospital in philadelphia explains the reasoning and consequences of not vaccinating yourself and your children.

he speaked at the manhattan institute. it's about an hour. >> i was a resident in pediatrics in children's hospital in pittsburgh in the 1970s. at that time, we would every week as in interns and residents, she children who would come into the hospital infected with a bacteria called influenza type b, or h.i.v., it was the common cause of bloodstream infection, and common cause of something called open glow triotus, when the wind pipe would swell up and cause suffocation. we saw it every week. it was our life as interns and residents. but the late 1980s, the vaccine was developed to protect against h.i.v. type b.

this was affected 20 to 20,000 children, killing many and leaves others with permanent brain damage and kidney damage. after that vaccine was produced, we went from about 20 to 25,000 cases a year, to fewer than 10 cases a year. up until recently. there was a -- just to put this in perspective, about a year ago, we had a child admitted to our hospital who had back tierian meningitis and died from the disease. every monday we have the weekly infectious disease. when we presented that case, we asked them to go through the differential diagnosis of what bacteria or virus. none of them listed h.i.v. type b. even though that is what the child had and killed this child. it was one the several children,

three specifically, that died of invasive h.i.v. type b. tied because the parents were frightened of the vaccine than the disease. it's a testament to how successful we've been that the residents or fellows didn't even -- that bacteria didn't even come to mind. but this isn't the -- the outbreaks of h.i.v. type b which have occurred not only in philadelphia, but also in minnesota and a couple other of states, it's not unique, because there have been other outbreaks. we have a measles epidemic, in the 1990s, mumps in new york and new jersey which involved 1500 people leaving several death, we've had pertussis and whooping cough, it caused ten young babies to die.

it's the biggest in california that we've seen since 1947. why is that? why is it that we've come to fear vaccines to the level that we now have outbreaks of infectious diseases that we have come to see this live-saving medical product as something to be feared rather than embraced? and i argue in this book that i think the birth of the american anti-vaccine movement occurred on one specific day. and i think that day was april 19th, 1982. because on that day, there was a one hour television documentary that aired on wrc tv 4 in washington, d.c., which was an nbc affiliate. it was called "dpt vaccine roulette" it stands for diphtheria pertussis vaccine. they made famous films and

documentary. it had that quality. the stories were one of parents and they were all of the same. the parents told the story, my child was fine, they gold this vaccine, and now look what happened. you would see very up close the children who had mental retardation, who had a permanent seizeture, withered limbs, who were wearing bicycle helmets who were seizing and looking up into space. it was dramatic. it was like a sort of richard avedon film or picture. you were far intimately involved than you could stand. it was emotional and gripping. and it had an affect. there were a few people in the northern virginia obvious washington, d.c. area that day, including barbara fisher, kathy williams, and jeff schwartz what got together through the local nbc affiliates who got shows that called it in to get

together. they very quickly formed a group called dissatisfied parents together, dpt. they had changed their name to the national vaccine information center in the 1990s which barbara was the head. this group was powerful enough and connected enough within one month of the show's airing, there was congressional hearing headed by paula hawkins, who is since deceased. he's a republican senator from florida who was looking into whether or not vaccines, in fact, were doing more harm than good. the result was predictable. there was a flood of litigation claiming that vaccine not only caused epilepsy or mental retardation, but unexplained comas, sudden infant death, and other illnesses to the points there were hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and awards and companies were large abandoning the business. we went from six measles containing vaccine makers to

one, we went from three oral polio vaccine makers to one. we went from eight whooping cough vaccine makers to one. we went on the verge of losing vaccines. the government stepped in and created something called the national childhood vaccine act which basically created the compensation program who put up a wall between the parent and the pharmaceutical company. you had to first go through this federal claims court before you could actually sue a pharmaceutical company in open court. but it had an affect. we went from 27 vaccine makers in 1955 to 18 vaccine makers in 1980 to basically five vaccine makers today. although i think the national act saved vaccine, the event that occurred in the 1980s was a tremendous hit. what's interesting about that to me is that at the time in john straus membered this, he covered the story, we didn't have the

science to go up against the contention. the fear that looking at hundreds of thousands of children who didn't receive to see whether the incident was greater. it look really ten years for the science to mature. by the time it matured, we now know that the vaccine never caused brain damage. an interest is it took another 15 years to figure out who really was happening. basically in 2006, almost 25 years after that event, after that television show, you now had in hand, the kind of genetic probes to allow you to look at those children to see what really was the cause of epilepsy and retardation. that work was done at university of melbourn, he found that almost all of them had a scn

mutation, this was genetic mutation which had 100% penetration. they will independent of vaccines. vaccines don't cause. that public work was published in 2006 and got absolutely no media attention. i mean when you think about the media attention that was accorded, dpt vaccine roulette in magazines, newspapers, "today show," "20/20" now fast forward to where you have the answer to the question, and not a single journalist covered the story. remarkable. what's happened is the dissatisfied parents together when they became the national vaccine really became the one stop shop to scare parents. every time a new vaccine was introduced on to the market, the national vaccine information center was there.

when the h.i.v. vaccine was introduced in the 1990s, barbara fisher claims it caused diabetes. it doesn't. when the hepatitis b was first introduced, there again was barbara fisher on "world news tonight" claiming that the vaccine caused sudden infant death or multiple sclerosis. there was a "20/20" on the role giving advice, making the claim it was causing permanent harm. these were emotional shows. the show on "20/20" when hugh and barbara were the host, the mother that had given and within a day passed away. the mother said my child was fine. now the vaccine killed her. then they showed the tomb stone, you know, the encryption our

little angel. anyone who is human is going to be moved. maybe this is a vaccine that should be avoided, even know we clearly now it doesn't cause sudden infant death. it's only designed to prevent one specific path again. it doesn't protect everything else. some of them are going to happen with the vaccine, but not cause it. >> the greatest hit of vaccine has been the human papillomavirus. the only vaccine that caused the uterus cancer. they claim they were fine, then they got the human papillomavirus, and they developed chronic fatigue and blood clots and heart attacks. data now clearly shows the vaccine doesn't do that. but, you know, it's again their

powerful stories and people who are choosing not to get that vaccine because of those stories who put themselves at getting the risk of cervical cancer 20 to 25 years from now. as you all know, probably the biggest hit i think, or certainly who most people are embraced as a chance -- as a consequence, the vaccines cause autism. we have gone one to the next. ten years ago it was the measle/mumps/rubella, that myrrh offed to the mercy, which is now morphed to the general vague fear too many too soon, and maybe we should space them out and separate them so we don't put children at risk. by doing that, all we do is increase the period of time which children are susceptible, which are at least in certain pockets on the increase without offering any benefit. so i think that now what you

have is just a fall out is you have parents that have a vague notion that vaccines might be doing harm. it's estimated that four of ten parents are choosing to delay one or more vaccines and now you are starting to see these outbreaks. i will say that i think there is a role for conservism in vaccines. i think probably the best example of that is the oral poll owe owe owe -- polio vaccine. it was developed and used from the 1960s to the lite 1990s. that vaccine was a rare cause of polio. it caused it, it's the only live vaccine that has the capacity actually to revert to so-called neurotype and caused polio that is indisestablishable from clinical polio. we eliminated polio. every year, we would see six to eight cases caused by the

vaccine. one the children who suffered from the vaccine was a child named david solomon. his father was john solomon who had worked with the italian american foundation in new york. he made this a cause. i was actually on the polio vaccine working group at the cdc in the late 1990s. he was asked to be on that group. i can tell you his voice of important. when we moved from the late 1990s to the inactivated vaccine, and eliminated even this rare cause of polio caused by the vaccine, john solomon had everything to do with that move. i think vaccine activism is important. as any consumer activism is yes or no. it has to be science-based. you can't make stuff up. you can't say that you want vaccines to be safer so they don't cause autism. you can't make them safer if it doesn't cause the thing that you are arguing for. i do think that in some ways the

pendulum is swinging back. i think that the media feels a little, and i guess i shouldn't speak from the media. i don't work for the media. i think the media has gotten a little bit more suspicious about some of this anti-vaccine rhetoric. certainly the autism story is no longer carried by mainstream media as a scientific controversy. it's at most, carries the cultural controversy. i think they have gotten much better. "new york times" had articles in the 1990s, such as the "l.a. times" claiming it to be a controversy, when it wasn't. that's changed. that's good. i think you are also starting to see hospitals starting to make stronger stands. our hospital is one of them. i work at children hospital of philadelphia. last year in 2009, we decided to mandate the influenza. now we had since the early 2000s, we had really pushed to educate our health workers to get an influenza vaccines.

by health workers, anybody who walks on the floor. there are 9400 employees of the childrens hospital. anybody who would potentially walk on the floor where there would be a vulnerable child was asked to get an influenza. with a lot of conditions, we were able to get it up to the low 90% range, which puts as one of the best hospitals in the united states. we did it by raffles and giveaway, we gave away eagles tickets, not like 6ers tickets, which you can't give away. we got immunization rates up to 90%. that meant that several hundred people were choosing not and walk on the floor as the child. we said if you didn't want to get a flu vaccine in 2009, you had two unpaid weeks, we fired

people. five of them were onion employees. they took us to arbitration in may of 2009. the decision was made in september 2009 on behalf of the hospital. the reason that we did it, since 2003, we had two children that came into our hospital with cancer. they had been vaccined because it didn't matter. their immune systems were suppressed so it wouldn't work. they depended to be protected. they caught and died from the disease despite heroic measures on our part. the question is who's responsible for them? is it our responsibility to make sure that we put them in the position where they are least likely to get influenza? we think the answer is yes. we don't think it's your right as a health care worker to catch and transmit a potentially fatal infection. you could make the same argument for the pertussis outbreak in california. that outbreak has involved 9,000 people and 10 children had died.

all of the children who died were less than three months. which isn't too say they were too long. they depended on those in the home to protect them. look at the immunization rates in the home. in california, all adolescents were recommended, 40% get it. all adults who live in the home of someone of a young child are recommended to receive the vaccine, 6% get it. i'll give you an example. there was a child who came into our hospital about nine months ago, a two-month-old that got whooping cough and died. everybody else was well. of the mother got sick about two weeks after the child was born that was no doubt pertussis. when the mother delivered, the nurse came in within 24 hours and said you are recommended to receive the vaccine. the mother said i'd rather not. the nurse said okay and walked out. that was the chance to save that child's life.

and i think that moment has to be far more passionate from the clinician side, from the nurse, doctor, nurse practitioner, who let people know when they make that choice, it's a potentially dangerous one. you could argue that if parents -- parents deliver a child into the home that it be mandated that the father and the mother receive a t-dep vaccine. there are certain popup, like religious and philosophical, but you could argue that it's the only way they are going it protect that young child. and if you look at who dies from pertussis, it's always less than 6-month. their wind pipe is narrower. when it getting clogged, they die. it's the home from which they catch it. you know, you feel enormous sympathy for anyone who watches a child suffer and die. it's the worst loss in the

world. you'd never want to come down on the parent, obviously. but it's that balance to me between the sovereign right of the parent to raise the child, and the right of society to protect that child. it balances far too much on the side of the parent. it shouldn't be the parents right to transmit the potentially fatal infection to their child. so what changes all of this? you know, you hear a lot of rhetoric about trying to tighten philosophical exemptions. i think what has to change is the way we see ourselves. we see ourselves as part of the commons. which is true. we are all in this together. there are about 500,000 americans who can't be vaccinated. they can't be vaccinated because they are too young in the case of children less than six months of age for flu or pertussis, they can't because they are getting chemotherapy, or therapy

for the transplant, or asthma. you know, they steroids for their asthma. they depend on those around them to be vaccinated. if they are not, they are the ones most likely to suffer and be hospitalized and die. i think we have to find a way to appeal to the societal instinct. it's there. i think here in new york city when 9-1-1 happened, we applauded that instinct of the new york police department or fire department to save those or the people in tucson who ran forwards the gunshot to protect their fellow man. i do think it's in us. i just think we have to find a better way to appeal to it. thanks for your attention. [applause] [applause] >> do you have some time? >> sure. >> can we get the microphone please? please wait for the microphone.

thank you. >> yes, ma'am. >> with the whooping cough being epidemic, is it considered an epidemic right now? >> endemic. >> endemic. should adults get a booster shot in general in case that are exposed. >> adults are recommended, if it's been more than 10 years, you recommended to receive it. my guess is within the next few years, you will be recommended to receive every ten years. the recommend is currently that adults get t-dep. >> go to the intern? >> yes. >> they generally have a supply? >> should be. although you are right. i think we think of vaccines generally as a kids thing to do. we don't think of it as the adult thing to do. adults are terrible. i think if you went to the infectious disease, what percentage, it's going to be well less than 100%. you are right.

>> i've been having annual checkups for as long as i can recommend. what i can't remember ever being vaccinated since i was a child. i can't remember a physician recommending a inoculation. so as an adult, just which inoculations should adults have? >> right. or others? >> right, there were the pertussis, you should be getting a booster for tetanus and pertussis every ten years or will be every ten years soon. you recommended to receive a chickenpox if you never had chickenpox. if you are over 60, what you are recommended is a shingles

vaccine which will protect one the more painful and debilitating diseases of man. you are recommended to have the hepatitis b vaccine if you have never had that vaccine. interners aren't great at this. i think obstetricians aren't check. >> does your doctor recommend the flu shot? >> that's right. good point. the flu shot. and the vaccine for people at risk. [inaudible comment] >> i'm a medical oncology here in new york. congratulations for the wonderful work that you have done. [applause] [applause] >> but the problem maybe the

quote shakespeare, we can't expect the media to do our. we have read about the breast cancer drugs. the day the fda says, you know, it shouldn't be given, there was a paper in the san antonio breast cancer meeting, which is the most prestigious breast cancer conference in the world, that showed when given to women before surgery had 40% rate which involved about 5 to 30% of people. there was no reaction. they just said we can't use a medicine that's going to help about 25% of women with breast cancer. it's outrageous. media is there. we are running out which stock, which company is good. but they don't want to cover that.

number two, i went to pitt medical children, and the childrens hospital where i trained. you know the breast surgeon, this is one the great heros, inspite of all resistance, he moved women need the lumpectomimy, when he was doing the trial, he found out in 40,000 cases, one researchers in canada, the platelet counts had to 150,000. 145 is okay. great scandal. he said let me finish the trial. he went after him viciously, and he went after david baltimore, who won the noble prize and kept him out of research. and he was totally exonerated. it was outrageous at the american society of clinical

oncology, bernie fisher walked in, more operates. 10,000 people gave him a standing ovation. not a word. we should have had our spokesman screaming and yelling this was one of the great heros of modern day medicine. not a word. he was totally exonerated, and $3 billion because they fired him and it's a long story. p.s., when obama passed the wonderful health care law, where is john standing? i get mad when i say this? john dingell is standing next to the president. this man probably caused the death of women with breast cancer because the trial was delayed two or three years. when obama was passion his wonderful health care bill, he trucked out a bunch of pelicans known as doctors in white coats. did they question the expertise? when betsy mccoy had a form in new york?

>> i'm sorry. doctor. can you ask a question. >> my question is what do we do to get our message across? train physicians in public relations? how do we go about it? we are doing work that no one knows about. and we get pushed around. >> i completely agree with you that i think as clinicians and scientists we are terrible at interacting with the media. i will tell you why i think that is, and how i think we can get better at it. i think the reason it's true, certainly as a pediatrician, i'm sure you support this, we are nice people. we are not good at confrontation. bad at it even. i think as a scientist, you know, your scientific training is not only not a training to interact with media, it's the opposite of that. as a scientist, you are really taught to be very critical of your data, to be circumspect, and it's hard to make a statement. you know, you can never prove

never. on the other side, you have people like jenny mccarthy, and people who are willing to say it caused autism in this child. that is what you up against. i think as a scientific that's been funded by the national institute for health, which is public money, this is your responsibility to try and educate the public that pays you. and so i think -- but i think we've been terrible at it. we've gotten over it. we are not trained to it. i would argue we are trained toot -- trained to do the opposite of that. it's not an easy game to enter. on national television, when you are asked to take a complex issue and reduce it to the sound bite, not only does it feel wrong, it is wrong. it's intellectually honest. you have to get in the game. because the other side, the anti-science side is perfectly willing to do it. >> david? >> i like the talk, i like the work that you are doing. are there other motivations in

the vaccine than the ones we heard about? >> i think those who are -- who passionally believe that vaccines have hurt their children believe it. i think their child was fine. they got a vaccine. now they are not fine. i believe the vaccine did it is where they were coming from. they don't want other children to be heard. i think although, you know, some of the funding is a little concerning, upsetting, the agree to which personal injury lawyers and anti-vaccine activist, i think most of the parents believe what they are doing. barbara believes the child is hurt. i don't think she's lying about that. i think she's trying to help other children. the problem of the matter, it didn't cause permanent brain damage. she's advocating for something that's not science-based. she's no smart woman, media savvy, she can do a lot of good. there are issues of vaccine that

one can focus on. the flu vaccine is made in eggs. people who are severely allergic to eggs have a problem with that. could you make the flu vaccine in nonaviation cells? absolutely. the chickenpox and nasal spray, like the flu. i think if you see advocates for that, you would see changes. there are things which consumer activism would make a difference. there's painful to watch people who are so good at what they do isn't a problem with vaccines. >> also, i think you talk about in the book, there's an industry of experts that make the living testifies in this case to bad science. >> yeah, the injury compensation program has roughly $2 billion in it. that's a large and tempting pool for personal injury lawyers and those who testify on their

behalf. >> michael? >> i'm michael myers, executive director of the new york civil rights coalition. let's forget the science-based concern in society. because science is not perfect. and very often is not short term. it may require a long term studies. so if you have a vaccine today say for h1n1, and you develop a vaccine that scientists and doctors say will prevent you from getting aids, really, maybe down ten years later, 15 years later, there's somebody, the scientist, or doctor who finds and confirms the long term study that the vaccine had side affects they did not know about. so it's not just fear of vaccines, i think it's a science-based anxiety. and particularly respect to the notion because we are a society,

we believe in civil liberties. the economy of the individual. and so my question to you is what circumstances, for example, in h1n1, have become epidemic in terms of new york in subways and other kinds of things like aids, what would require people to have vaccines and make it mandatory as people go and volunteer to get their shots. >> okay. i think the question -- thank you. i think the question isn't -- the way i see it, it's not when do you know everything? it's when do you know enough? if you want to use the h1n1 novel example of 2009, that's fine. here's a vaccine that's made with technology that's been used to make influenza vaccine since france in the 1940s. this is technology that's 60 years old. we know that the influenza vaccine induces an immune

response which is protective. we know roughly how protective. the question is whether the strain would induce that same level of protection to protect what we now know. we had them come in 2009 which caused 47 million people to suffer, which caused about 250,000 to be hospitalized, and 12,000 to die among 1100 children. that ten times were children that died typically. we had five children die in our hospital from influenza. none of those children had been vaccinated. the odds are the children -- although they may have suffered, the odds are they would not have died. bless you. thank you for that audio. aim not dismissing your point. the question of could there be long-term affects certainly is an responsible one? what's an example? we've had vaccines been around for the lears -- last 2 years. the longest and best tested, and

the technology used to make it is well worn. i guess i don't share that fear. although i understand it. when you choose not to get a flu vaccine, for example, the children that died in the hospital had that choice. you take a risk. a choice to not get a vaccine is not risk. free. the question is what does that different risk look like? well, you may wait for the microphone. >> at what age would you start taking the shingles vaccine? >> 60. >> also, i saw what this man said here, about the fact that he hadn't had vaccines. i thought it was mandatory to have certain vaccines in order to go to school in this country? no? >> yes. the question is is there vaccines mandatory? there are. there are many popoffs, 48 of 50 states have a religious exemption, the 21 states have a

philosophical exemption which is to say it's against your philosophical, love of wisdom. i'm not sure where the wisdom is. i don't understand the religious exemption. the vaccine was made in 1796. the old testament was written between 400a.d., these are three major texts. none of them ever mention the word vaccine. they never predicted vaccines. i'm not sure where it comes from. christian science, 1875, 80 years of the vaccines, that specifically say pips don't think most of them who choose that exemption are christian scientists. >> everything that we have discussed so far has been about the united states. and could you provide an international perspective both on the same issues and

controversies exist elsewhere to the degree to which these populations are vaccinated in other countries and whether the vaccine city is being incured or discouraged in other places around the world? >> to put thank you. i think the united states is great at vaccinating our children. we asked our children to get vaccined. prevent 14 disease in the first two years and two in adolescents. that's 16 different. our immunizations rated are in the high 80s. we have communities that are under vaccinated where you seeing the outbreaks. and it's better than any other country to put if in perspective, if you look at other countries where vaccines were not never mandated. england basically has, measles is endemic in england. you know, mumps is endemic. that outbreak in new york and

new jersey, that came from england. that so-called mumps strain came from england to the united states from the camp counselor. the first of the american vaccine movement was in 1982 because of the fear of pertussis. that originated in england in 1973 with john wolf. immunization reached from 80 to 30%. they had 35 deaths of pertussis because of that. france actually was the birth of the notion that hepatitis b caused multiple sclerosis. they shut down their school based because of the fear which was just wrong. england, also, as you know, was the source of the notion that mmr vaccine caused autism. that was in the late 1990s. first it's the tea tax, now this. it's england. the problem is england. i'm just kidding. other countries -- if you look

at measles outbreak in 2008. the epicenter of what was in southern california. the mother takes her child to switzerland, comes back to the united states, and then proceeds to -- the children who come in contact with that child, you know, in the pediatrician and whole food store. if you ever look at vaccine outbreak or diseases, these outbreaks, the whole food store is somewhere they serve the least ironic. you know, so that was switzerland. you know, where measles was much more common. i think western europe hasn't been great, israel hasn't been great. i think our country is doing well. the problem is we are just starting to know see a fraying at the edges. the question is does this represent something bigger. did you hear something about some point? that's the question. are we hearing something now? >> thank you.

doctor, there are an estimated 10 to 15 million illegal aliens in the country. presumably many if not most have not been vaccinated, is there any danger to your public health that so many unvaccinated people walking among us? >> that certainly is part of the story in california. i mean it's not only that some people have chosen not to vaccinate, which is part. it's also that there are those who access to medical care is less and have been less able to get a vaccine. it's interesting. if you look at who chooses not to get a vaccine, it's almost the opposite of what happened in the england in the mid 1800s. where they were dealing with smallpox. if you looked at the movement in england, it was really among people who were not as well educated who fears vaccines because they didn't understand the biology of it. it's the opposite here. it's really the upper middle class well educated person who has gone to college and graduate

school who tends to have a responsible position in control who makes that choice. in philadelphia, the help population which generally is a lesser serve and less educated population, they actually get vaccines. they actually believe in the expertise of the doctors that serve them. they think the doctors may know more about vaccines than them. it's ironic. >> i wanted to ask is the general climate that makes vaccines unpopular causing us to miss opportunities like maybe the opportunities in the aids or malaria where new vaccines could really have been powerful weapons. are we under investing because of that? >> i don't think so. and i think certainly, there's a tremendous push and pull to make a malaria. as the companies -- i think the few companies that were in

vaccines made commitment. certainly the h.i.v. spent over a million dollars on the virus factor program which failed. but that was a -- they certainly were willing to spend the money. i don't think money is the problem with the h.i.v. or with malaria. so i don't think so. the good news is i think that's not true. there are fortunately not that many companies that do it. and i think that's -- well, at some level of the tremendous amount of litigation in the early '80s. >> doctor, to what extent is there an unholy alliance between the litigation and the anti-vaccine movement. >> right, when the act was created, the vaccine program was an exceptionally good fire wall between the litigant and the

jury trial. the way it works you have special masters and judges who are lawyers and special masters who at least look through the data and make a recommendation. the autism proceeding is probably the best example of that. i mean that -- there you had parents of 5,000 children, more than 5,000 children who believe that vaccines can cause autism, that was a trial that probably lasted from 2002 up until 2009 or 2010. it was a long time. a lot of money spent looking at this. the judgments were very clear and very strong. you know, vaccines don't cause autisms. so it was turned away. if that had gone to civil court, states court, i can't imagine. there were certain judicial hell holes. philadelphia being one of them. in mississippi, i think the companies would have gotten murdered. i think that's been good. there is a critical supreme court case which was heard in october which will probably be

adjudicated on february 22nd, which has in it's heart the capacity to over turn that program, the vaccine jury compensation. i don't think that's going to happen. i am very confident the supreme court will rule in favor and won't over turn. because they can't. it will be too much at stake if they made that decision. >> last question. all right. please join me in thanking dr. offit. [applause] [applause] :