INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Looking back, Offit said he was sandbagged
He lied about who he was; he lied about what he was doing
He was just wanting to set me up," Offit said.Although that was the only time they had ever spoken, Kennedy has continued to disparage and
malign Offit over the years
In his book dedicated to denigrating Fauci, Kennedy spends plenty of time spitting insults at Offit, calling him a "font of wild industry
ballyhoo, prevarication, and outright fraud." He also makes the wildly false claim that RotaTeq "almost certainly kills and injures more
children in the United States than the rotavirus disease."Understanding that Kennedy is a germ theory denialist and terrain theory embracer
"There is no shaking him from that," regardless of how much evidence there is to prove him wrong
And so any time anybody disagrees with him, he goes, 'Well, of course, they're just in the pocket of industry; that's why they say
that.'"There are some aspects of terrain theory that do have a basis in reality
And, with recent advances in understanding the microbiome, it has become clear that imbalances in the microbial communities in our
gastrointestinal tracts can also predispose people to infections.But, on the whole, the evidence against terrain theory is obvious and all
Terrain theorists consider disease a symptom of an unhealthy internal state, suggesting that anyone who gets sick is unhealthy and that all
disease-causing germs are purely opportunistic
This is nonsense: Plenty of people fall ill while being otherwise healthy
And many germs are dedicated pathogens, with evolved, specialized virulence strategies such as toxins, and advanced defense mechanisms such
as antibacterial resistance
They are not opportunists.
