How much does "Offit for Profit" earn from vaccines?

The BBC’s ‘measles expert’ Offit has already been labelled as Dr Paul “For Proft” Offit and he has stated he believes “an infant can safely receive up to 10,000 vaccines at once”. The BBC don’t tell us their measles expert Offit has already made “millions” of dollars profit from his ties to vaccines and the measles MMR vaccine maker Merck, nor do they tell us about the second court case filed last year in America regarding Merck’s MMR II vaccine.

In 2009 it was reported:

“Offit, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, earned millions of dollars as part of a $182m sale by the hospital of its worldwide royalty interest in the Merck RotaTeq vaccine. The amount of income distributed to Offit could be as high as $46 million. Offit has refused to say how much he made from the vaccine.

The high price placed on the patents raises concerns over Offit’s use of his former position on the American CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to help create the “market” for rotavirus vaccine - effectively, to vote himself rich.”

Coincidentally, the Department of Health has just successfully created a £25m market for a rotavirus vaccine in Britain, to be used on babies within weeks of them being born. It was reported last November that the government hopes to roll out GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) new Rotarix vaccine program. Rotovirus is not known to cause deaths in British infants but to cause sickness and diarrhoea. From this September GSK’s Rotarix vaccine is to be given to 840,000 babies every year in Britain, which will cost around £25m. The Department of Healthclaim they “believe” it will save the NHS £20million.

But what the BBC did not report in their current measles stories is that Dr Offit, in his position of authority on the American Advisory Commitee on Immunization Practices, voted in 1998 for drug manufacturer Wyeth's ‘Rotashield’ rotavirus vaccine to be approved to be given to babies. Just a year after the approval of Rotashield, the vaccine was linked to an increased risk of a serious bowel complication called intussusception. It was quickly taken off the market.