Paul Offit, MD; University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine |
 Autism has become a front-and-center news topic, not least because of controversy surrounding a possible relationship to infant vaccination. We are pleased to have Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, to address this issue.
In 1998 a paper published in the British medical journal, Lancet, claimed that the combination MMR vaccine caused autism. The author claimed that measles vaccine given in combination with mumps and rubella vaccines damaged intestinal epithelial cells, allowed entrance of encephalopathic proteins, and eventually damaged the central nervous system, causing autism. Since that original publication, twelve separate studies have examined the incidence of autism in children who did or did not receive the MMR vaccine—all with the same result; MMR didn’t cause autism. More recently, the use of an increasing number of thimerosal containing vaccines has led to the fear that the mercury containing preservative caused neurodevelopmental damage, including autism. Six separate studies have now examined this relationship, again showing no association between vaccines and autism. Dr. Offit will discuss strategies and challenges for communicating this information to the public. In addition to his positions at the Children’s Hospital, Dr. Offit is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is the recipient of many awards and has published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine RotaTeq, recommended for universal use in infants by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for which he has received many accolades. Dr. Offit was a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation. He is the author of five books on autism and antibiotics, including the recent Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. |
Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: The Cynwyd Club
332 Trevor Lane, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
Phone: 610-667-4524
Cynwyd Club Web site, Directions
Cost: $30 for Dues-paying Club members & their guests
$25 for Retired Dues-paying Club members & their guests
$20 for Young Alum Club Members ('00 or later)
$40 for Non-members and their guests
Reservations: via MIT Infinite Connection (by Friday, Oct. 9):
https://alum.mit.edu/smarTrans/register-login.vm?eventID=35961&groupID=158
Club Membership -- Join or Renew on-line:
https://alum.mit.edu/smarTrans/user/PayDues.dyn?groupID=158
For Questions: e-mail: mitdvoffit@gmail.com
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“Brilliant, Exciting, Innovative, Quirky, Acclaimed .” Those words describe my impression of this museum. I'm Bob Radcliffe, membership VP for the MIT Club of the Delaware Valley. November 14, join with MIT Club of the Delaware Valley in a visit to a museum that was the home and studio of Wharton Esherick, internationally known sculptor. Mr. Esherick became renowned for his work with wood sculpture in the last century, and received international acclaim for his work exhibited at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. The Wharton Esherick museum is located on a wooded hillside near Valley Forge Park.
As an added benefit for MIT Alumni and their guests, the Pyramid Club's Board of Governors is proud to extend an exclusive invitation for Pyramid Club membership to Toast to IAP attendees. The Pyramid Club is reducing the Young Executives (those 35 years of age or younger) membership initiation fee by almost 50% for Young Alumni. The initiation fee will be $250 on January 15 only (monthly dues are $102). Furthermore, $50 of the initiation fee will be donated to the MIT Club of the Delaware Valley to support scholarships for the 
The Wilhelm Gustloff was a German ship sunk with the greatest loss of life in maritime history. We are extremely pleased to join with the Explorers’ Club to hear about the diving exploration of this ship directly from the expedition’s leader, Mike Boring who, despite his name, is known as a captivating speaker.
Senator Ted Kaufman will address a joint meeting of the MIT Club of the Delaware Valley and the Delaware Section of the American Chemical Society to discuss STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education and related topics. Science and technology are critical components of several topics of current national interest. In particular, public policy addressing American competitiveness, energy independence / security, and environmental concerns requires the knowledge of the scientists and engineers who study the technical underpinnings of these challenges. MIT President Susan Hockfield and American Chemical Society Past-President Katie Hunt have both emphasized the importance of advocacy by members of the scientific community to influence the construction of sound public policy.
We are extremely pleased to have MIT Professor Daniel Nocera to speak to us on a unique view of the energy future – personalized solar energy. Prof. Nocera will discuss his innovative research in the field of solar energy. His approach to the sustainable energy challenge is to seek a solution that provides personalized solar energy—the capture and storage of solar energy at the individual level. Such a solution addresses three essentials—the energy is plentiful, it is carbon neutral, and it is secure. Personalized energy is secure because it is highly distributed and the individual controls the energy on which she/he lives. Moreover, because energy use scales with wealth, point-of-use solar energy will put individuals, in the smallest village in the non-legacy world and in the largest city of the legacy world, on a more level playing field. Finally, solar energy is plentiful and has the potential to supply the increasing global energy demand which is expected to double by mid-century and triple by 2100, reaching a total of 6 billion people.
Daniel Nocera is the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the Eni Solar Frontiers Center. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to the development of renewable energy and was named in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. He is also a frequent guest on TV (CNN, ABC Nightline, PBS, ABS Nature’s Edge, Jim Lehrer News Hour, NOVA, CBS, CNBC, Discovery Channel, The Science Channel and Plum in the U.S. and Explora and RAI in Europe), radio (NPR, Bloomberg News, CBS, BBC, All Things Considered, Here and Now, Climate Connections, Voice of America) and is regularly featured in print (New York Times, National Geographic, Forbes, Discover, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The New Republic, U.S. News and World Report, Outside Magazine, Wired, Technology Review). He currently sits on several advisory boards and in 2008 he founded Sun Catalytix, a company committed to bringing personalized energy to the non-legacy world.
The battle between juried science and pop science raged in 1875, as Thomas Alva Edison announced in the Newark NJ newspapers a new scientific finding which he called “etheric force”. Elihu Thomson (later Acting President of MIT twice between 1920 and 1923) countered Edison's announcement with a careful study published in the scientific journal, Journal of the Franklin Institute.
Join the MIT Club of the Delaware Valley for a tour of the U. S. Mint in Philadelphia. This is a 45 minute self-guided tour. View the actual coining operations from 40 feet above the factory floor and see the first coining press, used to strike our nation's first coins in 1792. Watch as they make one million coins in 30 minutes – a task that took the early mint three years! Additional tour highlights and other information can be found on the 
Join your MIT friends at one of the area’s premier summer events, The Brandywiners’ annual production at Longwood Gardens' outdoor amphitheater. This year they are performing the classic romantic comedy Guys and Dolls. The Club has its own permanent block of seats (we chose the best in the house). They will sell out quickly so send your reservation soon! If our theater block is sold out, unless you request otherwise in the registration, we will do our best to get the best seats still available. Your tickets will be mailed in late July.
Hello Everyone,
!!! Due to an almost-immediate fill-up of our "Bluejeans & Flashlights" tour WE HAVE ADDED A SECOND TOUR, STARTING AT 9:00. Register promptly for this new tour, as its size is also strictly limited. We will still hold a "traditional" tour -- now postponed to 2011-- focusing on the performance area, history and grand public areas.
We will be privileged to have John Kelleher of Lockheed Martin present a technical view of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) -- critical components of modern warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. In operation, various sensors and formats are used which incorporate industry-leading commercial broadcast technologies to capture terabytes of video data. The vast amounts of video information gathered in this way then need to be collected, archived, searched, and analyzed in order to provide rich operational knowledge and actionable intelligence.
