Rahul K. Parikh is an American pediatrician practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area,[1] and who is also employed by Kaiser Permanente in Walnut Creek, California, as the associate Physician-in-Chief of Patient Education in the Diablo Service Area.[2] He writes a regular column, called "PopRX", for Salon about various medicine-related topics.[3] He has also written for CNN about how vaccines do not cause autism, and how important he considers it to be for parents to get their children vaccinated,[4] and for the Los Angeles Times about the effectiveness of workplace wellness programs.[5] Parikh has also written an article for The New York Times about neonatal intensive care units and whether or not prematurely-born infants born between 23 and 26 weeks of gestation should be resuscitated.[6]
Parikh grew up in Orange County, California, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a degree in molecular biology. After graduating, he took a year off from college, attended Tufts University School of Medicine, and completed his residency in pediatrics, first at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,[7] and then at a hospital in Mumbai.[8]
Parikh is an outspoken defender of vaccinations, and has described anti-vaccine pediatrician Robert Sears as someone whose "understanding of vaccines is deeply flawed," that his Vaccine Book "is a nightmare for pediatricians like me," and "is peppered with misleading innuendo and factual errors." He also writes that "Sears misleads parents," using "tactics [like] soft science, circular logic, reporting rumors and outright falsehoods."[9]
Parikh is married and has two daughters.[1]