Rand Paul needs to stop distorting truth about vaccination


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Rand Paul has been sucked deeper into the loony lagoon.

Despite being busy advocating for a return to the gold standard, claiming Ebola can be contained through free market mechanisms and asserting that the Department of Education is unconstitutional, Rand Paul has decided to make another wild assertion — that vaccinations should be voluntary because they cause “mental disorders.”

For starters, there is no link whatsoever between vaccines and mental disorders. As a matter of fact, the CDC reports, “There is strong evidence that MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] vaccine is not associated with autism.” One would think that Paul, a trained medical professional, would have learned the fundamentals of human biology (or at least how to read a peer reviewed academic journal), and publicly supported the scientific consensus that vaccines are incredibly beneficial substances that effectively combat highly contagious and often deadly diseases. Evidently not.

But allow us to accept this completely and utterly false premise that vaccines cause mental disorders. What would happen if people completely stopped vaccinating their children?

Before the polio vaccine was created, half a million people worldwide were killed or paralyzed every year from the illness. Before the mumps vaccine, over 150,000 mumps cases were reported every year, a disease that causes complications like permanent deafness. Smallpox, before it was eradicated through vaccines, would blind and kill as much as 60 percent of those infected with it. So which is better? Mentally handicapped, or paralyzed, blind, deaf or dead?

What is most upsetting about Paul’s announcement is that, besides spreading dangerous misinformation, it politicizes medical and scientific fact. Less than 24 hours after President Obama encouraged parents to vaccinate their children, Paul made his statement. To assert that this action was done out of a concern for “freedom” and not a chance to politically polarize himself from the President is absurd.

There are some places that politics do not belong, especially in muddying scientific truths that protect the health and safety of this nation. Paul, in his eagerness for volunteerism, should realize it’s time for him to voluntarily shut up.

Sarah Green is a sophomore majoring in economics. Her column, “Power Politics,” runs Mondays.