Donald Trump’s Latest Paranoid Conspiracy Theory: Vaccines Cause Autism

Donald Trump‘s latest paranoid conspiracy theory rant is that vaccines cause autism in children. The failed Republican presidential wannabe candidate told Fox News that he “couldn’t care less” what people — including the medical community that has found this theory to be false — think; he “knows cases” where he believes this is true. Just like Michele Bachmann, this anti-science wingnut could now be in part responsible for children not getting the medical attention and vaccines they need. Trump based his toe-in-the-water presidential campaign testing — he never actually was a candidate — last year on his birther theories, claiming that President Obama’s birth certificate was  not real, suggesting Barack Obama was a fraud.

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“Business mogul Donald Trump chose the fifth annual World Autism Awareness Day to reveal that he ‘strongly’ believes that autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are linked to exposure to vaccines,” David Edwards at The Raw Story reports:

“I’ve gotten to be pretty familiar with the subject,” Trump said. “You know, I have a theory — and it’s a theory that some people believe in — and that’s the vaccinations. We never had anything like this. This is now an epidemic. It’s way, way up over the past 10 years. It’s way up over the past two years. And, you know, when you take a little baby that weighs like 12 pounds into a doctor’s office and they pump them with many, many simultaneous vaccinations — I’m all for vaccinations, but I think when you add all of these vaccinations together and then two months later the baby is so different then lots of different things have happened. I really — I’ve known cases.”

“You know that most physicians disagree with that,” co-host Gretchen Carlson noted. “And the studies have said that there is no link. It used to be thought that is was the mercury in those vaccinations, which they have not had for years and, yet, we are at the highest number in recent time of autism. So, maybe it’s environmental.”

“It’s also very controversial to even say,” Trump acknowledged. “But I couldn’t care less. I’ve seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations and a month later the child is no longer healthy.”

Trump is not a physician, and it is remarkably irresponsible to push this theory that will only lead to more children not being vaccinated.

Last year, failed GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s dramatic fall in the polls that many believe led to her being forced to pull out of the race was directly linked to her anti-HPV vaccine comments.

In September of last year, Bachmann said, “I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter.”

Anderson Cooper called Bachmann’s claims “incredibly irresponsible,” and said, “Bachmann is spreading an all-​out falsehood here.”

 

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