Libertarian Dr. Rand Paul Tries To Out-Crazy Chris Christie On Vaccines

Rand Paul, a medical doctor – ophthalmologist, actually, – by training, has an even more ridiculous position on vaccines than Chris Christie.

Today Chris Christie made some ridiculous remarks about vaccines, in another episode of his hat tipping to the anti-vaccine mob. The New Jersey governor and likely 2016 presidential candidate for over five years has ben careful to woo the anti-vaxxers, folks who ignore a plethora of scientific evidence to insist they should not vaccinate their children because, autism. 

Christie called it a “choice” and called for balance, but backtracked later to add that for a disease like measles, he thinks parents should vaccinate their children.

Rand Paul, who graduated, believe it or not, from the Duke University School of Medicine and is a former ophthalmologist, has a different take on vaccinating kids.

Don’t. Or do. Or whatever, but it should be completely “voluntary,” the Kentucky Republican and son of conspiracy theorist and former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul says. 

“I’m not anti-vaccine at all,” Senator Paul told far right wing talk radio host Laura Ingraham, “but particularly, most of them ought to be voluntary. What happens if you have somebody not wanting to take the smallpox vaccine and it ruins it for everybody else? I think there are times in which there can be some rules, but for the first part it ought to be voluntary.”

This claim that parents, the vast majority of whom are not medical doctors, should somehow pick and choose which vaccines their children should be inoculated with is madness. There is no link between autism and vaccines, as medical science has proven time and time again. The one study that purported to show it was debunked, its author was stripped of his medical license, and a British medical journal labeled it an “elaborate fraud,” and “a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.”

Yet for years now, parents have increasingly been given leeway to not vaccinate their children, because, well, for absolutely no good reason, as Dr. Paul knows quite well.

Listen:

 

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