The Weird Vaccine Panic Rand Paul Joins the Santa Monica Left by Indulging Bad Science.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-weird-vaccine-panic-1423010524?mod=hp_opinion
On Tuesday we rapped Chris Christie for his odd doubts about public vaccines amid a dangerous outbreak of measles in California. But it seems this is something of an epidemic among potential GOP presidential candidates, so perhaps it’s time for some facts about science, liberty and public health.
Rand Paul joined the vaccine follies Monday in an interview with CNBC. While acknowledging vaccines are a “medical breakthrough” and it is a “great idea” to raise “public awareness of how good vaccines are for kids,” Mr. Paul then gave credence to the conspiracy theories that have frightened parents. He suggested there is a health concern in giving “five and six vaccines all at one time” and explained that he had delayed his own child’s immunizations.
The likely presidential candidate also claimed to have “heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” He pitched all this as an “obvious” question of “freedom”: “The state doesn’t own your children. The parents own the children.” Oh, my.
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Mr. Paul is an ophthalmologist, so he should know he was broadcasting misinformation. The claims about vaccine risks go back to a 1998 article in The Lancet in which British doctor Andrew Wakefield claimed to have found a link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. But the real menace was Mr. Wakefield, whose findings were proven to be fraudulent and who was on the payroll of the plaintiffs bar. The Lancet retracted the article in 2010, and Mr. Wakefield lost his medical license.
Yet the virus of fear was released, and it infected and was carried by the likes of celebrity Jenny McCarthy and former GOP Member of Congress Dan Burton. A favorite theory of anti-vaccine activists is that too many shots at one time can overwhelm the immune system, triggering autism. Mr. Paul’s reference to mental “disorders” is a dog whistle (perhaps unintentional) to autism fears.
Vaccines do have side effects, most of them minor. In rare cases they can lead to deafness, seizures, comas or brain damage. As the Centers for Disease Control points out, these outcomes are “so rare that it is hard to tell whether they are caused by the vaccine.”
The website of the American Academy of Pediatrics contains a list of more than 40 studies that refute the Wakefield-autism claims. “These studies do not show any link between autism and MMR vaccine, thimerosal [a preservative], multiple vaccines given at once, fevers or seizures,” concludes the AAP.
One irony is that vaccine anxiety is most common in privileged communities of the liberal elite. The California schools with some of the lowest rates of immunization are clustered in the organic-food-and-yoga realms of Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. Most states provide religious exemptions to school vaccine mandates. The states that have seen vaccination rates fall are the 20 that also allow “philosophical” exemptions.
According to the CDC, in the 2013-2014 school year Colorado had the lowest share of kindergartners (81.7%) immunized for measles, mumps and rubella. The state documented that 195 exemptions were based on religion, while 3,097 exemptions came from parents with “a personal belief opposed to immunization.” In other words, the Jenny McCarthy infection.
The Democratic National Committee was quick to criticize Mr. Paul on Tuesday, accusing him of “kowtowing to the fringe rhetoric of the anti-vaccination movement.” Yet Democrats were also happy to indulge anti-vaccine parents at the height of the autism controversy.
President Obama is now telling parents to vaccinate, but as a candidate in 2008 he said that, “We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines.” He called the science “inconclusive,” which it certainly wasn’t. Hillary Clinton in 2008 responded to a questionnaire from an autism activism group with a commitment to “make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines.”
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As for Mr. Paul, he will have to avoid these libertarian dormitory passions if he wants to be a credible candidate. Government doesn’t “force” parents to vaccinate children. The states impose penalties (such as barring attendance in public schools) on those who pose a risk to public health by refusing vaccinations against infectious diseases. This strikes us as a legitimate use of state “police powers” under the Constitution. It is also a reasonable and small sacrifice of liberty to prevent the potentially fatal infection of unsuspecting infants at Disneyland.
Let’s chalk up the weird science of Messrs. Paul and Christie to a lack of information, and we’re happy to send them 13 years of vaccine editorials if they want to study up. The not-so-great measles vaccine debate of 2015 is one of those events that makes us wonder if there is such a thing as human progress. But then we live in America, so we know there’s hope.
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