In the video above Senator Rand Paul, considered by many to be a viable and serious presidential candidate for 2016, plays both sides of the street. On one hand be pays homage to the scientific breakthrough of vaccines and their importance to public health, and on the other hand he spreads falsehoods and disinformation about vaccines that suppress their use.
When some uses the word ‘but’ you need to pay close attention. In most cases what follows that word is a negation of what went on before. Several times in the video Rand Paul praises vaccines and then with a ‘but’ turns on them in his friendly, folksy ‘gosh, I just love freedom’ manner.
There are three major flags in his discussion of vaccines in this piece.
1) He insinuates that simultaneous vaccinations are a bad thing, referring to spreading out the scheduled for his own children. There is NO evidence that multiple or simultaneous vaccinations are unsafe or compromise the immune system of the vaccinated. Spreading out the vaccinations creates no benefits and leave gaps for possible infection.
2) Senator Paul stress that Hepatitis B is transmitted by sexual activity and blood transfusions. This is true, but is a prevarication. There are multiple methods of transmission and infection for Hepatitis B that place children and new borns at risk. It is typical of a social conservative to show reluctance at vaccines that interact with a person’s sexual life, such as the HPV vaccine.
3) His worst offense and the one that has generated a bit of a media controversy from this interview is the senator repeating the idiotic and ignorant canard that vaccines can cause mental retardation. The day after this interview he has tried to ‘walk back’ the comment by asserting that he did not says that vaccines caused mental retardation merely that they were, his words, ‘temporally related.’ Instead of manning up and talking the heat for saying a damn stupid thing, he’s insisting that you should believe him and not your lying ears,

It is true that he praised vaccines in the interview; it is true that his children are vaccinated, and it is also true that he repeated and insinuated anti-vaccine myths, either because he himself believes them or he believes that it plays well to people who matter to him.

Either way it looks like Rand Paul thinks you’re stupid.