In a March 2013 COMMENTARY essay Michael Gerson and I authored, we wrote this:
Republicans need to harness their policy views to the findings of science. This has been effectively done on the pro-life issue, with sonograms that reveal the humanity of a developing child. But the cause of scientific literacy was not aided during the recent [2012] primary season, when Michele Bachmann warned that “innocent little 12-year-old girls” were being “forced to have a government injection” to prevent the spread of the human papilloma virus, adding that some vaccines may cause “mental retardation.” Bachmann managed to combine ignorance about public health, indifference to cervical cancer, anti-government paranoia, and discredited conspiracy theories about vaccines into one censorious package.
It looks like Chris Christie and, especially, Rand Paul are picking up where Ms. Bachmann left off. In an interview, Doctor Paul said, “I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” The ophthalmologist, after stinging criticisms of his statements, made an effort to backtrack from them. “I did not say vaccines caused disorders,” Paul insisted, “just that they were temporally related. I did not allege causation.” Of course you didn’t. Just sayin’.
It might be easier to give the Kentucky Republican and libertarian more of the benefit of the doubt if he had not previously argued that mandatory vaccines were a first step toward “martial law.” One day it’s vaccines for measles; the next day it’s Tiananmen Square.
The claim that there’s a link between “profound mental disorders”–Senator Paul clearly has in mind autism–and vaccinations has long ago been shattered. (The link was asserted in a 1998 article in The Lancet by the British doctor Andrew Wakefield; it has since been completely discredited. This excellent Wall Street Journal editorial is worth reading in this context.)
This kind of fever swamp speculation will hurt Senator Paul’s reputation, which is fine by me. It’s no secret I’m not a particular fan of his. But let me tell you what does concern me about this kind of talk from Paul, as well as from Governor Christie, who earlier this week echoed sentiments he expressed in a 2009 letter he sent to potential voters in which he said he had “met with families affected by autism,” many of whom had “expressed their concern over New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation vaccine mandates. I stand with them now, and will stand with them as their governor in their fight for greater parental involvement in vaccination decisions that affect their children.” This has the effect of making the GOP look like the party of the benighted.
When probable Republican presidential candidates give voice to conspiracy theories–when they speak in ways that strike most people as bizarre and disturbing–it damages their party. In saying this, I understand that vaccinations won’t be a key issue in 2016. And a week from now, unless other Republicans make the same mistake (and to their credit it looks like most will not), the issue will die down.
But these kind of stumbles do considerably more harm, I think, than many people realize. They can break through in a way that, say, a substantive policy speech (or a dozen) does not; and in doing so they can feed a negative, even toxic, impression about a party and a political movement. Voters who don’t follow politics all that closely, when they hear stuff like this, come away thinking, “This must be the home of cranks and kooks.” Thanks to Rand Paul in particular, that charge is harder to refute than it was.
So let me conclude with a modest suggestion: Prominent Republicans–especially those who are interested in winning the GOP’s presidential nomination–should, for reasons having to do with epistemology and politics, conduct themselves in a manner that demonstrates that Republicans are at peace with, not at war with, science and medicine.
