Today’s post is about a stance that Donald Trump has repeated many times in the past, but has not mentioned recently. Vaccines are an important issue to me, so I decided on an infrequent throwback edition called What Donald Trump Lied About Last Year. His stance against vaccines plays into an overall distrust of science that could really impact the US if he is elected President.
Let’s begin by saying that Centers for Disease Control and the overwhelming bulk of scientific evidence say that vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines have saved millions of lives over the years and there is no proven link between vaccines and autism.
Donald Trump believes otherwise. While not completely against vaccines, he seems to think that vaccines are given in “massive doses” that are “meant for a horse.”
“Autism has become an epidemic. Twenty-five years ago, 35 years ago, you look at the statistics, not even close. It has gotten totally out of control,” Trump said at a Republican debate in 2015. “I am totally in favor of vaccines. But I want smaller doses over a longer period of time. Same exact amount, but you take this little beautiful baby, and you pump—I mean, it looks just like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child, and we’ve had so many instances, people that work for me.”
Here are a few tweets from 2014, when he really seemed to become interested in the anti-vaxer movement.
Donald Trump is not pushing to ban vaccines, but has publicly and repeatedly linked them to autism. He is not a medical doctor and doesn’t seem interested in numerous studies that say otherwise. That doesn’t stop him from giving his opinion on the dose and schedule of childhood vaccines.
This disregard of science and the scientific method shape his policies, and plays into other areas like his denial of climate change. He is basing his opinions on anecdotes and conspiracy theories instead of the massive body of legitimate research that has definitively denied a link between autism and vaccines.
Sources:
https://www.romper.com/p/everything-donald-trump-has-said-about-vaccines-is-silly-dangerous-15735
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism.html
Jill Stein and Donald Trump are both linked to a dangerous anti-vaccine myth that just won’t die
What Donald Trump Lied About Yesterday 