Elizabeth Warren takes on Rand Paul's 'profound mental disorders'

[UCmeNdc]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not having any of your anti-vaxxer nonsense, or any of Sen. Rand Paul's anti-vaxxer nonsense either. At a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on vaccinations, Warren had some questions for the director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC:
“Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism?”
“Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines cause ‘profound mental disorders’?”

“Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines have contributed to the rise in allergies or auto-immune disorders among kids?”

“Are there additives or preservatives in vaccines that can be toxic to kids?”

“Is there any scientific evidence that giving kids their vaccines further apart or spacing them differently is healthier for kids?”

“Is there any scientific evidence that kids can develop immunity to these diseases on their own, simply by eating nutritious foods or being active?”

(Answer key: No, no, no, no, no, and no.)
Important questions, but one stood out: "Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines cause ‘profound mental disorders’?"

Rand Paul last week: "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines."

Game, set, and match go to the Massachusetts Democrat refusing to be drafted for president over the Kentucky Republican trying to rig the system to run for president without losing his Senate seat.



https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/11/1363771/-Elizabeth-Warren-takes-on-Rand-Paul-s-profound-mental-disorders

[MADem]

1. There are people here who will throw her under the bus for those remarks!

That vaccination phobia is something that (quite surprisingly, to my view) crosses party lines.

[Hortensis]

2. It sort of surprised everyone at first, but look at the kind of narrow, radical

liberal mindset that insists all GMOs are bad, all wind farms should be banned, all nuclear power plants the same, the only good ivy or good lawn is a dead one, etc. These people tend to bring to any issue a strong bias that natural is good, man-made is bad.

And then on the right, of course, is the knee-jerk anti-government bias that links vaccinations to government -- that's before you even get to the real paranoid delusionals, and evil government plots and to the hard-core anti-science types.

Plus, there's a tendency in both left and right wingers to accept stories from other people over empirical evidence, the farther out in the fringe, the stronger the tendency.

OF NOTE, the kind of people who balance the virtues and dangers of vaccinations in a pretty uniformly sensible way are MODERATES, both conservative and liberal. Fortunately for humanity, most people tend to be fairly moderate overall.

[MADem]

3. No truer words!!

Plus, there's a tendency in both left and right wingers to accept stories from other people over empirical evidence, the farther out in the fringe, the stronger the tendency.

But don't be saying that MODERATE word too loudly either, around here--that'll get you run outta town on a rail, too!

[Hortensis]

6. Or to poke the beast more -- both "moderate progressive conseratives"

and "moderate progressive liberals" tend to be sensible and balanced too.

[loyalsister]

4. That's an unfortunate headline

I applaud Sen Warren for addressing the ficticious claims.

But, foolish beliefs should not be quated with a widespread interpretation of diagnoses that real people live with. They could just as easily have said "Rand Paul's claim regarding vaccine causation of 'profound mental disorders'".
Clarifying that it is his ableist language makes a stronger statement because it calls attention to the "I'd rather my kid be dead than Autistic" mentality that drives the anti-vaxxer movement.

[Warren DeMontague]

5. Nicely done, there, on the headline.