There is no link between vaccines and autism. We’ve known that for years. However, if you’re running a presidential campaign largely based on warning voters of dangers that don’t exist, and then promising to protect them from said nonexistent dangers, you might as well ignore science and say there’s a link anyway.
Since 2012, Republican front-runner Donald Trump has been making the claim that vaccines cause autism. In Wednesday’s GOP debate, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked GOP contender (and pediatric neurosurgeon) Ben Carson to comment on whether or not Trump should stop making that allegation.
Carson maintained that there is no correlation between vaccines and autism. He went on to take the perfectly valid conservative position that we shouldn’t have a “big government” forcing parents to vaccinate their children.
Then it was Trump’s turn to talk. The real-estate developer relied on his vast body of medical knowledge when he responded, “I am totally in favor of vaccines, but I want smaller doses over a longer period of time.”
He didn’t get into specific details about what exactly a “smaller dose” means, so if you’re a parent considering getting your child vaccinated, you should probably make sure your local medical professional knows what the Donald Trump-approved dose is.
Trump went on to say, “Just the other day, 2 years old, 2½ years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, and now is autistic.”
Because of the technical nature of this issue, I’ll attempt to explain where this misinformation comes from. The medical community has a very cloudy understanding of what the actual cause of autism is. It’s assumed that the disorder is caused by genetics, but researchers haven’t yet been able to pinpoint the causal mechanism.
Autism usually becomes apparent during the first few years the affected children’s lives, so some researchers have suspected that the MMR vaccine might be responsible because the inoculation gets administered around the same time that autism symptoms tend to start showing up.
This hypothesis has been tested extensively, and it appears to be false.
I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014
Why does Donald Trump want us to believe in a hazard that’s not even real? After observing Trump’s antics from afar over the past four years or so, I’m convinced that his popularity is largely founded upon persuading people that there are threats out in the world that they can’t see. He then vows to protect them from those threats, thus making him the good guy.
When President Barack Obama was running for re-election in 2012, Trump was a leading voice in the group of people claiming the president wasn’t born in the U.S., despite the fact that Obama had already released his birth certificate multiple times.
By spreading a completely false conspiracy theory, people saw Trump as someone who was trying to protect them from an evil person trying to take over their country, which was exactly what Trump wanted.
An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2012
More recently, he used the same scare tactic when discussing immigration. He said, “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. ... They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.”
As it turns out, Latinos make up 17 percent of the population and account for only 9 percent of documented sexual assaults. Of course, all sexual assaults are horrific, but they are committing fewer than the number of assaults you would expect given their share of the population.
To Trump’s followers, though, he’s the hero who wants to build a wall to keep them safe.
There are plenty of scary things that do exist. Climate change is arguably the most serious issue of our time, and Trump claims it was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
The consequences of having a president who ignores real problems and embraces fake ones would be more than offensive. They'd be disastrous.
Related Links:
Thousands gather at Phoenix Convention Center for Donald Trump rally
The next Teflon president: Why Donald Trump can not and should not be stopped
Reach the columnist at cmfitzpa@asu.edu or follow @CodyFitzStories on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
