There was a Republican candidate debate (opens new window) on Wednesday, and I thought it would be good to look at the wrong-headed thinking of some of the candidates regarding vaccines.

Trump

Thinks vaccinations cause autism:

"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."

"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."

"Just the other day, two 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, now is autistic."

"I’ve seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations and a month later the child is no longer healthy."

"It happened to somebody that worked for me recently. I mean, they had this beautiful child, not a problem in the world, and all of the sudden they go in and they get this monster shot. You ever see the size of it? It’s like they’re pumping in — you know, it’s terrible, the amount. And they pump this in to this little body and then all of the sudden the child is different a month later. I strongly believe that’s it."

Rand Paul

He said:

"Even if the science doesn't say bunching them up is a problem, I ought to have the right to spread out my vaccines out a little bit at the very least."

Dr Carson

Another frontrunner, Carson was asked about vaccines at the debate and said:

"there have been numerous studies, and they have not demonstrated that there is any correlation between vaccinations and autism."

"This was something that was spread widely 15 or 20 years ago, and it has not been adequately, you know, revealed to the public what’s actually going on."

"Vaccines are very important. Certain ones. The ones that would prevent death or crippling. There are others, there are a multitude of vaccines which probably don’t fit in that category, and there should be some discretion in those cases."

"You know, a lot of this is — is — is pushed by big government."

Carson is a creationist (opens new window):

"Somebody says that came from a slime pit full of promiscuous biochemicals? I don’t think so."

And he said about the eyeball:

"According to their scheme, it had to occur over night, it had to be there. I instead say, if you have an intelligent creator, what he does is give his creatures the ability to adapt to the environment so he doesn’t have to start over every fifty years creating all over again."