Call comments by Chris Christie and Rand Paul ‘disappointing’ and say the safety of vaccines is ‘closer to whether the sun’s going to rise tomorrow’

Medical experts responded to zigzag statements by Republican presidential hopefuls on Monday about the supposedly unsettled science of vaccines with a single-word answer: no.



No, there is no link between vaccines and autism. No, the science is not up in the air. And no, people who might very well run to lead the country should not still be saying this, the experts said.

Leading Republican politicians have been drawn into a row over basic public health policy after senior party figures questioned the wisdom of vaccination during an alarming measles outbreak in the United States.

Measles cases in 14 states have been tied to an initial case in December at the Disneyland theme park in southern California. Confirmed cases include five Disney employees. The Centers for Disease Control counted 102 measles cases total in January following the worst year for measles since its elimination was documented in the United States in 2000, with 644 cases recorded in 27 states in 2014.

Concerned that the Republican candidates’ statements could slow or sabotage the effort to end the outbreak, doctors and academics issued a sharp rebuke. On Tuesday morning, the top Republican in the House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner, was drawn into the controversy when he was asked by reporters where he stood on childhood inoculation.

“I don’t know if we need another law, but I do believe all children ought to be vaccinated,” Boehner said.

Measles vaccine row escalates as GOP hopefuls and Obama differ on advice Read more

New Jersey governor Chris Christie kicked off the controversy by saying that in setting vaccinations policy, the government must strike a “balance” between public health and parental discretion. A spokesman issued a later statement saying: “With a disease like measles, there is no question kids should be vaccinated.”

Later on Monday, Kentucky senator Rand Paul – who is an ophthalmologist – said on CNBC that he had “heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines”, and argued that “most of them [vaccines] ought to be voluntary”.

Dr John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley school of public health, said politicians’ misleading messages on vaccines were “disappointing”.

“The science is so solid on the fact that there is no association between vaccination and autism, any vaccine and autism,” Swartzberg said. “It is more solid than our science in most other areas. I think the science is very strong for climate change. And I think the science for the safety of vaccines is even stronger. It’s closer to the perspective of whether or not the sun’s going to rise tomorrow.”

Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the science was “utterly conclusive, completely conclusive”.

“I think what you can say about science is that truths emerge,” Offit said. “Gravity is not a theory anymore. Evolution is not a theory. Heliocentrism is not a theory. There are truths that emerge. And this is a truth.”

The science is built on an exceptionally strong, internally consistent and large body of experiments around the world, Offit said.

“This has been done now in 14 separate studies, on three different continents, involving hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children,” Offit said. “The answer is always the same. You are not at greater risk of getting autism if you received a [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine than if you didn’t. All you’re doing, by choosing not to vaccinate with an MMR vaccine, is increase your risk of getting measles or mumps or German measles, and not in any way decreasing your risk of getting autism.”

Other medical researchers agreed that one reason the public seemed ill-equipped to make judgments about vaccines and autism is that in the United States, diseases such as measles are very rare.

“If you haven’t seen it and it is something that is so rare, you don’t fear it any longer; you don’t respect it, maybe,” said Dr Tara Smith, an associate professor of epidemiology at Kent State University. “Because you haven’t seen a friend or relative die from measles or even get very sick from it and be hospitalized.”

Swartzberg said that some developing countries face measles threats today analogous to what the US faced more than 100 years ago.

“Recognize that at the turn of the 20th century in the United States, measles in very young children carried about a 10% mortality rate. It was a very serious disease in very young children,” Swartzberg said. “Today, in the developing world, the mortality rate in very young children is around 10%. So measles is not just an annoying five days or so of fever and a bad rash and a terrible cough and feeling miserable, and then coughing for a few weeks after that. It’s much more than that.”

In advance of a hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican, warned of a “significant” public health challenge from under-vaccination.

“Too many children and young adults are not getting a safe vaccine that works to prevent measles while the broader population is being vaccinated with a dose this season that marginally protects against the flu,” Murphy said in a statement.

Swartzberg supports encouraging vaccinations by requiring parents who seek a religious or philosophical dispensation for their child to participate in mandatory counseling sessions with qualified health professionals.

“I think that public health always has to be sensitive to autonomy, and the autonomy of the parents,” Swartzberg said. “That said, I think that we can tighten up tremendously the requirements on immunization if people are going to be using our schools, for example.

“When parents make the decision not to immunize their child, they’re making a decision for another human being who can’t make the decision for themselves, because they’re too young to make an informed decision. They’re taking that responsibility. The child is not participating in a decision that affects his or her life. Furthermore, parents … are going to put other children at risk if their child comes down with measles.

“And I think there’s a major ethical issue there.”

Doctors of medicine weren’t the only critics to come down hard on the latest outbreak of Republicans questioning science. Likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pounced on Christie and Paul’s comments on Twitter. “The science is clear,” she wrote late Monday. “The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let’s protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest.”

The tweet had tens of thousands of retweets and favorites by Tuesday morning.