Paul decades-long member of group opposed to forced vaccines

Rand Paul, who has been mired in controversy over whether child vaccinations should be mandatory, has long been associated with a medical group that opposes mandatory vaccinations and has published reports promoting a handful of other dubious positions.

The Kentucky Republican’s association with the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons dates back to at least 1990, though the group’s executive director, Dr. Jane Orient, told POLITICO that Paul stopped paying dues when he was elected to the Senate in 2010.


“We consider him one of us, but he hasn’t paid his dues recently,” she said. Paul’s Senate office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After telling CNBC on Monday that he had “heard of many cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines” and that vaccines should be voluntary, Paul, an ophthalmologist, on Tuesday brought along a New York Times reporter to witness him getting a hepatitis A booster vaccination. He said he recognizes the scientific consensus that vaccines are not harmful.

In 2000, when Paul was a member, AAPS called for “a moratorium on vaccine mandates and for physicians to insist upon truly informed consent for the use of vaccines.”

Orient bristled at the notion that the group is anti-vaccine, but forcefully defended its stance against policies that make them mandatory.

“We are opposed to forcing people to have medical interventions; we believe we have the right to turn them down,” she said. “We don’t believe in human sacrifice, to put it bluntly.”

The group still publicly claimed Paul as a member as recently as 2013, when it celebrated his victory in the Conservative Political Action Conference presidential straw poll. The Kentucky Republican and likely presidential candidate also appeared in a teleforum for the group in 2012, and appeared on Fox News promoting one of its lawsuits in 2010.

In that appearance, he described the group as an alternative to the American Medical Association.

Orient said Paul was not a particularly active member of the group but that he did speak at one of its meetings.

The group in 2005 published a paper linking the “gay male lifestyle” to a life expectancy shortened by about 20 years, and in 2003 argued that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Paul’s connection to the group was reported in a Louisville Courier-Journal story during his successful Senate campaign in 2010.

The article noted that the group has published articles doubting the tie between HIV and AIDS, asking whether President Barack Obama is a hypnotist — based on an examination of his 2008 campaign speeches — and suggesting anti-asbestos regulations helped cause the collapse of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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