Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said in a 2009 interview with Alex Jones' InfoWars that mandatory vaccines for illnesses such as the swine flu could be an early step toward "martial law," and said the procedures have a long history of lethal side effects.

"The first sort of thing you see with martial law is mandates, and they’re talking about making it mandatory," said Paul. "I worry because the first flu vaccine we had in the 1970s, more people died from the vaccine than died from the swine flu."

"The whole problem is not necessarily good versus bad on vaccines, it’s whether it should be mandatory or the individual makes the decision," he said. "And sometimes you want to not be the first one to get a new procedure, you want to see if it works well before you choose."

While Paul said he would personally choose to get the smallpox vaccine again and would have taken one for polio, he said the decision to vaccinate should be left to the individual. He also said the risks of the vaccines need to be weighed against the risks of the diseases.

"You have to weigh the risks of the disease versus the risks of the vaccine," Paul said. "But I’m not going to tell people who think it’s a bad idea that they have to take it because everybody should be allowed to make their own health care decisions."

Full transcript and video below (remarks start around 15:20):