Emily Willingham writes at Forbes:
Last week, reporters at the Washington Post filmed an interview with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein that began with one question: Do you think that vaccines cause autism?
In her reply, Stein never, ever addressed the question. Instead, she appeared reluctant to come down firmly on the side of evidence she seemed to acknowledge. She confirmed the importance of vaccines while at the same time using dog whistle terms and equivocations bound to appeal to the “antivaccine” constituency, a dangerous and compromised approach
As it turns out, her reluctance to anger what is probably a sizable proportion of her putative constituency was well founded. She likely felt she was in quite a bind, with a tension between what she owed her reputation as a physician versus what she knew a lot of these people wanted to hear.Eve Peyser writes as Gizmodo:
Today, Dr. Stein responded to a tweet that asked her to clarify her beliefs on the matter ...
It seems that between 4:54PM and 4:59PM—@twitersgoodboy confirmed the legitimacy of the screenshots—Stein revised her response from “There’s no evidence that autism is caused by vaccines” to “I’m not aware of evidence linking autism with vaccines.”
