In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. And among those diseases could be COVID-19.
Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers. Even before COVID, they fought vaccine mandates and other public health measures.
J.D. Vance is one of them, as last night's debate confirmed.
Venturing into territory that some Democrats instantly flagged as anti-vaccine, Vance offered a more benign spin to those skeptical of the anti-vaccine movement, referring to his own three children and saying: “Look, so many of the drugs — the pharmaceuticals — that we put in the bodies of our children are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop, and we’re not going to stop it by listening to experts.”
He also gave a shoutout to the infamous antivaxxer, RFK Jr.
Now I'm really proud, especially given that I was raised by two lifelong blue collar Democrats to have the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, lifelong leaders in the Democratic coalition.
Vance, as has been widely reported, has carried on fatuously for years about how childless people have an insufficiently heartfelt interest in democracy and the republic. He has argued for higher tax rates on the childless, denigrated political and business leaders as “childless cat ladies,” etc., etc.
Yet when Vance was asked about vaccine mandates on Fox News during his Senate campaign in 2021, here’s what he said: “I am sick of these bureaucrats experimenting on my children because that’s what they’re doing.... If you want to experiment on somebody’s kids, Kamala Harris, AOC, and so forth, have your own kids, lay off of mine.”
As part of that same spiel, he put in a pitch for “bodily autonomy,” one of the catchphrases of anti-vaccine fanatics. “This is about doing what you want to do with your own family, with your own rights,” he said.
