Dr. Ben Carson, former Director Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and author of “You Have a Brain” argued that the US should be “doubly vigilant” about vaccinating children due to the dangers of an open border on Tuesday’s broadcast of “The Lead” on CNN.
Carson was asked about a statement he gave where he said “we should not allow those diseases to return by foregoing safe immunization programs, for philosophical, religious or other reasons when we have the means to eradicate them,” he explained “We already have policies in place at schools that require immunization records and things of that nature. What we have to recognize is that a lot of people are put off when they hear the word ‘government force,’ and perhaps there’s a better way to put these things, but the fact of the matter is, studies have shown us over the course of time, that the benefit-to-risk ratio for vaccination is way in the favor of doing it as opposed to not doing it.”
Carson was then asked by comments made by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on vaccines, Carson said “well, I listened to what he said and I think perhaps it’s not exactly being portrayed the way he meant it. You know, if you were to talk to him, I’m sure he would tell you that vaccines are very, very important, have made a tremendous difference in our society, it’s a public health issue, and I’m sure he would be very supportive of him. He’s simply saying we don’t want to be forced, we want to have some choice. and i think there are ways to do this in a reasonable and rational way that also involved educating the populous. there were a lot of myths going around about vaccinations causing autism and other types of things these have been dispelled. we know better now. a lot of people haven’t gotten that information. we need to make sure we make that we make that available to everyone.”
Anchor Jake Tapper then followed up, asking Carson if the measles outbreak in California was “because the people in California have been given the option of opting out, and they have a whole bunch of misinformation, they’re not getting their kids immunized.” Carson stated, “yeah…it is a good example of what happens. These are things that we had under control. We have to account for the fact that we now have people coming into the country, sometimes undocumented people, who perhaps have diseases that we had under control. So now we need to be doubly vigilant about making sure that we immunize our people to keep them from getting diseases that once were under control.”
(h/t Mediaite)
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett