Carly Fiorina stepped into the perilous politics of vaccinations on Thursday, which has proved to be a large stumbling block for past presidential candidates.
At a town hall in Iowa, Fiorina said parents should have the right to not vaccinate their kids, but that schools should be able to exclude unvaccinated children from attending classes, according to a Time report.
“When you have highly communicable diseases where you have a vaccine that’s proven, like measles or mumps, then I think a parent can make that choice, but then I think a school district is well within their rights to say, ‘I’m sorry, your child cannot then attend public school,'” Fiorina said. “So a parent has to make that trade-off. I think when we’re talking about some of these more esoteric immunizations, then I think absolutely a parent should have a choice and a school district shouldn’t be able to say, ‘Sorry, your kid can’t come to school’ for a disease that’s not communicable, that’s not contagious, and where there really isn’t any proof that they’re necessary at this point.”
Fiorina’s answer stands in stark contrast to 2012 presidential candidate former Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. During the 2012 GOP presidential primary season, Bachmann related the story of a mother who allegedly told her that the mother’s child suffered from “mental retardation” after receiving an H.P.V. vaccine.
On the debate stage in the last presidential cycle, Bachmann and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry tussled over a 2007 executive order Perry signed mandating 11- and 12-year-old girls receive the H.P.V. vaccine. Perry claimed he made the wrong decision for the right reasons, and Bachmann argued that the executive order was an example of crony capitalism because of the governor’s chief of staff’s connections to a drug company.
More recently Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, caused a stir when he appeared to link mental disorders to vaccinations.
“I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children, who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,” Paul told CNBC earlier this year. “I’m not arguing that vaccines are a bad idea, I think they’re a good thing, but I think parents should have some input.”
Paul later invited a reporter to watch him get a booster vaccination to show he had not come out against vaccines.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has caused a ruckus for his varying answers about vaccines this year as well. In February 2015, Christie said his family chooses to vaccinate their children, but added that “not every vaccine is created equal.”
“We think that it’s an important part of being sure we protect their health and the public health,” Christie said in February, according to the Washington Post. “I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”
By April, Christie seemed to have altered his stance on the issue of government-mandated vaccinations. At a town hall in New Hampshire earlier this spring, a woman asked Christie about whether he would support conscientious objections for vaccinations in the “Live Free or Die” state.
“I cannot be someone who supports voluntary vaccination,” Christie said. “I think that would be the wrong step for the public health of our country. … I would err on the side of protecting public health through vaccine unless that vaccine was proven to be dangerous to members of the the public.”
Public health may not be the determinative factor for many GOP primary voters deciding whom to support, but the candidates’ nuanced positions about the government’s role in healthcare could help voters distinguish between the17 major candidates running for the nation’s highest office. Public opinion seems to show people have begun to view vaccines and mandates for vaccines more favorably.
A University of Michigan survey released earlier this summer found one-quarter of parental respondents perceived vaccines to be safer now than a year ago, and one-third of parents also indicated they were more supportive of school requirements for vaccination than they were in the previous year.
“Over the last year there have been high-profile news stories about outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough. These news reports may be influencing how parents perceive childhood vaccines across the country,” said Matthew M. Davis, director of the poll and professor at Michigan’s medical school, in a statement earlier this summer. “For a quarter to a third of parents to say that their views on the safety and benefits of vaccines have shifted in just a year’s time is quite remarkable. Parents’ perceptions that vaccines are safer and offer more benefits are also consistent with their stronger support of daycare and school entry requirements for immunizations.”
As the Republican Party’s presidential candidates uniformly rail against Obamacare on the campaign trail, their remarks on vaccinations and other aspects of public health may provide more insight into their thinking about the relationship between government and the private healthcare industry.
