After Rand Paul and few other Republicans came out supporting the anti-vaxxer movement this past week, Fox News Sunday's host Chris Wallace asked Dr. Ben Carson, a supporter of vaccinations, if the GOP is the anti-science party.
Wallace: You are talking about this in a very clinical scientific way, as a noted brain surgeon would. Some Democrats say there’s some elements in Republican Party, both candidates and voters, who deny science, whether it is vaccinations, or climate change, or evolution. Do you think that criticism is fair?
Wallace didn't only offer up the anti-vaxxers position as the only ideal that would paint the GOP as anti-science party and included global warming and evolution deniers as well.
Carson refuted that idea based on his own support of vaccinations even though he himself is a science denier.
Carson: No, it’s not fair at all because it’s not a partisan issue. You look in California, the places where outbreaks have occurred are largely blue areas, Democratic areas where people have said you know, they don’t need them anymore. The reason they think they don’t need them anymore is because we've had such an effective vaccination program that you’re not seeing diseases. But now that you’re getting large pockets of people who are not vaccinated, the opportunity exists to reintroduce the disease. It’s not a Democrat or Republican issue at all. A lot of people want to make it a partisan issue.
Glenn Beck just said the measles outbreak was a federal government hoax and conspiracy to control people. par Robertson longs for the days when children got sick and died from measles while issuing a warning against water fluoridation. Chris Christie said anti-vaxxers need a voice at the table and Republcian Rep. Sean Duffy feels anti-vaxxers are being oppressed.
That would lend credence to the claim that the GOP is anti-science just based on being an anti-vaxxer, which Ben Carson is not, but let's see how Carson feels about climate change. Oh, He's not convinced:
Carson, a retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, often talks about his medical background and science during his speeches. Pressed on the fact that the bulk of the scientific communitybelieves the Earth is indeed warming, Carson pivoted. "You can ask it several different ways, but my answer is going to be the same," he said. "We may be warming. We may be cooling."
And Dr. Ben Carson is also a Creationist:
An unusual controversy has erupted at Emory University over the choice of famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson to deliver this year’s commencement address because he does not believe in evolution.
Nearly 500 professors, student and alumni signed a letter (see full text below) expressing concern that Carson, as a 7th Day Adventist, believes in creationist theory that holds that all life on Earth was created by God about 6,000 years ago. It rejects Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is the central principle that animates modern biology, uniting all biological fields under one theoretical tent, and which virtually all modern scientists agree is true.
Carson has spoken publicly about his views on evolution and creationism, once telling a convention of the National Science Teachers: “Evolution and creationism both require faith. It’s just a matter of where you choose to place that faith.”
There's nothing partisan there. Science isn't based on faith, but research. Anti-vaxxers have strech to all types of people, but not to the political parties of today.
