Dr. Ben Carson was initially a voice of sanity during this week’s bizarre outburst of inanity on whether vaccinations interfered with parental prerogatives. He told Buzzfeed:
Certain communicable diseases have been largely eradicated by immunization policies in this country and 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.
Guess he couldn’t leave the wrong impression, since even as other Republicans try to make it clear they’re not objecting to measles vaccinations, Carson kinda went in the other direction (per a report from TPM’s Caitlin MacNeal) in comments to CNN’s Jake Tapper:
“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,” he said. “So now we need to be doubly vigilant about making sure that we immuMnize them to keep them from getting diseases that once were under control.”
MacNeal drily notes:
According to the World Health Organization, about 93 percent of children in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, from which a majority of undocumented children have emigrated from, have gotten a measles vaccination.
Can’t leave the “base” unsatisfied, can you?
