Rand Paul and the Anti-Vaxxers of the Right

By the end of Tuesday, Republicans from Dr. Ben Carson to Kentucky Senator Rand Paul were proclaiming their faith in vaccines. Paul even brought New York Times reporter Jeremy W. Peters along as he got a booster shot. Some of Paul's quotes ended up in a quick story about the strange political theater; some ended up in a Peters follow-up today, about Paul's long association with the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. In an interview, the AAPS's executive director, Dr. Jane Orient, suggested that the risk of mental damage from vaccines was real, and that "we have a lot of observations that are not otherwise explainable."

The Peters story (which came after an Andrew Kaczynski story in BuzzFeed) solved a small mystery: Where did Paul say he'd "heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccine?" Well, he was campaigning for Senate when the Tea Party was in full flower. The AAPS was a big presence at rallies against the Affordable Care Act, and at the time reporters asked why so many Republicans were associating with it. It was a controversy when Nevada's Sharron Angle appeared at an AAPS event, and when Paul did the same, the Courier-Journal's Joseph Gerth dove deep into its archives. Among the greatest hits: