A Couple of Points on the Recent GOP Debate

 Picture from Media Scrape

For the sake of disclosure, I did not actually watch the debate, but I still feel compelled to comment on a couple things.

First, Michelle Bachman made this comment on Governor Rick Perry's policy of instituting mandatory HPV Vaccination in the state of Texas after the debate to Fox News:

"There's a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result. There are very dangerous consequences."

I am not an expert on medicine or vaccines and thus, I do not have much of an opinion on the HPV vaccine per se, nor do I have an opinion on this policy in Texas (it appears both sides have legitimate points). 

However, I am an expert on individuals with Intellectual Disabilities, and I can tell you that there is no link between the HPV vaccine (or any vaccine for that matter) and Intellectual Disabilities.  So, what cause one to become Intelectually Disabled?  There are numerous causes that range from likely to definite:

• Infections (present at birth or occurring after birth)
  • Congenital CMV
  • Congenital rubella
  • Congenital toxoplasmosis
  • Encephalitis
  • HIV infection
  • Listeriosis
  • Meningitis
• Chromosomal abnormalities
  • Chromosome deletions (such as cri du chat syndrome)
  • Chromosomal translocations (a gene is located in an unusual spot on a chromosome, or located on a different chromosome than usual)
  • Defects in the chromosome or chromosomal inheritance (such as fragile X syndrome, Angelman syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome)
  • Errors of chromosome numbers (such as Down syndrome)
• Environmental
  • Deprivation syndrome
• Genetic abnormalities and inherited metabolic disorders
  • Adrenoleukodystrophy
  • Galactosemia
  • Hunter syndrome
  • Hurler syndrome
  • Lesch-Nyhan syndrome
  • Phenylketonuria
  • Rett syndrome
  • Sanfilippo syndrome
  • Tay-Sachs disease
  • Tuberous sclerosis
• Metabolic
  • Congenital hypothyroid
  • Hypoglycemia (poorly regulated diabetes)
  • Reye syndrome
  • Hyperbilirubinemia (very high bilirubin levels in babies)
• Nutritional
  • Malnutrition
• Toxic
  • Intrauterine exposure to alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, and other drugs
  • Lead poisoning
  • Methylmercury poisoning
• Trauma (before and after birth)
  • Intracranial hemorrhage before or after birth
  • Lack of oxygen to the brain before, during, or after birth
  • Severe head injury
• Unexplained (this largest category is for unexplained occurrences of mental retardation)

Now, I don't want to say for sure that Michelle Bachman lied when she told that story about the woman in the crowd.  But given the accuracy of a lot of the information that comes out of her mouth, one must take an immensely large grain of salt with her claim.

By the way, the American Academy of Pediatrics has come out refuting Bachman's claim and defended the use of the HPV Vaccine.

I also want to address something that happened at the debate that a number of people are talking about.  This is when Wolf Blitzer was asking a question to Ron Paul about giving life-saving treatment to someone who is uninsured and whether or not society has a responsibility to take care of that individual.  When Blitzer asks Congressman Paul if "society should let him die", watch how parts of the Tea Party crowd react:




The way the Tea Party has conducted themselves as a movement in the past two years ranges from comical to ignorant to just plain greedy and cruel.  It is all the more terrifying that they have not merely developed into a major political force in American politics, but they are now the controlling block in one of the political parties of our two-party system.  The dangerous and troubling fact of what the Tea Party (and thus GOP is today) is best described by Andrew Sullivan in a recent post about this incident:

"Of course, even if such libertarian purity does make sense, that cannot excuse the emotional response to the issue in the crowd last night. Maybe a tragedy like the death of a feckless twentysomething is inevitable if we are to restrain healthcare costs. But it is still a tragedy. It is not something a decent person cheers. Similarly the execution of hundreds, while perhaps defensible politically and even morally (although I differ), is nonetheless a brutal, awful business. You don't delight in it. And the same is true of torture. Even if you want to defend its use in limited circumstances, it remains an absolute evil, no humane person would want to do it, and no civilized person would brag of it or dismiss any moral issue with it at all. And yet that is what Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney have repeatedly done. They are positively proud of their torture record.

The fish rotted from the head down. Last night, we got a whiff of the smell."