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Monday, February 29, 2016

Trump, Autism, Disability

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.

Previous posts have discussed Trump's advocacy of this idea.

Maggie Haberman reports at The New York Times:
He has also promoted the notion that vaccines cause autism, a claim that has been widely debunked by doctors and scientists. “Just the other day, 2 years old, 2-and-a-half-years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic,” Mr. Trump said at a Republican debate in September. When another presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann, then a Minnesota congresswoman, made a similar claim in the 2012 campaign, she was savaged by news media commentators for the remarks; Mr. Trump received little serious blowback.
Dominique Mosbergen writes at The Huffington Post:
What’s frightening, [John] Oliver added, is that “we have no way of knowing which of[Trump’s] inconsistent views he will hold in office … Will he stand by his statement that vaccines are linked to autism or his belief that Mexico is sending us rapists?” Or will he implement his plan to defeat ISIS by killing families of terrorists?
At Independent Journal, Andra Oyler recounts another candidate's meeting with her son, who has Down Syndrome.
Contrast this with Donald Trump’s horrific mocking of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a musculoskeletal disorder. How one treats those among us who are different is an indicator of character. A glimpse into the heart of the man. Trump is not just a flamboyant candidate who says outrageous things. Trump is, in every sense of the word, a bully. #NeverTrump took on real meaning for our family this week.