Michele Bachmann Jumps the Shark by Suggesting HPV Vaccine Can Cause "Mental Retardation"

RUSH: Perry goofed up by using an executive order on the Gardasil -- there's no question he goofed up on it -- instead of taking it to the Texas legislature. He's admitted that over and over again. I think one of the reasons that Perry gets tired is that he had all the questions. He had to answer every question three or four times last night, and he did it smiling. I tell you, I would have probably (by the third or fourth time they came at me on this) have said, "What more do you need to hear on this? What more do you want to know? There was an opt-out! If anybody didn't want to take it, they didn't have to." There was an opt out. So the next time, I'm gonna have to issue another warning: "Not only don't go bother with this Social Security Ponzi scheme stuff, but forget this vaccine business." This is ending up being a giant distraction. Now, I said that Bachmann may have jumped the shark. It's just a gut feeling. Last night on Fox she was on with the Greta after the debate and she continued to talk about this.

BACHMANN: It's the Merck drug company, and the governor's former chief of staff is the chief lobbyist for this big drug company; and mandated, again, that every girl would have to have this particular drug. And the problem is it comes with some very significant consequences. 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 of that vaccine. There are very dangerous consequences. It's not good enough to take, quote, "a Mulligan" or you want a do-over. Not when you have little children's lives at risk.

RUSH: All right, now, she had scored the points in the debate, but now this comment has become a news item for Bachmann today rather than what she said at the debate last night. That's what I mean by jumping the shark. She scored the points and should have left it there.

RUSH: We've got Vinny. Vinny in Queens. Vinny, are you no New York 9? Do you vote in that district?

CALLER: I wish I could vote in New York 9, but that's been gonna be some race to watch.

RUSH: That really is. I've got so much to say about that race, but I gotta wait 'til it's over.

CALLER: Well, let me say what I have to say, and that's this. You know, I like, Michelle Bachmann but, quite frankly, she sounded shrill last night. This is before what you just said about her talking to someone claiming that this drug causes mental illness. She sounded a lot like a Democrat by pushing the words "innocent" and "children" over and over and over again. Part of the problem we have in politics is people afraid to say, "Hey, I was wrong," okay? Rick Perry as much as said that to a degree. The guy basically came out and said, "Yeah, I would have done it differently. I'm sorry I did it that way," but she went after him over and over again. And I thought it was kind of unnecessary, and I thought it cheapened her status, quite frankly, as a contender. And I do like her, but I think -- and, by the way --

RUSH: Vinny, put yourself in her shoes. Here she comes out of the Iowa straw poll in Ames, she's the winner. Perry is not in the race yet. Perry announces -- and by the way, I, El Rushbo, predicted this. I said, If he announces, it's gonna shake everything pick up," and it did. He announces, and all of a sudden, even before his first debate appearance, he's in the top tier, and he's taken her place. She's got one chance here, in her mind, I'm sure, to recapture the energy that she had going into the straw poll and winning it in Iowa, and that's what last night was all about. You just think she did it the wrong way?

CALLER: I really think so. You know, I'm an adherent to Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment, thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.

CALLER: No, no. Let me finish. I know you're right. It is impossible, and they should go after each other, but we shouldn't sound like Chuck Schumer going after each other. We should make our point and we should go on to the next issue. Now, like you said Perry has a big problem with immigration. All these candidates have their problems. Okay? And, by the way, why does he look fatigued at the beginning of the second-hour? Because if you were Rick Perry and you realized every question from the moderator and every candidate is gunning for you you'd like fatigued, too. Because he knows what's coming. He knows if the guy tied his shoelace the wrong way they're gonna make an issue out of it, and I understand that part of the process, but to me that's why he kind of peters out the second hour because the guy spends all his time saying the same thing over and over and defending himself.

CALLER: Well, that's the way I feel about it, and let me premise again: I like Bachmann. I do. I just thought she went a little overboard last night with that whole child vaccination thing I really do.

RUSH: Seattle, Washington, as we go back to the phones. This is Ania. Great to have you. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Greetings from the beautiful state of Washington. By the way, from your intro, I just got back from Alaska and I just wanted to let you know the glaciers are fine, they're there, everything's good on that.

CALLER: Yeah, they're massive, they're huge, they're not going anywhere. But just about Bachmann's big pounce that she did on Perry yesterday and trying to get him on the HPV vaccine. I'm a mom, and there is an opt-out on this whole thing. Usually I really like Bachmann, I think she's very genuine, I just didn't see the real zinger in that one. It's just much ado about nothing. I think he was honest, Perry came out as being sincere, and if that was her big thing, I just didn't see it. I just wanted to share that there's an opt-out.

RUSH: I hear what you're saying. Okay, he admits that he made a mistake in the way it was implemented. He admits he made the mistake, and then the pile-on continues, and people did see that as a little bit gratuitous. That's what you're saying. I understand, especially since there was an opt-out. Again remember, now, from Bachmann's perspective, she's the Iowa straw poll winner. Perry announces, he totally takes over. This is a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. She's got to get back in that upper tier. She's got to go after the number one guy. That's what she's doing.

RUSHL Let's go to central Texas here. Janice, you're next. I'm glad you waited. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Hello. Oh, my gosh, Rush Limbaugh, it's unbelievable I'm speaking to you. Have a great day. I have two points on Perry and Bachmann on the immunizations. Simply by mandating the immunizations, he put it on the schedule, the immunization schedule that's required for kids to even come to school for years. For instance, recently chicken pox, recently meningitis, recently hepatitis B, so Gardasil ought to be there. Now, if you've got a problem with getting your kids immunizations, there's always a flat risk, flat. But the benefits far outweigh that. Number two, with Gardasil and hepatitis B, they are both sexually commutated. And if you are a parent of a girl or a boy now, because both sexes can get this immunization now, you should definitely get it for your kids, because genital warts is so prevalent that the CDC doesn't count the numbers anymore, statistically speaking.

RUSH: Okay. So let me see if I understand where you are on this. You think that the Gardasil was a good thing, and you think that the mandatory vaccine of little girls in Texas that Perry required was a good thing?

CALLER: Absolutely. And if you didn't want it, then you take responsibility for what happens, don't ask me to pay for your opt-out if something goes wrong.

CALLER: And my other point is the Ponzi thing. If only people that added into Social Security were taken out it wouldn't be much of a problem. Unfortunately we have a lot of hands in that bucket that never put a dime in.

RUSH: Oh, yeah, I been there, too. Yeah, okay, well, this affords an opportunity. Here's a woman in Texas who has no problem with what Perry did on the Gardasil and the HVC vaccine, no problem whatsoever, thinks about everybody ought to get it. Now, I must admit, I bring no shortcomings to this program. However, there are things that I have to work extra special hard on to get up to speed with you on, and one of them is things involving kids, 'cause I don't have any. So my natural inclination when this stuff about the vaccine hits, it has no personal impact on me so I have to work hard to, quote, unquote, care about it. I don't have little girls, therefore I don't have the fear that mine are gonna get cervical cancer. Therefore when this thing hit, the natural inclination was, that's somebody else's problem.

Of course I can't afford to look at it that way. So I'm just wondering as I sit here how many of you mothers out there raced out and got this vaccine? When you heard what was being touted about the vaccine that it would go a long way toward vaccinating your kid, your daughter against cervical cancer, did you wait or how many of you, you know, a lot of people, government mandates a vaccine, when the Clintons came along and tried to do it, it depends on who's doing the mandating as to people's reaction. Now, here we have Janice in central Texas, just fine, she has no problem with it whatsoever. (interruption) What is that? Well, it only works before they've had sex. Right. Well, you have to get the vaccine -- yeah, preferably -- well, if it only works before the kids have sex, then you got to vaccinate them before they're seven or eight, I would think. Isn't that about right? I don't have kids. Isn't that about right?

So if you don't do it before they're seven or eight, is it automatic it doesn't work, or its chances of working are much reduced? (interruption) Oh, really? Oh, oh, your daughter, she had to sign something that said she hadn't had sex? So if you've had sex and you admit you've had sex as a kid they won't give you the vaccine? Okay. Okay. So it must be that it's no impact whatsoever if you've had sexual activity, zip, zero, nada. Well, let's go to the debate. Here's how this happened. It was in Tampa last night, and Wolf Blitzer said, "Governor Perry, as you well know you signed an executive order requiring little girls 11 and 12 to get a vaccine to deal with a sexually transmitted disease that could lead to cervical cancer? Was that a mistake?"

PERRY: It was, indeed. If I had it to do over again, I woulda done it differently. I woulda gone to the legislature, worked with them. But what was driving me was obviously making a difference about young people's lives. I will tell you that I made a mistake by not going to the legislature first.

RUSH: Now, he also said he hates cancer. I mean I'm quoting him there, he hates cancer. At any rate, here is Bachmann after Blitzer said, "Congresswoman Bachmann, do you have anything to say about what Governor Perry just said?"

BACHMANN: I'm a mom, and I'm a mom of three children, and to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat-out wrong. That should never be done. That's a violation of the liberty interests. That's little girls who have a negative reaction to this potentially dangerous drug don't get a mulligan, they don't get a do-over. The parents don't get a do-over.

BACHMANN: We cannot forget that in the midst of this executive order, there was a big drug company that made millions of dollars because of this mandate. It's wrong for a drug company because the governor's former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for this drug company. The drug company gave thousands of dollars in political donations to the governor, and this is just flat-out wrong. The question is, is it about life or was it about millions of dollars and potentially billions for a drug company -- RUSH: All right, so there was the charge, crony capitalism, that Perry had no real interest here in saving lives, he wasn't interested in that, it was simply the fact that his former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for Merck, and that there was a payoff, and that that's why he insisted on the vaccine be given because it had to be bought, and that meant profits. So Perry said that he ended up being offended by this.

PERRY: Yes, sir. The company was Merck, and it was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them. I raise about $30 million, and if you're saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I'm offended.

BACHMANN: I'm offended for all the little girls and the parents that didn't have a choice. That's what I'm offended for.

RUSH: Now, what I didn't understand throughout this whole thing was there was an opt-out, there was a choice, there was an opt-out. I don't know how widely advertised the opt-out was, but there clearly was an opt-out there. Now, I'm also being told that we might not be correct here in saying that this vaccine is no good if given to you after you have sex. There's a school of thought that says the Gardasil only works if you get the vaccine before you get the HPV infection. It's not so much that you've had sex; it's that it only works before you've had the infection. If you get the infection first, the vaccine doesn't work.

I am not a doctor, I don't play one on television, and I don't want to be stamping official medical news that we're putting out here that may not be a hundred percent accurate here. In other words, you have to be vaccinated before you get the infection. All vaccines work that way, that's what a vaccine is. The smallpox vaccine will not prevent you from getting smallpox or chicken pox, mumps, whatever they shoot you up for. In my day, the polio vaccine was a sugar cube that they gave you and had something in it, kids loved the sugar cubes. But if you had polio it wouldn't do any good. All vaccines actually work that way.

RUSH: Now, on this crony capitalism business. I mentioned this at the top of the program. Sarah Palin jumped on this with Greta last night, the Perry and the Merck thing. She jumped all over, in defense of Bachmann. There's no evidence that what Bachmann charged Perry with doing happened, and Perry said he can't be bought for five grand. A cynic could listen to what Perry said, "Well, what is the price?" (laughing) I'm not saying that. Some could. Crony capitalism is when the government is using tax dollars to subsidize a particular industry or company. What Bachmann is accusing Perry of is a quid pro quo. That's making a decision based on a donation. That's not crony capitalism. Crony capitalism is what Obama's doing with GE and Solyndra and that kind of stuff.

RUSH: Palin getting involved in this is a little unsettling only because there's no evidence that Perry did any of this, and it really isn't crony capitalism anyway. Now, if you're making official policy in exchange for a donation, we're talking about something criminal, and that you'd better be able to back up if you're going to charge that. That's why, frankly, people cringed when she said it, because that takes it to a different level. That's not simply a policy disagreement; that's an accusation of criminal activity that she made, Bachmann against Perry. That's why this little nervousness that you could see and sense settle through the hall there, changed the whole dynamic.

I remember all the hysteria over the MMR & chickenpox vaccines. That turned out to be much ado about not much.

I know that no medication is 100% safe for 100% of the people and that adverse events can happen.

I know that there was an opt-out provision for the HPV vaccine in Texas.

And I know that there are a considerable number of low rent/ low brow ‘parents’ who wouldn’t get their kids vaccinated for anything if not required to enter school.

>> I know that there was an opt-out provision for the HPV vaccine in Texas.<<

I think we are getting all tied up in the benefits or not of the vaccine. The important issue here is that Perry was all too willing to put government in control and also the perception, if not outright ties, to crony capitalism. I think his willingness to put government over the people is serious and the influence of Merck is telling.

Perry says he only got $5000 but it was really $6000, not a big difference, but it has come out that he has received much, much more from Merck throughout his carreer and the ties of people in his administration lead to other sticky issues. It appears more dirt will be coming on that whole deal.

I'm with you on Opt in, parents shouldn't have to say no to the government....the government should have to ask if its OK. I am neither a Perry or Bachman supporter. But Perry is the first politician I think I have ever heard say....I made a mistake...he gets a little credit for that, but I like Cain so far. Neutral on the rest except NO ROMNEY. Huntsman looked like a deer caught in the car headlights....he is the saddest on the stage....at least the perennial candidate Ron Paul made one statement I agreed with, but I forgot what it was, so it wasn't earth shattering...

Merck tried to push untested Gardasil on Gov. Palin. She refused and did not sell the children of Alaska

Sorry, but you are wrong on that. You should actually listen to what Sarah Palin says, and not make things up about her.

She NEVER said Merck talked to her. And in fact, there is no evidence MErck talked to her. Merck stopped their campaign in February of 2007, which was 2 months after she took office.

What Palin said was she dealt with the issue of adding a vaccine to the mandatory list. She mentioned an e-mail. You can search all of her e-mails, and you'll see that NO e-mails mention Merck of Gardasil.

The e-mail she mentions was about the chicken-pox vaccine. The Alaska Board of Education was adding the CP vaccine to the mandatory list. Sarah's e-mail says she opposed that, but that her staff should make it clear that as Governor, she had NO say in what vaccines were on the list, so she couldn't do anything about it, but to tell people she opposed making the CP vaccine mandatory.

A few Palin supporters got ahead of her, and misrepresented what she said. Palin told the truth. Your statement about her is false, so you should stop saying she said things that she didn't.

So, I see you HAVE the quote, so you know she never said that Merck talked to her, or that she told them no.

As I said, in another part of her interview, she mentioned her e-mail, which was about the BoE mandating the chicken pox vaccine.

The only thing I can't really figure out how to defend Palin about in her statement is her saying she told her health and human services department that Alaska was not going to mandate immunizations.

I'm not sure what she meant about that. In her e-mail, she clearly indicates that as Governor, she has no control over immunization mandates. Those are controlled by the Board of Education. She couldn't stop the Chicken Pox vaccine, even though she opposed it. So if her BoE had decided to put Gardasil on their list, she wouldn't have been able to stop that either.

Remember though that when Perry signed his EO, Palin had only been governor for a month. So she may mean here simply that she talked to her HHS department to make sure they didn't do anything to encourage the vaccine.

BTW, Palin was not opposed to giving Gardasil to young girls. She only opposed mandating it. She actually presided over a federally-funded program which used taxpayer dollars to give out free and reduced-price Gardasil vaccines to 8-18 year-old girls.

But again, that was a voluntary program. Palin has been clear that she does not support mandatory Gardasil, or mandatory chickenpox.

I don't know if she is opposed to any other mandatory vaccines. I looked through her record, and saw no indication she ever tried to change Alaska's mandatory vaccine law, nor was their anything in her e-mails about it.

So all I can say for sure is that she opposed the mandatory CP vaccine (because we have the e-mail) and she opposed mandator Garasil (from her statement that you quoted).

The other thing your quote clears up is the claim by some that when Palin endorsed Perry for governor, she wouldn't have known about his Gardasil "problem". This quote proves that she knew ALL about Perry's Gardasil EO, and understood the difficulty with it, as soon as it happened.

She still endorsed him for Governor and called him a true conservative, so apparently it wasn't a disqualifying issue to her.

That quote is from someone who either doesn’t understand drug reports, or doesn’t care about misleading. When collecting the statistics, the ONLY causality considered is time proximity — meaning “things that happened within x days of taking the vaccine”.

49 women died within a certain period of time after taking Gardasil. Note that thousands of women died during those same periods of time, without taking the vaccine. Women die, and sometimes they will happen to die after taking a vaccine.

The CDC studied 29 of the deaths where they could get information. In NONE of those 29 cases was the cause of death tied to the Gardasil vaccination.

A lot of people get confused by drug reaction reports, because they don’t understand it’s simply a time-association. So they think the drugs actually caused all sorts of problems.

That article will make you laugh. It’s easier to opt out of vaccines in texas than it is to GET your vaccines in order in texas. I made the list to show how.

To opt out, google “texas vaccine opt-out”. Go to the link, fill out the request form (takes 30 seconds, I did it). CLick enter to submit. Wait a while, you’ll get mail with the completed form (Texas fills it out for you). You just check off the vaccines you want to opt out of, and get it signed and notarized. Then you take it to school.

If you think that is complicated, I’d hate to see you try to fill out employment forms. I had to do 15 government-mandated forms for a temp job as a haunt monster, took me 40 minutes.

In the article, one of their complaints was that you have to give your mailing address. Another was that they use the post office to mail you your form. They also thought that giving the full name and birthdate of your children would complicate things.

The also complained both that the state took too long to MAIL the form, and then contradictorily that 90 days was too short a time to get it signed and notarized.

The sad thing is that these were supposedly bright people, trying to pretend they were too stupid to fill out a trivial request form.

It’s also not really a “potentially lethal medication”, any more than any of the other vaccines kids are “forced” to take.

And unlike, say, Polio, where people DO die from the vaccine, and virtually NOBODY dies from Polio anymore, there have been no confirmed cases of death caused by Gardasil, but 80% of the women in America will have an HPV infection at some point in their lives.

I oppose mandatory Gardasil vaccination, but I understand why people would push it, and it’s absurd for Bachman, a lawyer with no medical experience, to be actively discouraging women from getting the facts about Gardasil.

If women skip the vaccine because they are afraid of turning mentally retarded, and they get HPV, contract cervical cancer, and die, will that be Bachman’s fault?

Anyway, Perry’s order never went into effect, so NO girls got vaccinated because of what he did. But if they had vaccinated girls, lives would have been saved, not lost.

THere were several reports last night of “what Palin said” that were wildly wrong. One report claimed she said Merck contacter her to force Gardasil on her state, and she responded “hell no”, and had e-mails to prove it.

It turns out she didn’t say that, her e-mail was about the chicken-pox vaccine, and in her e-mail she says that the governor has no control over which vaccines are mandatory in Alaska, it’s controlled by the Board of Education. Also she opposed the CP vaccine (she didn’t say that by name, just said she opposed mandating shots for our girls, but since she didn’t push to end mandatory vaccines, I assume she was talking about the CP vaccine).

Palin was right that Perry’s CoStaff going to Merck, and then coming back and lobbying to get better government treatment of his new company, is a form of “crony capitalism”. But she didn’t say Perry was using “pay-for-play”, so far as I can tell.

Michelle essentially says that Bachman shouldn’t talk about medical stuff, which is what Rush was saying.

Michelle also falls for the stupid argument that the opt-out is hard, but she just quotes the article, so maybe she didn’t really read it enough to understand how hilarious it is.

It’s a 30 second process to request the form, the state fills in the whole form for you, you just check the vaccines you want to opt out of, sign it and get it notarized (that’s the hardest part), and turn it in.

It’s easier than doing your personal property tax, a lot easier than your income taxes, easier than the employment forms when you get a job, and it’s easier than getting the vaccines.

Yes — it is easier to do the opt-out, than it is to actually get the vaccines and do the paperwork that proves you got them.

The important issue here is that Perry was all too willing to put government in control...

Agreed. OTOH, Perry has been gov in Texas for almost eleven years...plenty long enough for a few mistakes to have been made along the way. And he has said that the EO was a mistake. I'm willing to accept that. Which is not to say that I necessarily think that requiring HPV immunization is a bad thing.

...also the perception, if not outright ties, to crony capitalism. I think his willingness to put government over the people is serious and the influence of Merck is telling.

On this point, I'll refer to the idea of 'six degrees of separation'...that any one person on Earth is only six steps away from any other person on Earth. In any 'community', such as the political community, I would imagine that any one person is something like two degrees away (on average) from any other person in that community. Put any one of them under the microscope and its going to get ugly. Or can be made out to look ugly. For example, Sarah Palin, by way of her association with McCain. In my mind, only 'Crony Politicism' can explain her endorsement of John McCain in the Senate race in 2010. I shudder to think that Political Idealism was the reason.

Ronald Reagan was the last presidential contender that I was wildly enthusiastic about starting with his speech at the 1976 GOP presidential convention. And I liked Pete DuPont when he was running but that went nowhere. Haven't followed him since so I might have changed my mind about him subsequently. Anyway, I'm trying to convey my lack of enthusiasm about the current field but, of those in contention, I do lean Perry. As I'm sure you've divined. I look at the Big Picture in terms of nat'l security and economic issues in weighing candidates. Their positions on social issues barely register a blip on my radar.

Nice chatting with you. Gotta' run because my 'to do before winter' list is a mile long & I'm in Wisconsin! (Oh, need to add that I spent most of my life in Oklahoma...a very solid Red State!! Doing' my part to turn WI into at least a maroon state.)

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