Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said in a 2009 interview with Alex Jones' InfoWars that mandatory vaccines for illnesses such as the swine flu could be an early step toward "martial law," and said the procedures have a long history of lethal side effects.
"The first sort of thing you see with martial law is mandates, and they’re talking about making it mandatory," said Paul. "I worry because the first flu vaccine we had in the 1970s, more people died from the vaccine than died from the swine flu."
"The whole problem is not necessarily good versus bad on vaccines, it’s whether it should be mandatory or the individual makes the decision," he said. "And sometimes you want to not be the first one to get a new procedure, you want to see if it works well before you choose."
While Paul said he would personally choose to get the smallpox vaccine again and would have taken one for polio, he said the decision to vaccinate should be left to the individual. He also said the risks of the vaccines need to be weighed against the risks of the diseases.
"You have to weigh the risks of the disease versus the risks of the vaccine," Paul said. "But I’m not going to tell people who think it’s a bad idea that they have to take it because everybody should be allowed to make their own health care decisions."
Full transcript and video below (remarks start around 15:20):
The first sort of thing you see with martial law is mandates, and they’re talking about making it mandatory. I worry because the first flu vaccine we had in the 1970s, more people died from the vaccine than died from the swine flu. I think you have to use your brain but I think every individual should be allowed to make that choice. For example, 20 years ago my parents gave me the smallpox vaccine and I would do it again.
Smallpox was an awful disease and the vaccine wiped smallpox out of the civilization, the only people left with it are bioterrorism labs that have smallpox. I would have also taken the polio vaccine. I know a lot of people had polio and we stopped it. But am I going to take the swine flu vaccine? Unlikely, until I’m certain that it’s safe, and I’m not going to have my kids take it til I know it’s safe.
But I’m not absolutely saying I won’t take the vaccine, but I say you have to be careful. You have to weigh the risks of the disease versus the risks of the vaccine. But I’m not going to tell people who think it’s a bad idea that they have to take it because everybody should be allowed to make their own health care decisions and that’s the problem with allowing more and more government. There was a vaccine about three years ago for rotavirus, it’s a diarrhea type virus for children.
They started giving the vaccine but kids started dying from a blockage in their intestine which they linked to the vaccine, but it took them six months to figure this out. And meanwhile they had already talked about making it mandatory. The whole problem is not necessarily good versus bad on vaccines, it’s whether it should be mandatory or the individual makes the decision. And sometimes you want to not be the first one to get a new procedure, you want to see if it works well before you choose.