Beginning of the end for Bachmann campaign?
Is it the beginning of the end for Michelle Bachmann's presidential bid?
Her remarks this week that the HPV-vaccine (Gardasil) caused "mental retardation" (to use her words) put her in hot water, especially in light of the fact she was using anecdotal information (the report of a distraught mother) as evidence to support her claim.
When pressed Bachmann said to Fox News host Sean Hannity when asked if she believed a Gardasil injection could cause retardation:
"I have no idea ... [she re-tells the entire anecdote again for at least the third time] ... I am not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a physician. All I was doing is reporting what this woman told me last night at the debate ... Now, parents are very busy. And for parents to just assume that if the government says their child has to have an injection that it must be good for them, and, so, that's why it's wrong for them to have an opt out policy. It's more prudent for them to have an opt in policy. "
Her erroneous remarks, which she also gave on the Today Show, led to condemnation in the media, such as these comments by Dr. Paul Offit in a guest editorial in New York Daily News.
"During the past few years, the Centers for Disease Control has done careful studies showing that, apart from redness and tenderness at the site of injection and occasional fainting, the vaccine doesn't cause any serious side effects.
"But Bachmann, in front of millions of television viewers, claimed that the vaccine caused permanent harm. It is likely that some parents watching her, assuming that Bachmann was right, will choose not to give the HPV vaccine to their daughters, putting them at unnecessary risk.
"Although Bachmann could reasonably argue that an informed public can make its own decisions, the problem comes with how the public gets informed. People believing false statements, particularly those made by irresponsible people in positions of authority, will make a bad decision based on bad information."
Dr. Offit is chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the author of "Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All."
The controversy is going viral, with many saying that this is the end of Bachmann's candidacy, largely because she plays fast-and-loose with facts.
Anderson Cooper put together some of Bachmann's more notable factual faux-pas in a feature seen on Anderson Cooper 360 on Wednesday, September 14,2011: