Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Rand Paul in 2009 said he was a member of a physicians’ association that has publicized debunked medical theories, including links between vaccines and autism, as well as abortion and breast cancer. A 2003 conference sponsored by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons even said that HIV did not cause AIDS. “I am not a newcomer to AAPS,” Paul told the group in 2009 while he was running for the U.S. Senate. Paul added that he’d been a member for more than two decades, and in the words of The New York Times, “relied on its research, statistics, and views about the role of government in medicine.” Paul told the Times on Tuesday he isn’t anti-vaccination despite saying that he had heard from parents whose children had suffered “profound mental disorders” after being vaccinated. “That’s not what I said. I said I’ve heard of people who’ve had vaccines and they see a temporal association and they believe that.”