Brett Flashnick / AP Photo
It looks like Michele Bachmann is just not going to back down about the whole HPV vaccine. The presidential candidate claimed Wednesday that a woman came up to her after the Republican debate the night before and said the woman’s “young” daughter had gotten the HPV vaccine and then became “mentally retarded.” The Minnesota Republican attacked Rick Perry throughout Tuesday night’s debate for an executive order he put into place that required 12-year-old girls to get inoculated against the sexually transmitted disease that causes a form of cervical cancer. But in an apparent first, the American Pediatric Association disputed that it is possible for the vaccine to cause mental retardation, saying there is “absolutely no scientific validity to this statement.”