From the Washington Post:

At a town hall meeting this week in Las Cruces, New Mexico, presidential candidate John McCain backed off his earlier comments linking vaccines with autism and called for research to find answers. He also called for more funding for special education, but offered no specifics. From the transcript:

… a terrible thing that’s happened in America recently, as I know you all know, is the rise of autism. We don’t know. We don’t know what causes it. There’s a huge debate going on now about vaccinations. And I’ve read and studied and gotten briefings, and I don’t know all the answers.

But I do know it’s a fact that autism is on a dramatic rise in the United States of America. And we’ve got to find the cause of it.

But, meanwhile, we’re going to have to increase funding for special education. I mean, it’s just — it’s just a fact. And that’s expensive, but it seems to me the kind of country we are, that that should have one of our priorities, along with our most gifted.

See earlier posts:

• Reaction to McCain comments on autism, vaccines
• ‘What studies show is not reflected in what candidates say’

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 1:20 pm and is filed under autism, politics, special education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post