Did anyone watch Bill Maher last Friday and see him go off on his anti-medication tirade? Until then, he was almost my ideological ideal, but this shocked the hell out of me. He could have given Tom Cruise a run for his money, except that Cruise speaks out mainly against psychotropics. Bill Maher seems to condemn everything that comes in a capsule or pill. The topic came up, IIRC, with the overdose death of Heath Leger. Through Maher’s rant, I was waiting for him to say “in excess amounts” or “when used in a manner contrary to prescriber’s instructions.”, but any such qualifier or disclaimer was never given.
Of course drugs are poison, dipshit! That’s why they tell you how much to take and why you’re not supposed to take more than that, and also why you’re supposed to tell the doctor or pharmacist about everything else you’re taking.
Kevin Treudeau will be quoting excerpts from the rant on the jacket of his next book. Maher has always been pro marihuana, who knows, maybe now he’s turning into Dennis Miller.
His guests seemed really taken aback by his rant, too.
And it was especially odd coming from someone who has been a vocal advocate of illegal drug use over the years. (The illegal stuff is more “natural,” I guess?)
I thought he was acting kind of strange when he ranted off about the writers’ strike a month ago. I guess he’s really, really determined not to be pigeonholed into anyone’s expectations.
Maher is a crackpot when it comes to medications and health; whenever the subject has come up on his show, he’s gone into a little rant about it. He doesn’t believe that antibiotics or vaccines save lives; I think he also doesn’t understand the difference between the two.
Odd how somebody can be so right and logical (i.e., agree with me) on a lot of issues, and be a total crackpot (that is, not agreeing with me) on this one subject.
Maher has a few nutty hobbyhorses. Prescription drugs is one. Meat is another (Maher is a member of PETA). Corn syrup is another. Basically, he tends to have some extreme views on health issues.
Opposing the drug war or even advocating legalization is not necessarily the same as advocating use. Myself, I’m as pro-marijuana as the next guy but don’t accept the idea that “natural” remedies (i.e. powerful chemical compounds occurring in uncertain doses in leaves and roots) are necessarily better than a controlled dose from a pill. That’s not to say that an herbal product is never better than a manufactured pill, especially if we don’t sufficiently understand how all the chemicals in the natural plant work together. I think cannabis might be a good example of that.
People forget that “natural” remedies are also drugs. The pharmacopeia is replete with “drugs” that come from plants, and if you use the corresponding raw plants, you’re using the drugs whether you admit it or not. I note that the product “Sleep MD” claims to be drug free, but contains passionflower, Valerian root, and hops. That’s like saying, “I’m not drinking alcohol–it’s just a little brandy, bourbon, beer, and wine.”
To be fair to marijuana, that doesn’t appear to be poison in the sense that a lethal dose has ever been determined. Unless there’s some new data I’m unaware of, no one has ever died as a acute physiological result of ingesting cannabis, the way people have by overdosing on other drugs.
This is not new for him. He’s had this whole anti-medicine thing going for a LONG time. I did happen to see this particular rant though. It seems to me he’s rather contradicting himself, he refers to any medicine by the pharmaceutical companies as poison in any amount, but then goes on to say they’re useful in emergency situations. So which one is it?
No one is suggesting that people should take anti-biotics as a preventitive measure, you take them WHEN you get sick, which WILL happen from time to time, even if you’re extremely healthy. Sure, I’d rather take herbs and exercise and eat well than take a bunch of medications, but isn’t that pretty much what the health care industry says too?
Now, that’s not to say there isn’t some validity to his argument, in that drugs are a poison, but only because there seems to be a tendency to over-medicate. His comparison of little bits of chlorine in drinking water to drinking bottles of chlorine is completely assinine. IIRC, eating too much beta-carotine turns your skin an orangish hue; does this mean we should avoid it because it does bad things in large amounts? Or how about iron, it’s entirely possible to get sick from having too much iron in your diet but, clearly, iron is essential.
I appreciate the whole holistic, naturalistic approach, but this is a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water. If you want to espouse your views, fine, but you’re just making your panel members and your audience uncomfortable, because they all think you’re a whack job when you bring it up, but few of them come prepared to defend their positions on that. If you want to make it an issue, inform your panelists beforehand and have a reasoned, informed, and supported debate about it. A bunch of random unsupportable assertions just makes you look like an idiot.
The rant started when Maher was talking with his panel (or Bob Costas, anyway) about steroid and Human Growth Hormone abuse in pro sports. Maher declared that anybody who eats meat in America is already ingesting HGH, and then started talking about Heath Ledger, and said that all prescription drugs are poison.
One of his guests (a conservative columnist for the New York Times, I forget his name) said, 'Well, a handful of antibiotics might kill me, but the right amount could save my life." Maher responded “You’re wrong!” and went from there. It was a bit bizarre. He’s even argued on the show with an expert from the CDC, who tried to set him straight on some basic medical points.
ETA: I was just thinking about how my mother almost died from rheumatic fever as a child, and her mother almost died from polio. People used to live in fear of those or a dozen other diseases that might steal their child away at any time; I don’t know just how Maher accounts for their near-disappearance in the industrialized world.
IIRC, (no cite, but I believe I read it on NORML’s website) there is (or was, at the time) exactly one case of someone ODing on THC, but it occurred from actually using it in a more purified form, and it took magnitudes more than would normally be needed to get high, and certainly long after the point where all the impurities in the smoke would have given the user a nasty headache.
Either way, it’s interesting that Marijuana is just fine, but anti-biotics will kill you. I dunno how he manages to justify that to himself.
IIRC, a lot of the anti-vaccine, anti-medication culture accounts for it with improved hygiene and cleanliness. I certainly agree that it’s a factor, as I’m sure most doctors would, but to completely ignore the correlation, time and again, of a major epidemic, a vaccine, and it being quickly contained is just silly. What sort of major thing happened with regard to cleaniness that could account for polio? It’s not they invented soap, or anything.
I think it’s really just the logical extreme of the idea that there’s a bunch of people in the medical industry to make money, not to save lives, and so it logically follows that some of the medications and procedures are either under tested, ineffective, or over used. Sadly, it looks like some people have decided that the entire industry is corrupt, and that EVERY procedure or medication is bad for you.
Didn’t someone mention Kevin Trudeau up thread? I’d REALLY be interested to know what Bill thinks of him, because AFAICT, they seem to share pretty similar beliefs about the medical industry.
He is, to the degree that it’s irritating. I stopped watching his show years ago because I felt like he was more interested in being a contrarian than in making sense, even though he was pretty funny sometimes.
