Vaccinations don’t work? No wonder I keep reading those newspaper stories about the thousands and thousands of kids infected by polio in the US every year, even though almost everyone gets vaccinated against it. That must be it…
What a load of crap. I certainly have no love of purveyors of high fat, low nutrition food, but there’s hardly a Pentavirate conspiracy to sell dangerous food and then make money off drugs to fix the problems it causes. McDonald’s sells that food because that’s what people want to eat. As Eric Schlosser pointed out, if we all demanded tofu and spinach, that’s what they’d sell, and they’d market it just as aggressively.
Now for Bill’s questions about why we get sick. It seems like he’s operating from some belief that we’re all engineered to be perfect and healthy, and we mess it up with “toxins” - is he some sort of creationist? Evolution explains beautifully why we get sick: we’re just a hodgepodge of random mutations, selected solely for our ability to survive long enough to reproduce effectively. There’s no selective pressure against heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and many cancers, because they tend to crop up long after our offspring are able to care for themselves.
As for people who “always get sick after vaccinations,” I’m sure it’s just an example of “the van is always at the corner” misperception. They pay attention and remember their illnesses around the time of vaccination, due to pre-existing prejudices, and forget or minimize illness at other times and illness-free vaccinations.
I like Maher (at least on TV), I think he’s often funny and I agree with a lot of what he says. But I was also flabbergasted at how stupid these statements are. As Dave Foley and John Mace noted, what about polio? It’s too bad he wasn’t pressed on that.
And he totally misunderstood what the woman meant by children having “plastic” minds. That was kinda dumb. He never heard the word as an adjective, meaning malleable?
I am a fan of his, but on the last couple of shows there have been a few moments where he looked rather nutso. The one you mention was one, and the part where he was trying to feed Ward Churchill’s opinion to him was even more uncomfortable.
I whined about this show at another website that specializes in people whining about TV:
Originally posted by me:
Maher is going the way of Dr. Laura. He started out being laser-tongued but funny. He was willing to listen to other people and even occasionally change his mind. Then he started getting attacked. And the more people pushed him into a corner and forced him to defend himself, the more strident, rigid and unreasonable he became. When you remove the humor, you’re left with cynicism. And that’s no fun to listen to. Now I just wish he’d shut the fuck up.
Dr. Laura, when she first started on radio, was a breath of fresh air. I do not kid! She was always bitchy, but it was laced with a tongue-in-cheek humor. But after she started getting attacked from this group and that, she became more and more strident and eventually all semblance of humor disappeared and we were left with an angry, vitriolic bitch. I’m glad someone finally shot her and put her out of her rabid misery.
Interesting point, Lisa. I’m not sure that Maher is quite there yet, at least from my perspective. I find him hilarious and haven’t noticed his lunatic side yet. I’ll be listening for it in the future, though. I think you’re Dr Laura observation is a good one, though, and can easily be applied to someone like O’Reilly. He used to be sharp and witty, but now it’s all about him and his opinions and how everyone else is a “pinhead” or “insane”. I can’t stand listening to the guy for even a few minutes any more.
I liked Maher in the beginning, but like Lisa pointed out, he’s turning into a grade A whackadoo. That said, I’m not the biggest fan of Western medicine. There is a LOT wrong with the treatment methodologies, and if anyone anywhere thinks profit is not a supreme motivator for a great portion of doctors, well, they’ve got another thing coming.
Doctors don’t get paid if no one is sick, it doesn’t get any more simple than that. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, but I think there is a confluence of coincidences that western medicine (or more appropriately the corporations that deliver said medicine) is almost unjustly profiting from. The recent glut of lawsuits made the pendulum swing the other way, now the doctors are feeling the hustle by the patients in court, and now are crying to their lobbyists to stop the hemmorhage of cash. I agree, tort reform is past necessary, but it’s always amusing, at least to me, to watch the rich and hope-to-be rich get their knickers in a twist because their margins are shrinking.
And before the bitching starts, I know that if you don’t have money coming in, there’s no money for research, and without research, breakthroughs never happen, I get it, but the end fact, which I heard from a group of MD’s and DO’s in professional conversation, is that if the doctors don’t get the people in as soon as they’re sick, that they get better, and when they get better, they don’t need the doctor. Like anything else, follow the money.
End of the day, the best tool in medicine is education. You know damn well that those cigarettes and that double cheeseburger with fries and super-coke you order every day for lunch is going to clog your arteries, promote poor health and certain cancers, and make you fat. The question is, how are you going to address it? Go to the doctor, pay your co-pay (if your lucky enough to have insurance), get a blood test, pay the lab, get a 'scrip for some Lipitor, pay the pharmacist, go back to the doctor, pay your co-pay again, get a liver function test, because that stuff can be toxic, pay the lab again ad nauseum…
Or stop smoking and have a salad?
Seems a no-brainer to me.
Oh yeah, and Bill Maher’s a nut.
yes, i know that some cholesterol is hereditary, it’s an illustration, not an absolute
PunditLisa, are you sure it comes from being defensive? Or could it be that many public personalities realize being more stident and controversial makes for better entertainment? Attacks are publicity, after all.
The tragedy of all this, as others have said, is that we do need some healthcare reform in this country and we do need to change how we look at our own health. We have a good system here, but it’s a long way from being what it could be.
But people like Maher make the average person associate healthcare reform with anti-scientific fucknuttery. The people who want to work for change have to fight a stereotype that they’re going to eliminate vaccinations and put everyone on insane fad diets. Their opponents can always drag out the handy straw men who are running their mouths on HBO every night and distract people from the real issues.
I don’t think Maher’s lost anything except his dignity. He’s doing this for the money, because conflict sells and you don’t have to think too hard to simply disagree with everything everyone else agrees with.
Huh?
While the direct individual benefits/hazards of vaccinations is well studied, it has not been shown that mass vaccinations for easily transferable, quickly mutating viruses such as the flu gives an aggregate benefit. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong.
Though that is far outside the subtlety range for Maher on subjects like this.
BTW, either his audience is incredibly enlightened or fucking sheep. Who applauds a Pasteur death bed quote, ffs? “Woohoo! You’re goddam right it’s the terrain, not the mosquitos!!”
The most disturbing element of all this is the underlying presumption by Maher and others that doctors, the food industry, and the pharmeceutical industry are in cahoots to keep us sick so they can sell us drugs and treatments (and processed foods).
This kind of conspiracy thinking is all too common these days. And there are plenty of real scammers out there playing on such fears.
Any dopers interested in looking into the phenomenon may want to start with the Kevin Trudeau case. Mr. Trudeau’s legal troubles are maily due to his marketing practices, but this critique of his pitch – which plays directly to Maher’s way of thinking – by one of the editors of Quackwatch is worth reading.
It’s a kind of anti-intellectual insanity, I think.
CHEMICALS in our food? Next he’ll be telling us that the drinking water has ATOMS!
Excalibre, I was speaking metaphorically. TPTB canceled Dr. Laura’s t.v. and radio programs.
It won’t be long before Maher follows suit, IMO.
I don’t get HBO so I haven’t seen the new show. However I recall from Politically Incorrect that Bill Maher believes in ghosts, UFO’s,and ESP; and is an animal rights fanatic. He’s been an annoying nutjob for a while. His style of arguing is to take a point and repeat it over and over again. Even when he’s right, he’s right by accident.
I’m not sure, but it’s my opinion that defending themselves against special interest groups killed (metaphorically speaking) Howard Stern, Bill Maher and Dr. Laura. Let me explain.
“Desperate Housewives” is the #1 show in the U.S. right now. Because it enjoys a position of power, it can get away with showing two teenage boys kissing. The network knows that if sponsor x pulls out in response to the inevitable letter-writing campaign from “family values” interest groups, there will be another one willing and able to fill that gap.
Compare that to a show like “Buffy” that never experienced a significant market share. If the sponsors of that show pulls out, there is no guarantee that another sponsor will step up to the plate. So if a letter-writing campaign targeted that show for showing two teenage girls kissing, it would be detrimental to the show. Either the writers would have to put the kabosh on the lesbian thing altogether or risk the show. The network might call a press conference and apologize for offending people, blah blah blah. In situtations like these, the sponsors can pretty much dictate to the show what they will or won’t allow and ultimately creative control shifts from the writers to the sponsors.
IMO, Maher and Dr. Laura (and Howard Stern, etc.) lost creative control of their own shows because they weren’t powerful enough to be impervious to threats from special interest groups. And the more they had to apologize and back-pedal and clarify their positions on various things, the angrier and more strident they got. Once they changed their personalities to suit the network and sponsors, it was only a matter of time before their shows died along with their integrity.
Bill O’Reilly may or may not be a different case, only because Fox’s numbers are increasing while the other networks’ numbers are decreasing.
Well put. I’d only disagree when it comes to Stern. He had loads of leverage. He only decided to bail when the decision came down to allow fines against individual DJs and not just the affiliates. He decided that he didn’t need the broadcast channel and moved to satellite. As I understand it, he wasn’t shown the door, he chose to relocate.
My understanding is that tiny amounts of mercury were used as preservatives in vaccines. As children began to receive more and more vaccines, the amount of mercury increased. There was a corresponding rise in autism. Children who develop autism don’t seem to be able to process heavy metals in the same way that other children do. Some studies seem to point to this mercury as a cause in the rise in autism.
Please don’t ask me to cite. I’m not invested in defending the point at all. Just thought I would present a little of what the other side is saying.
As for Maher, sometimes he’s good and sometimes he falls flat. Live TV is a big risk. But he gets rolly eyes from me when he talks about being fair one minute and then is totally degrading to women or Southerners the next. He is very inconsistent.