Bill Maher is getting whomped on everywhere now. Enjoy Orac’s demolition of the crank’s recent episode.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Bill Maher is getting whomped on everywhere now. Enjoy Orac’s demolition of the crank’s recent episode.
I was pretty astonished when he went into his routine about “vaccines preventing the immune system from getting a work out” when fighting an infection. He seems to think the vaccine fights the infection and so the immune system doesn’t have to. That is a worrying level of ignorance.
I think that’s a common misconception that vaccines somehow weaken the body’s natural defenses when in fact they stimulate the immune system. At least he said he is not anti-vaccine. The flu shot is hit and miss but it isn’t harmful. Interestingly the only person in my family that got the flu this year is the only one who got the shot. It happens.
Almost too much crap to wade though on the Bill Maher show. Oral has more fortitude that I do.
As always, Orac does an awesome takedown of science crankery with an Oracian length post.
Orac ought to be invited onto Maher’s show as a guest. I’d pay to see that.
On a slightly related note, I Googled the phrase “Webster technique quackery” today and Orac’s blog was the second result.
On an unrelated note, I’m a touch worried about my pregnant friend.
Maher is not the only one who thinks that vaccines prevent the immune system from getting a workout, so do many anti-vax parents. These parents plan to intentionally expose their children to measles, smallpox, etc. Dumb and then dumber by far.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/02/09/3621020/measles-parties-california/
Real Time really jumped the shark last week showing just how anti-vax Bill Maher can be (minus a future Ebola vaccine that he would definitely take), but there’s a lot of this who-can-you-really-trust? bullshit out here in LA. Or the entire state, to be honest, but I’m hoping lawmakers can get rid of the insidious that help facilitate measles outbreaks in the U.S. in 2015.
Still, there definitely needs to be more public education on this subject, and health generally. Just the other night I was arguing with a friend over his skepticism concerning vaccines–his opinion being that we didn’t have to worry about such diseases when we were all just eating raw food and not being poisoned-for-profit by the medical industry. Unfortunately, he didn’t have an answer for my question about how exactly this medical industry conspiracy makes more money preventing diseases with widely available and relatively cheap vaccines (particularly combination shots like MMR and Tdap) than letting people contract and treat them at much greater expense.
More coverage of the California parents throwing “measles parties”:
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/28056251/2015/02/08/parents-intentionally-exposing-kids-to-measles-with-measles-parties
More on the fact that some anti-vax parents are planning “measles parties”:
http://blogs.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2015/02/06/health-officials-discourage-measles-parties/
HolyPinkUnicorn @ 8
And he knows this… How? Honestly, did he sleep through the portions history class that describe the diseases and horrific plagues that swept through the world before modern agriculture and pharmacology?
Holy Fucking Fuck!!! My wife just heard about this today and told me. It’s a home daycare that allows only un-vaccinated children.
Ottawa Daycare Promises Vaccine-Free Environment
And the extra-crappy thing is that I suspect that there will be enough people who see this article and fill the daycare spots. It sounds like this is fresh news so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
@12
Yikes, Concentrating anti-vaxxers is a great way to do an end run around herd immunity.
Measles parties!?!? Geezoid. I was vaccinated when I was a pup, back in the early ’60s, for smallpox and polio at least, but I recall chucking away the permission paper for some vaccine (I was in kindergarten), and I certainly recall getting several childhood diseases. I do not recommend the experience.
That Pink Floyd song, _Comfortably_Numb_, has a line about “when I was a child, I had a fever”. It always reminds me of lying there, in pain, while the room tilted madly and swung about.
My mom had some failings, but she tried to keep us from getting sick. Anybody who deliberately gets their kids the measles is not being a good parent.
(The failing that my mom had that was springing to mind there was the “comforter” on the bed. I don’t know where she got it, but it was just layer upon layer of heavy cloth tacked together. (I think that when it got dirty, they’d added another layer.) It was so heavy and thick and slippery that I could not lift it, and I could just barely drag it to make the bed. It had no airspaces in it, and no give to it, and no insulative properties at all. It crushed any blankets under it, and it had so much thermal mass that it stayed cold all night. It bent my toes. It was not comforting at all.)
If you are willing to risk your child’s life by intentionally infecting them with a disease in the hopes that they develop a natural immunity to it, then you can drop any pretense of being against vaccines to protect your children. You’ve just decided that yoyr hatred of BIg Phartma/Big Government far outweighs any desire to keep your children healthy.
If you are willing to risk your child’s life by intentionally infecting them with a disease in the hopes that they develop a natural immunity to it, then you can drop any pretense of being against vaccines to protect your children. You’ve just decided that your hatred of Big Pharma/Big Government far outweighs any desire to keep your children healthy.