UPDATE: FriendFeed conversation embedded at bottom.
I remind my readers: Most Americans are frankly not knowledgeable enough to read the medical literature and act as their own medical advisor. Arrogant blowhards like Maher will gladly jump the gun, thinking they’ve heroically caught someone out, and make decisions that will cause widespread disease and death. If they only had the chance. Ha ha. Tee hee. Snark snark. Oops.
I’m very open to debate. The topic is scientific (and rhetorical) literacy, and how to improve it across the board.
This one goes out to:
- Anti-vaccine scare mongers
- Alternative medicine proponents who profit from fear and confusion
- Conspiratorial junkies who would sooner believe their government is evil, than believe that 9/11 was a terrorist attack
- Anyone who extrapolates small personal tragedies and comes to sweeping generalizations about entire groups of people
- Anyone who cherry-picks an issue of concern and thinks it grants them the right to throw all of western medicine under the bus
- Anyone who thinks their bad experience or sloppy “research” into a health concern negates decades of progress made by many thousands of medical professionals
- Anyone who thinks they have the right to draw outrageous conclusions when they aren’t familiar with the common logical fallacies — that can entrap people much smarter than they
Here is what video I could find, covering Bill Maher’s theories on the state of medicine and health care in the United States.
I’ll summarize:
Western medicine is completely useless because Big Pharma profits from illness, not health. We have made no progress in cancer treatment. Successful cancer treatment requires you leave the country for “alternative medicine.” You can be arrested for practicing or speaking about “alternative medicine.” All medical advancements are erased and doctor’s motives suspect, because of Nasonex. Vaccines are designed to kill you.
Enough preamble, let’s start the show. In chronological order. Chronos yes, Logos notsomuch.
The fun starts at 2:20 and ends at 5:20
The fun goes from 0:50 to 3:30
I’m very happy that Maher’s attempted appeal to anti-government GOP partisanship completely failed. Frist categorically denied that Maher’s conspiracy theories about western medicine and vaccines had any truth to them. More to the point, how pathetic is Maher’s attempt? Does he hope GOP lunacy will save his conspiratorial behind? Thankfully, Frist won’t abandon his profession or his decency to help Maher save face.
I’m glad Maher seems upset and defensive here, and spent a lot of time on his final show on this topic. His sloppy thinking and cheap laugh lines only highlight the real problem here. And that is, he’d lose this debate to a smart 7th grader.
He cites death by medical error and concludes we’re a “sick society.” His hyperbole highlights his lack of rigor, his unfamiliarity with logical fallacies and his inability to make coherent arguments. Maher does not want to admit he’s wrong. His three guests try to make fun of him gently, but no, Maher won’t back down.
PZ Meyers wrote regarding this rant:
The most telling moment for me was when he compares vaccination to global warming and evolution; global warming and evolution, he says, are settled science (which is correct), but vaccination is not. That is not correct. Vaccination works. It’s been tested and measured and analyzed, and vaccinations save lives. It has been settled, repeatedly.
Michael Shermer has commented on RichardDawkins.net on this issue, too. Maybe someday it will sink in.
If you want more details on how angry the Scientists are at Maher, use this:
ScienceBlogs search for Maher+anti-vacc
Here’s a very interesting analysis of Maher’s “I just want a debate” attempted exit strategy. Guess what? No dice!
Bill Maher digs himself even deeper & the ‘I’m just a humble investigator asking questions’ gambit
I was unable to find video of his very first rant on Larry King in 2005, but you can read about it here. There, Mr. Maher. I’m now officially done with you.
20091207 at 02:10 
