Ignorance Is Not exclusive To The Right Wing

Before I lambaste him, let's get one thing straight. I like Bill Maher a lot, and I think Real Time is one of the best shows on television. It has an excellent open concept that usually allows both sides to get their opinions out in a civil manner, which is more than anyone can say for American news. I agree with many of his views on religion, and most of his economic views as well, but there are some things that Bill is just an absolute idiot on, these include the his view on animals, the food industry, pharmaceuticals, and more specifically vaccines, which is the topic of this post.

On Friday Bill Maher had ex-United States Senator and current physician Bill Frist on the show as a one on one guest, and as expected the talk covered the current health care reform, and eventually touched on H1N1 flu and flu vaccines in general. While Frist is not without his faults as a physician, which are very out in the public, he was absolutely right in balking at Bill Maher in this instance. Bill stated that because viruses mutate quickly, that flu vaccines are a cash grab for pharmaceutical companies that are designed to actually make people sick and in turn sell more drugs. He then said on air that he would not only never get a vaccine, but that he didn't think anyone should trust people who give vaccines, and that no one should take them. Frist informed Maher that flu vaccines are 98% effective in the United States, and that the amount of mutation influenza viruses can undergo in a couple months can be substantial, but is not enough to make a vaccine ineffective. Maher then assessed Frist's statement as false, and said science was on his side, even though it wasn't.

Do pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money? Yes, they do. But there's a reason for this, they have a massive overhead. As an industry they have perhaps the most expensive research and development standards around, and still only one in ten thousand drugs ends up going to market. Read that again, one in ten thousand drugs goes to market. It costs millions to develop a drug and test it over a period of years, and 0.01% of the developed drugs goes on to make money. Are there instances where pharmaceutical companies cut corners to make money? Absolutely. Are some of the actions taken by these companies detrimental to society? Sure, however it could be easily argued that the negative effects are by far overshadowed by the positives.

What frustrated me about this segment is that Bill wouldn't let Frist talk about the most important aspect of vaccines, herd immunity. Vaccines are the single greatest accomplishment in medicine, although a case can be made for antiseptic. The kind of conspiracy theories Bill Maher espouses on his show from time to time are incredibly harmful, and it's important to realize that Bill Maher may have a quick wit and read a lot of news stories, but he is not a medical professional, in fact he has absolutely no background whatsoever in science. He has English and History Bachelor of Arts degrees from Cornell, which gives him about as much expertise in the subject is desk lamp beside me.

While Frist did come back with a rebuttle to Maher, I don't think he came back strongly enough. For something as serious as a contention that vaccines are a scam or in some way harmful to the populace, Frist should have scolded him, and spoken directly to the audience clarifying that Maher doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Maher is often allowed to get away with ludicrous statements seemingly because it's his show, such as his statement about a month ago that oranges are injected with drugs to make them orange since they're naturally green. In reality oranges are orange when edible and picked unless the area they're grown in never gets cold, in which case the ripening takes place after the orange is picked by exposing the orange to methane gas, which is entirely natural and just increases the speed of ripening. There are no ill effects from this process. It's time that for once someone on Maher's show has the balls to call him out on his more inane opinions. Perhaps it's time Christopher Hitchens returns to the show?