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Just to be clear, Maher has an extreme distrust of modern medicine, to the point that it led me to almost totally abandon his show. For example, he gave the fra

by nefitty 10y ago

Just to be clear, Maher has an extreme distrust of modern medicine, to the point that it led me to almost totally abandon his show. For example, he gave the fraud Sam Chachoua an inordinate amount of airtime for someone claiming he can cure HIV with goat's milk. As far as I know Maher is still an antivaxxer, as well. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bill_Maher#Medicine http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bill_Maher#Medicine Anyways, I've realized to take Maher's views and endorsements regarding the medical field with a grain of salt.

pfarnsworth 10y ago
Maher doesn't say that vaccines are bad. He's saying that not all vaccines are good, and that Merck has discovered that it's a new stream of profits by convincing doctors that everyone should take vaccines for low-risk diseases. So there's a difference, and I agree with him. I vaccinated my kids, and I even take the flu shot because my kids are still young. But given the fact that the flu vaccines is sometimes less than 50% effective some years especially in the years when it's a new strain, it's mostly an enormous waste of money that is going into the pockets of the drug companies. They have marketed the idea and created vaccine militants when practically it's not effective. If you even dare to say you don't want to take a flu-shot, you're labeled as an anti-vaxxer kook, basically exactly what you did.
- nefitty 10y ago
  If I misconstrued his position on vaccines that is my fault, but my point was that I don't trust his views on medical science one bit.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>and that Merck has discovered that it's a new stream of profits by convincing doctors that everyone should take vaccines for low-risk diseases. Depends on what you mean by "low-risk disease." If you mean diseases that are rarely seen, then I think you need to re-examine your stance. The reason a lot of those diseases are low-risk is because the population has herd-immunity from decades of vaccination. This is a good thing. But if people stop vaccinating against those diseases, they will become higher risk.
  - pfarnsworth 10y ago
    I mean things like HPV vaccination. I'm not going to get my son vaccinated. This is an example of Merck and the other drug manufacturers manufacturing a vaccine to treat a low-risk disease. Pushing it on boys, as well, is simply expanding the market to get more money. When my daughter is old enough, she can get the vaccine, once we have figured out if there are long-term effects from this vaccine of if it's just scare mongering. Yes, HPV causes cervical cancer in some cases. But they want to innoculating every single child for a disease that kills 3000 women a year in the US. That is less 10% of the number of people killed in driving accidents per year. That sounds like a money grab by the drug manufacturers by making up a boogyman in HPV, and collecting the money from our government and us through our taxes. It's genius, in some senses. It's the equivalent of banning all peanut products from every school in the US to protect those few that are deathly allergic, and then paying a company for the enforcement of the ban.
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      You're saying if you could get rid of 10% of auto accident deaths with a one-off injection in childhood you wouldn't?!
      - pfarnsworth 10y ago
        You should educate yourself better. There are 3 doses, and at the monetary cost and health risks of vaccinating every single child in the US? I would definitely not. The vaccination is not risk free, there have been health issues and deaths associated with it. It's not a freebie.
        enraged_camel 10y ago
        What health issues and deaths?
    - minikites 10y ago
      Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and group you with every other dangerous anti-vaxxer: http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/04/opinion/carroll-douglas-hpv-vaccine/index.html?iref=allsearch http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/04/opinion/carroll-douglas-hpv-va... > Such cancer still causes the death of 4,000 women each year in the United States. It's estimated that about 15,000 HPV-associated cancers could be prevented each year by the vaccine. HPV is, unfortunately, often transmitted through sexual activity. It's the cause of genital warts, and it's an extremely common sexually transmitted infection. > The vaccine is safe. By the summer of 2012, more than 46 million doses of the vaccine had been given in the United States -- almost all to girls because of early awareness of HPV's link to cervical cancer -- and adverse events from vaccines are closely monitored. > Moreover, there is growing evidence that the recent increase in cancers of the head and neck are also associated with HPV infection. A recent study of more than 1,300 patients with oral cancer found that more than 55% of them were infected with HPV.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11649577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11649577 and marked it off-topic.

by nefitty 10y ago

pfarnsworth 10y ago

Maher doesn't say that vaccines are bad. He's saying that not all vaccines are good, and that Merck has discovered that it's a new stream of profits by convincing doctors that everyone should take vaccines for low-risk diseases. So there's a difference, and I agree with him. I vaccinated my kids, and I even take the flu shot because my kids are still young. But given the fact that the flu vaccines is sometimes less than 50% effective some years especially in the years when it's a new strain, it's mostly an enormous waste of money that is going into the pockets of the drug companies. They have marketed the idea and created vaccine militants when practically it's not effective. If you even dare to say you don't want to take a flu-shot, you're labeled as an anti-vaxxer kook, basically exactly what you did.

nefitty 10y ago
If I misconstrued his position on vaccines that is my fault, but my point was that I don't trust his views on medical science one bit.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>and that Merck has discovered that it's a new stream of profits by convincing doctors that everyone should take vaccines for low-risk diseases. Depends on what you mean by "low-risk disease." If you mean diseases that are rarely seen, then I think you need to re-examine your stance. The reason a lot of those diseases are low-risk is because the population has herd-immunity from decades of vaccination. This is a good thing. But if people stop vaccinating against those diseases, they will become higher risk.
- pfarnsworth 10y ago
  I mean things like HPV vaccination. I'm not going to get my son vaccinated. This is an example of Merck and the other drug manufacturers manufacturing a vaccine to treat a low-risk disease. Pushing it on boys, as well, is simply expanding the market to get more money. When my daughter is old enough, she can get the vaccine, once we have figured out if there are long-term effects from this vaccine of if it's just scare mongering. Yes, HPV causes cervical cancer in some cases. But they want to innoculating every single child for a disease that kills 3000 women a year in the US. That is less 10% of the number of people killed in driving accidents per year. That sounds like a money grab by the drug manufacturers by making up a boogyman in HPV, and collecting the money from our government and us through our taxes. It's genius, in some senses. It's the equivalent of banning all peanut products from every school in the US to protect those few that are deathly allergic, and then paying a company for the enforcement of the ban.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    You're saying if you could get rid of 10% of auto accident deaths with a one-off injection in childhood you wouldn't?!
    - pfarnsworth 10y ago
      You should educate yourself better. There are 3 doses, and at the monetary cost and health risks of vaccinating every single child in the US? I would definitely not. The vaccination is not risk free, there have been health issues and deaths associated with it. It's not a freebie.
      - enraged_camel 10y ago
        What health issues and deaths?
  - minikites 10y ago
    Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and group you with every other dangerous anti-vaxxer: http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/04/opinion/carroll-douglas-hpv-vaccine/index.html?iref=allsearch http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/04/opinion/carroll-douglas-hpv-va... > Such cancer still causes the death of 4,000 women each year in the United States. It's estimated that about 15,000 HPV-associated cancers could be prevented each year by the vaccine. HPV is, unfortunately, often transmitted through sexual activity. It's the cause of genital warts, and it's an extremely common sexually transmitted infection. > The vaccine is safe. By the summer of 2012, more than 46 million doses of the vaccine had been given in the United States -- almost all to girls because of early awareness of HPV's link to cervical cancer -- and adverse events from vaccines are closely monitored. > Moreover, there is growing evidence that the recent increase in cancers of the head and neck are also associated with HPV infection. A recent study of more than 1,300 patients with oral cancer found that more than 55% of them were infected with HPV.

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11649577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11649577 and marked it off-topic.