Watch this video, where former Republican Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, totally schools talk show host, atheist and Richard Dawkins Award winner, Bill Maher, on the efficacy of flu vaccines. It turns out that despite being a famous non-theist, Maher is a true believer of wacky alternative medicine claims, including the anti-vaccination nonsense that’s been going around. It further turns out that despite Frist’s other crazy, conservative, Christian beliefs (like denying evolution), his training as a medical doctor has served him well on this issue. (Too bad his medical training failed him so utterly in the Terry Schiavo case.)
Yes, Frist is right and Maher is wrong. I know, I had to watch it twice!
Bad Astonomer, Phil Plait discusses the video here, and there’s more about Maher and his crazy beliefs here.
He might want to check out this site: http://whatstheharm.net/ which shows what can happen w/ weird belief/ideas (I really don’t get the anti-evo folks, though. For Pete’s sake, I was taught evolution @ Jesuit school!).
That’s a shame.
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This is just embarrassing. Why is Maher so invincibly ignorant on this topic? He doesn’t even appear to know the difference between a live vaccine and an inactivated one. It’s not a matter of having a differing opinion, it’s having an opinion which somehow completely fails to take into account generations of conclusive global public health data.
My own anecdotal evidence? I have had a severely suppressed immune system for years – equivalent to someone on chemotherapy or an organ transplant recipient. I get a flu shot every year and I have never a. contracted influenza from the vaccine, or b. contracted influenza at all.