It's official, Bill Maher is a total jerk.

[Archae]

The fact he's friends with Annthrax Coulter isn't bad enough, now he tosses completely the germ theory of disease, vaccinations, and repeats a long-debunked story about Louis Pasteur.

March 4th, 2005
"REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER"

JANET RENO
Former U.S. Attorney General

DAVE FOLEY

DR. BERNADINE HEALY
Former NIH Administrator

MAHER: I don’t believe in vaccination either.

HEALY: Oh, dear.

MAHER: That’s what? That’s another theory that I think is flawed. And that we go by the Louis Pasteur theory even though Louis Pasteur renounced it on his own death bed and said, "Beauchamps was right; it’s not the invading germs, it’s the terrain. It’s not the mosquitoes, it’s the swamp that they’re breeding in."

RENO: What are you going to do about smallpox?

MAHER: What am I going to do about smallpox? Not go to the chicken farm.

FOLEY: You’ve got to say, the polio vaccine turned out well. You know.

HEALY: You know, I think there, I mean, I think it’s great theater to, when you’re well, to say, oh, all those sick people, you know, let’s just dismiss them. But, you know, when you’re sick, there’s nothing better than having a good medical establishment.

MAHER: But why do they get sick? Do you think it’s normal that people need this amount of drugs?

HEALY: Well, I think that people get sick and we don’t entirely know why they get sick. And the older they get, the sicker they get. Every ten years that you add onto your life, you have a higher chance of getting sick. And you get atherosclerosis, you get cancer. I mean, the notion.

MAHER: Why?

HEALY: --that somehow if you get sick, it’s your fault.

MAHER: It’s the...

HEALY: It’s the wrong attitude. It’s not your fault. You don’t have a guilt trip because you get sick. People get sick. You know, they say all around the world people think that death is inevitable.

MAHER: You’re in denial.

HEALY: In the United States of America, we think it’s an option! I mean, death is not an option!

MAHER: You’re in denial of, I think, a key fact, which is...

HEALY: Okay.

MAHER: --there is, it is the, people get sick because of an aggregate toxicity, because their body has so much poison in it from the air, the water, yes, much of it is not our fault and we can’t control it, but a lot of it we can. And even the food people think is good for them is bad. And I’m not setting myself as a paradigm. I do cruddy things to my body, too, and I enjoy them.

http://www.safesearching.com/billmaher/print/t_hbo_realtime_030405.htm

[vi5]

1. I don't disagree that Maher is a jerk but on this I don't disagree...

We as a society are too quick to medicate and go for the quick fix rather than attempting to do or not do much simpler, less chemically toxic things to our bodies which would make us healthier in the first place.

Maher is wrong and a jerk for many reasons but on this particularly point I don't think's he's completely out there.

[Archae]

2. Except his blanket statement is dead wrong.

Heart disease is caused by bad diet, little or no exercise, etc.

But colds, the flu and smallpox ARE caused by viruses.
Pneumonia is caused by bacteria.

[Sanity Claws]

3. He is a jerk and he is out there

I agree with you that people do not take enough responsibility for their own health and rely on prescriptions far too much. However, Maher went way beyond that. What he said about vaccines is nuts. Smallpox and polio vaccines are truly marvelous.

[Placebo]

4. He's also become very pro-war all of sudden...

praising the "democracy" in Iraq week after week and saying that maybe the war was worth it!

To make it worse, tonight is his big "Conservative Show" where he is trying to get a live audience with more conservatives.

[FuzzySlippers]

5. I thought he was a jerk when he had the ABC show.

He seems very misogynistic.