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In the celebrity vaccine wars, I’m siding with actress Amanda Peet. And comedian Bill Maher, well, I like your show, but when it comes to vaccines you don’t know a punchline from a clothesline.
Maher recently tweeted to his Twitter followers “if u get a swine flu shot ur an idiot.” On his HBO program Real Time last week, Maher went head-to-head with former Senator Dr. Bill Frist, who patiently explained why vaccines were in fact good. But Maher wasn’t buying it. He advocates a healthy lifestyle over vaccines. But polio and smallpox outmatched many robust immune systems.
Actress Amanda Peet, meanwhile, has used her celebrity to encourage vaccinations, specifically in response to the alleged vaccine-autism connection, for which there’s no scientific evidence, but which has some parents afraid of childhood vaccinations. In a letter to a parenting magazine, Peet wrote: “It’s irresponsible to suggest that virtually the entire medical community, and the CDC, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are behind a massive cover-up about vaccine safety.” See you in the line for the flu shot.
—Steve Mirsky
To watch the Bill Maher–Bill Frist conversation, see Bill Maher gets schooled on vaccines by Bill Frist
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20 Comments
Add CommentThe problem with Maher is, he's not very smart, so he probably shouldn't be a standard bearer for the Left.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFortunately, HBO has a fairly sophisticated audience, as far as audiences go, so there shouldn't be too many people listening to the nonsense he was pushing regarding vaccinations in general. Now if Fox News would only take that position, that might be a positive development.
It simplifies the issue if you remind yourself that Bill Maher is a complete idiot on this subject (beleive it or not, he has no formal medical training - it is not even a requirement for being a talk show host).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh yeah, peet is so qualified to make recommendations on the shot ! and frist...knucklehead repuklican ! you morons who want the shot..please do get it. YOU DESERVE IT !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt isn't an issue of Peet being qualified, it's that Mahrer isn't qualified to contradict then whole entire medical community. Dear anti-vaccine people, show any credible resource (peer-review style.. where other professionals can judge and critique) to support your claims. Then I can take you seriously.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPS: Ant-vaccine people- I'm sure you "know" that our landing on the moon was filmed in a movie studio and ManBearPig is real.
SciAm should stick top SCIENCE (for qa change) not celebrity skirmishes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQ: Who is more MEDICALLY qualified - Ms. Peet or Mr. Maher?
A: Neither.
If you have to hear it from Amanda Peet or Bill Maher in order for it to be true, there is the REAL problem. Vaccines are well proven to reduce disease incidence...they are not perfect, but the risk of getting the disease is FAR higher than the risk of getting a side effect from the vaccine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo offense to those who choose not to vaccinate, but are you all that stupid? Can we all say "i told you so" when you are on a ventilator in the ICU or dead or for that matter when you unknowingly infect a newborn or coworker w/ H1N1 because you were too stupid/stuborn/scared/selfish to get a vaccination.
Someone telling an audience of millions that vaccines of any sort are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs most definitely falls into the purview of Scientific American.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDolmance, you've commented twice on the article. So what kind of audience member does that make you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo reply needed, just a thought for you to ponder.....
irondoc99 - - 100% right behind you!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd to add, These same people that think the entire medical community, and the CDC, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are behind some insanely unlikely massive cover-up about vaccine safety are also entirely blind to the advertising and money making blitzkrieg "alternative medicine" in it's various forms (from "mommy power", Holistic, organic, Homeopathic, chiropractic, etc). These people are making BIG $$ on scam help from emotionality vulnerable and desperate people (also the clueless). and this is supported by the strange trend to believe anecdotal evidence from some random person then a mountain of real and hard evidence by the dreaded "experts".
People are going to be harmed and even die from this trend . . sad times.
>>vaccine safety <<
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt HAS been shown if a person is PREdisposed TO a metal reaction this can result in significant brain damage.
Maybe it is this portion of the population to whom the naysayers are referring? Those people are not that 'too far between' AS the world thinks. Soo the sheer number of vaccines MAY have affected these individuals and NOW with the use of MORE and MORE vaccines the appreciation of this metal sensitivity will become more 'apparent' IE: dead bodies and or diseases corresponding "coincidentally" WITH the vaccination.
We SHOULD see more of a vaccination related 'incidence of reaction' TO the vaccine in our elderly IF there IS an elevated IF any reaction to the vaccines which contain mercury or aluminum.
Well there is "anti-vaccine" and "anti-H1N1-vaccine". I am very pro-vaccine but I'm very reluctant about the H1N1 vaccine, since I've been reading about adjuvants and such, which may or may not be in them, and may or may not [AHEM] cause nasty side-effects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, Burn Doubt. I am concerned that the testing was so rushed and incomplete. And the confusion regarding inhalant or two shots or one shot. For example, a friend with lymphoma got sick at 5th grade camp last week. Turns out it is H1N1. Without proper testing, his parents had agonized over whether or not to give him the vaccine considering his damaged immune system. Moot point, now. Wise people will be entertained by celebrities, but not informed by them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI Have A Brain,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBill Maher said don't get a SWINE FLU vaccine. He said this because it has been rushed to market without rigorous testing, and because the 1976 swine flu vaccination program led to an increase of Guillain-Barre syndrome. He makes no mention of other vaccines, as far as I know.
And IhaveAbrain, to put a blurb about random conspiracy theories at the end of your comment takes away any seriousness from your argument. It shows you simply group anybody who thinks twice about the safety of a rushed-to-market vaccine as someone who wears a tin-foil hat. The explosion in Guillain-Barre in 1976 was no conspiracy theory. Kiplinger reported on it. He is the world's most-referred-to management forecaster for major corporations. In the August 7, 2009 Kiplinger Letter he forecast that many employers would shy away from offering the vaccine because of the 1976 Guillain-Barre fiasco.
You said show me a peer-reviewed paper and you will take me seriously. Why would I care if you take me seriously? You clearly haven't taken into account that an untested vaccine is going to be given to half the western world. I take vaccines, and I get yearly flu shots.
I am not getting a Swine Flu shot because it hasn't been tested rigorously. So I guess I must endlessly spend my days searching for Big Foot and little green men. When you make baseless comparisons like that, nobody will care if you take them seriously.
Mr. Maher is profoundly ignorant about science and medicine if he is opposed to vaccines. It is a bizarre set of paranoid people who endanger us all with this nonsense. I had swine flu in 1976 and believe me, had I the opportunity to have avoided it with a vaccine I would have walked on glass to obtain it. Instead I was prone for three weeks and sick as a...pig. Vaccines do not cause any of the sad diseases of the brain such as autism which is a genetically determined neurological disease and which appears in early childhood which is why a coincidence such as a vaccination is tied to this but is just a way that angry parents whose child is thus encumbered tries to cope..with irrational blame for the tragedy. The mercury that USED to be used in the vaccine is a tiny amount that one gets pretty much any time one eats a tuna fish sandwich and I have yet to hear that anyone is accusing the tuna fish companies of causing autism. Consider that we live nearly double the lifespan of those born in the 19th century and rationally consider that one of the main causes of death then were the diseases that are now preventable. I nearly died from mumps. No one need get that disease today by getting a vaccine for it. Smallpox is wiped out nearly everywhere with the first ever vaccine. Pneumonia caused by the bacterium can also be prevented with a vaccine. The ignorance of TV personalities recommending with no knowledge whatsoever to do this or that medical procedure is so irresponsible as to make me boil. The paranoia and lack of trust in science in America is a real pandemic and I suspect that the eight years of a lying and ugly government regime did not make trust the first thing one thinks of when one thinks of government but separate science from politics for a moment and get real information based on medical science which the informed will see supports fully and wholly, vaccines. You owe it to your children to protect them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk i was googling manbearpig doing some research and it brought me to this article but it's obviously not about manbearpig so i don't understand that but it is common knowledge that vaccines are full of mercury that dumbs down the populace so they are more docile. Texans don't take it and they're wanting to seccede from the Union, so there you go!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am barely old enough to remember when parents were deathly afraid to let their children go to public swimming pools for fear they would contract polio. I do remember the sense of relief that their children would not end up in a row of iron lungs. God knows I was told about it often enough by my grandparents. The problem is that most of the anti vaccine people not only don't remember, their parents don't remember either, so they believe anyone selling a book that is anti whatever they wish to be anti to. You could present them evidence until you are blue in the face, but until they face real privation and disease they will not have a clue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho KNOWS now that it has been SHOWN that the vaccine sent to the other countries had actually been SHOWN to CONTAIN the virus as opposed to being prepared to KILL or prevent the virus .. ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen we have such a diagnosed autism and the scientific studies which show a DIRECT metal - sensitivity CAUSING autism like disease then one can SUSPECT the actual amount of aluminum or mercury in the vaccines to be .. relative .. TO the surveillance of the system. Which it seems IS sorely lacking since vaccines are allowed to be exported which would actually cause disease IN a population .. ?
Multiple chemical sensitivity .. ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe SAME thing that causes **some** people to react "badly" .. to
vaccines ..
These people might react badly to many different chemicals theSAME as
**some** Gulf War veterans and Desert Storm veterans and **some**
Vietnam veterans ..
They reacted "badly" .. but many didn't .. the majority didn't ..
PREdisposal TO the vaccine .. ?
PREdisposal to the inability to .. manage .. the KNOWN association OF
the vinyl .. ?
Just like latex .. allergy .. ?
Latex allergy is reactive in the presence of .. iron ..
"Loading cells with Fe-D increased their response to latex"
Iron uptake and release by macrophages is sensitive to propranolol.
Mol Cell Biochem. 2006 Aug;288(1-2):213-7. Epub 2006 May 23.
Komarov AM, Hall JM, Chmielinska JJ, Weglicki WB.
Division of Experimental Medicine, Departments of Biochemistry &
Molecular Biology, The George Washington University Medical Center,
2300 Eye St., NW, Ross Hall, Rm. 441A, Washington, DC 20037,
USA. phy...@gwumc.edu
In this study we have tested the effects of d-propranolol (D-Pro) on
the
iron uptake, iron release and oxidative response of iron-loaded cells
in
a cellular model of iron-overload using isolated rat peritoneal
macrophages incubated with iron-dextran (Fe-D).
Pretreatment of macrophages with D-Pro (5-200 microM) prior to Fe-D
exposure decreased the cellular iron content and partially prevented
iron
release from latex-activated macrophages.
Release of reactive oxygen species from activated cells was detected
by
dichlorodihydrofluorescein (DCDHF, 5 microM) oxidation.
We found that loading cells with Fe-D increased their response to
latex,
which was prevented by the lysosomotropic antioxidant agent D-Pro
(10 microM).
PMID: 16718379
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWHO, CDC and FDA Knew All About Mercury Dangers in 2000, Minutes of Meeting Reveal
A Freedom of Information Act FOI Document shows that the WHO, CDC FDA and pharmaceutical companies knew all about the dangers that vaccines with mercury and other toxins posed in 2000 and yet they decided to keep the information secret.
Here are extracts of the minutes of the meeting, which came to light through an Freedom of Information Act request.
Dr. Johnson, pg. 198: This association leads me to favor a recommendation that infants up to two years old not be immunized with Thimerosal containing vaccines if suitable alternative preparations are available.
My gut feeling? It worries me enough. Forgive this personal comment, but I got called out at eight oclock for an emergency call and my daughter-in-law delivered a son by C-section. Our first male in the line of the next generation, and I do not want that grandson to get a Thimerosal containing vaccine until we know better what is going on. It will probably take a long time. In the meantime, and I know there are probably implications for this internationally, but in the meantime I think I want that grandson to only be given Thimerosal-free vaccines.
Dr. Bernier, pg 198: the negative findings need to be pinned down and published.
Dr. Weil, pg. 207: The number of dose related relationships are linear and statistically significant. You can play with this all you want. They are linear. They are statistically significant. The positive relationships are those that one might expect from the Faroe Islands studies. They are also related to those data we do have on experimental animal data and similar to the neurodevelopmental tox data on other substances, so that I think you cant accept that this is out of the ordinary. It isnt out of the ordinary.
Dr. Weil, pg. 208: The rise in the frequency of neurobehavioral disorders whether it is ascertainment or real, is not too bad. It is much too graphic. We dont see that kind of genetic change in 30 years.
Dr. Brent, pg. 229: The medical/legal findings in this study, causal or not, are horrendous and therefore, it is important that the suggested epidemiological, pharmacokinetic, and animal studies be performed. If an allegation was made that a childs neurobehavioral findings were caused by Thimerosal containing vaccines, you could readily find junk scientist who would support the claim with a reasonable degree of certainty . But you will not find a scientist with any integrity who w
Clearly, vaccination against polio, etc. is a good idea, since it had been shown to work. I was somewhat shocked to read in this article that there is hardly any evidence that (seasonal) flu vaccination works and the CDC is not willing to study the efficacy of vaccination:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200911/brownlee-h1n1
I would like to see/read the opinion of sciam on this article.