Comedian and atheist Bill Maher on the shortcomings of big-pharma
by Fernando 6 Replies latest jw friends
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Fernando
From Wikipedia:
“William "Bill" Maher, Jr., born 1956, is an American stand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author, and actor. Before his current role as the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher hosted a similar late-night talk show called Politically Incorrect originally on Comedy Central and later on ABC. Maher is highly critical of religion and refers to himself as an apatheist - a pragmatic atheist.
Maher has stated that the AMA is a powerful lobbying group and one of the primary reasons why the United States had failed to enact health care reform. Maher has expressed the view that most illness is generally the result of poor diet and lack of exercise, and that medicine is often not the best way of addressing illness.
In an episode of his show about the 2008 presidential candidates' health plans, Maher stated that poor nutrition is a primary cause of illness, and that "the answer isn't another pill." He also has said:" If you believe you need to take all the pills the pharmaceutical industry says you do, then you're already on drugs!”
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bigmouth
Funnily enough, if you could edit out all the whooping and clapping, and weren't expecting comedy, his message made for serious listening.
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GeneM
He buys into a lot of the typical anti-big-pharm stuff. While I dont watch his show often, I don't think he ever says anything really positive about the industry which overall improves health outcomes by making good products. luckily he doesn't cast himself as a full on anti-pharm nutter. I think he might be anti vaccine too.
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breakfast of champions
I like Bill Maher, but I thank Pfizer every day for my meds. They have saved my life.
Do I like the idea of taking meds every day? No. Do I want to find a better way of dealing with my condition? Yes!
But until I can, the meds are what keep me going.
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finally awake
I firmly believe that it is better to prevent a disease than to treat it. However, things like cancer and heart disease are complicated and it's not possible to prevent to every case just by "living right" according to today's knowledge. If we understood 100% of the causes and interactions between causes of disease, each perrson would be in a better position to tailor his individual lifestyle to avoid those diseases. Until then, medicine and big pharma are going to remain necessary.
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snare&racket
Buy "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre
He highlights things that big pharma do that are dodgy, such as testing drugs on African tribes where efficacy would obviously be through the roof in comparison to a western patient with drug tolerances.
Ben is also a doctor so he is balanced. In the uk doctors prescribe 27 drugs every second, it saves lives, all the studies that prove this are available for everyone to look at. Use google scholar if you want to see the evidence. It is compulsory to peform EVIDENCE based medicine today, we dont use drugs that dont save, improve or prevent.
Snare x