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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019) and AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021).

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Michael Shermer's open letter to Bill Maher

I'm going to republish this without comment, except to say "Kudos to Michael Shermer!" for hitting what seems to me exactly the right note.

(And do you need reminding that Michael has a 5000-word essay explaining where he stands on the God question ... in a certain book that gets mentioned here now and then?)

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An Open Letter to Bill Maher on Vaccinations

From a Fellow Skeptic

By Michael Shermer
Editor of Skeptic magazine and “Skeptic” columnist for Scientific American

Dear Bill,

Years ago you invited me to appear as a fellow skeptic several times on your ABC show Politically Incorrect, and I have ever since shared your skepticism on so many matters important to both of us: creationism and intelligent design, religious supernaturalism and New Age paranormal piffle, 9/11 “truthers”, Obama “birthers”, and all manner of conspiratorial codswallop. On these matters, and many others, you rightly deserved the Richard Dawkins Award from Atheist Alliance International.

However, I believe that when it comes to alternative medicine in general and vaccinations in particular you have fallen prey to the same cognitive biases and conspiratorial thinking that you have so astutely identified in others. In fact, the very principle of how vaccinations work is additional proof (as if we needed more) against the creationists that evolution happened and that natural selection is real: vaccinations work by tricking the body’s immune system into thinking that it has already had the disease for which the vaccination was given. Our immune system “adapts” to the invading pathogens and “evolves” to fight them, such that when it encounters a biologically similar pathogen (which itself may have evolved) it has in its armory the weapons needed to fight it. This is why many of us born in the 1950s and before may already have some immunity against the H1N1 flu because of its genetic similarity to earlier influenza viruses, and why many of those born after really should get vaccinated.

Vaccinations are not 100% effective, nor are they risk free. But the benefits far outweigh the risks, and when communities in the U.S. and the U.K. in recent years have foregone vaccinations in large numbers, herd immunity is lost and communicable diseases have come roaring back. This is yet another example of evolution at work, but in this case it is working against us. (See www.sciencebasedmedicine.org for numerous articles answering every one of the objections to vaccinations.)

Vaccination is one of science’s greatest discoveries. It is with considerable irony, then, that as a full-throated opponent of the nonsense that calls itself Intelligent Design, your anti-vaccination stance makes you something of an anti-evolutionist. Since you have been so vocal in your defense of the theory of evolution, I implore you to be consistent in your support of the theory across all domains and to please reconsider your position on vaccinations. It was not unreasonable to be a vaccination skeptic in the 1880s, which the co-discovered of natural selection—Alfred Russel Wallace—was, but we’ve learned a lot over the past century. Evolution explains why vaccinations work. Please stop denying evolution in this special case.

As well, Bill, your comments about not wanting to “trust the government” to inject us with a potentially deadly virus, along with many comments you have made about “big pharma” being in cahoots with the AMA and the CDC to keep us sick in the name of corporate profits is, in every way that matters, indistinguishable from 9/11 conspiracy mongering. Your brilliant line about how we know that the Bush administration did not orchestrate 9/11 (“because it worked”), applies here: the idea that dozens or hundreds pharmaceutical executives, AMA directors, CDC doctors, and corporate CEOs could pull off a conspiracy to keep us all sick in the name of money and power makes about as much sense as believing that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their bureaucratic apparatchiks planted explosive devices in the World Trade Center and flew remote controlled planes into the buildings.

Finally, Bill, please consider the odd juxtaposition of your enthusiastic support for health care reform and government intervention into this aspect of our medical lives, with your skepticism that these same people—when it comes to vaccinations and disease prevention—suddenly lose their sense of morality along with their medical training. You excoriate the political right for not trusting the government with our health, and then in the next breath you inadvertently join their chorus when you denounce vaccinations, thereby adding fodder for their ideological cannons. Please remember that it’s the same people administrating both health care and vaccination programs.

One of the most remarkable features of science is that it often leads its practitioners to change their minds and to say “I was wrong.” Perhaps we don’t do it enough, as our own blinders and egos can get in the way, but it does happen, and it certainly happens a lot more in science than it does in religion or politics. I’ve done it. I used to be a global warming skeptic, but I reconsidered the evidence and announced in Scientific American that I was wrong. Please reconsider both the evidence for vaccinations, as well as the inconsistencies in your position, and think about doing one of the bravest and most honorable things any critical thinker can do, and that is to publicly state, “I changed my mind. I was wrong.”

With respect,

Michael Shermer

7 comments:

Jerry Coyne said...

You go, Michael! Maher's odd views on medicine and vaccinations simply don't square with his apparent respect for rationality and empiricism as shown in his critiques of religion. It's a cognitive dissonance as strange as that shown by people like Francis Collins.

jdhuey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
jdhuey said...

Brings to mind the 2008 Edge World question: "What have you changed your mind about?"
(http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html)

J. J. Ramsey said...

Dr. Coyne, I think you are assuming that Maher's critiques of religion are really a by-product of a respect for rationality rather than a cranky contrariness (and "cranky" can be taken at least a couple different ways).

Unknown said...

The left is too often the mirror image of the right. On healthcare, the right is pro industry, pro establishment medicine, anti government funding. So, the left is anti industry, anti establishment medicine, pro government funding.

Anti industry is fine, the health insurance industry, big pharma, and a lot of the health industry are just terrible. But establishment medicine gets conflated with evidence based medicine overall, so you get this anti evidence based medicine position paired with pro government funding.

And thus you get Bill Maher, who is actually representative of a lot of left thinking on health. People want government funding on medicine, but don't trust that same medicine. That's an inconsistent and self-defeating position.

No wonder the US can't reform healthcare. The right are against it, the left it are for it but against medicine itself, thus ineffective, finding any proposal unsupportable because it conflicts with one or the other of the conflicting positions they hold.

Good luck Obama!

Leon Leontyev said...

I agree with much of what is said in this article, except the very first claim, namely that denying the efficacy of vaccinations is inconsistent with endorsing evolutionary theory. While it is true that evolutionary theory explains why vaccinations work, (if they in fact work), from this it does not follow that evolutionary theory mandates thinking that vaccinations do work. So I don't think that Bill Maher is being incoherent in this regard (even though I do think that vaccinations do work).

Anonymous said...

I agree, Leon. I know that "evolve" and "adapt" had scare quotes, but the way in which vaccines work is really not analagous to the way in which species evolve over time.

Bryan