You can't write off the people who are so stupid that they listen to Jenny McCarthy for medical advice because their children could potentially grow up to be people that are smart enough to not listen to Taylor Swift for medical advice.

Well, Bill Maher repeatedly argues for various pro-Science positions on his show. (Climate change is the only one that comes to mind, but I vaguely remember him arguing against other Conservative anti-Science positions)

His anti-vaxxer stance is a bizarre aberration in his beliefs, and he doesn't talk about it much. So... yeah, he's dumb on this issue, but he does a lot of good in other Science-releated areas.

Bill Maher is one of the loudest anti-vaccination idiots out there. Are you sure "he doesn't talk about it much" is only because he spouts off on so many different things that he has no business talking about that it seems like his vaccination stance is only a small component of his overall bullshit package?

It will take a pandemic for these idiots to listen to the things we have known for over a hundred years.

It will take a pandemic for these idiots to listen to the things we have known for over a hundred years.

Maher's selective science isn't exactly unique. Steve Jobs owed his livelihood to science (electronics, engineering, etc.) yet completely ignored it when it came to treating his cancer.

If the universe was really into ironic justice, Maher would be the first to go in the next flu pandemic.

Bill Maher may have been an anti vaxxer but very recently on his show he said " I am not against vaccines. Except the flu vaccine."

So there is that. It would be nice if people who attack bill actually listened to what he says.

He had to be schooled by Bill "diagnosis by videotape" Frist about vaccines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB5DLf1Qt78

He says he doesn't want the government "sticking a disease into his arm." He quotes Salk from THE FRIGGIN' 1950's ABOUT THE POLIO VACCINE. On another show, he claimed there hadn't been any advances in cancer treatment FOR THE PAST 50 YEARS.

Maybe he's got some wacky phobia of getting ill, but he's completely wrong on just about anything to do with chronic illness and vaccination.

At least he isn't Jimmy Fallon.

Monsanto revenue: .58 billion
Merck (maker of MMR and other vaccines) revenue: .24 billion

This conspiracy theory doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Unless the media arbitrarily pick which companies they're scared of.

it doesn't sound complicated to me...pregnant women aren't taking vaccinations but it's been known for years that they are one of the most at risk groups for chemical exposure.

Monsanto once said it was okay to bathe babies in DDT. So fuck them with knives. Also fuck Jenny McCarthy for being a total idiot who is now, after writing four goddamn books about how vaccines cause autism, is now saying that she never said that.

Fuck you, you cunt.

Monsanto seems like it would be way more vulnerable to a lawsuit, though.

Merck, after all, has decades of science saying vaccines aren't harmful. Any lawsuit brought against them would be dismissed.

Monsanto, on the other hand, is producing chemicals that are known to be toxic and dangerous to people. Sure, they can say "Our scientists can show they're not that dangerous in small amounts." but they probably don't test them as extensively as they should.

Big companies have a long sad history of not wanting to know if their products are harmful and not scrutinizing them as closely as they should then trying to cover it up when someone does take a closer look.

"Monsanto once said it was okay to bathe babies in DDT."

I've been Googling for the exact quote because that sounds so ridiculously over-the-top that I feel source-checking is appropriate. No hits yet; got a link or anything?

That was maybe a bit of hyperbole on RoUS' part, but I definitely remember seeing old promo material where they let kids frolic in DDT spray to show how safe it was for humans.

And then the book "Silent Spring" came out showing what disastrous consequences DDT had on the environment and birds in particular. It's use was banned in the US, but it was still legal to manufacture here and it was shipped overseas to Asia and Africa where it continued to curb the mosquito population and help keep malaria in check, at least for a while. More mosquitoes developed immunity to DDT and cheaper, more effective alternatives replaced it along with other measures to control mosquitoes.

Remember that the next time some right-wing asshole blathers on about how "outlawing DDT led to millions of deaths from malaria" because a lot of them still believe that bullshit and trot it out every time an environmentalist proves how bad pesticides are for everyone.

"It's use was banned in the US"

Its use was (and is) banned only for widespread agricultural use. For disease control, though, DDT is not only approved but even recommended in the correct contexts. They talk about that around the bottom of this article (the "Current Status" section):

http://www2.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/ddt-br ief-history-and-status

So it's not even a matter of refusing to use DDT to combat mosquitos; when right-wing blowhards trot that out, it's a plain lie. What the government did was limit its use to disease control so that it would remain effective, and in the US, it still is (unlike elsewhere). The government worked, and free market fuckheads screwed up.

As for the hyperbole about bathing in DDT, I could personally do without. It just makes the Left look uneducated and panicky; it shouldn't be necessary to make things up to go after Monsanto.

Yeah, they never did go so far as to say you could bathe your baby in DDT...

They DID, however say it was safe enough to eat:

http://youtu.be/gtcXXbuR244

Holy shit!

Okay, but that was back in 1947, before people knew the impact of DDT; Paul Mueller (the guy who discovered DDT's insecticidal properties) won the Nobel Prize in 1948 -- the year after this film -- because of all the good that DDT was doing with (apparently) zero negative consequences. "Silent Spring" wouldn't come out until 1962.

I'm really looking for something where Monsanto (specifically Monsanto) declared DDT was safe for children well after DDT's health risks were known. Not because I think Monsanto is all rainbows, but because the Left has gotten really sloppy of late about fact-checking, to Teabagger levels, and it doesn't help. And if it turns out that we can't find any evidence that Monsanto has been trying to push DDT at known cost to human lives and the environment, well, that means they're slightly less evil than we'd believed, and that's a good thing, right?