Louis Pasteur was a Catholic.
Bill Maher doesn't believe in germ theory or pharmaceuticals:
But it turns out that the late-night comic is no icon of rationality himself. In fact, he is a fervent advocate of pseudoscience. The night before his performance on Conan O'Brien, Mr. Maher told David Letterman -- a quintuple bypass survivor -- to stop taking the pills that his doctor had prescribed for him. He proudly stated that he didn't accept Western medicine. On his HBO show in 2005, Mr. Maher said: "I don't believe in vaccination. . . . Another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur [germ] theory." He has told CNN's Larry King that he won't take aspirin because he believes it is lethal and that he doesn't even believe the Salk vaccine eradicated polio.
Interesting and illustrative. When you throw out the priest he isn't replaced by a scientist, he is replaced with the witch doctor.
“Louis Pasteur was a Catholic.”
So what does that have to do with the analogy?
Bill Maher is an idiot, and his idiocy is not germane to this discussion.
It would appear that Mr. Maher has picked up a small bit of wisdom, taken it out of context, and run wild. Even the most ardent natural therapists do not ever advocate that anyone just stop taking necessary medication 'cold turkey.' There are natural substances that outperform every synthetic medication, and do it without the often fatal and everpresent side effects, but the change has to be made gradually.
Maher's lack of belief in 'germs' certainly won't make them go away. I don't know of any N.D. D.O. D.C. or nutritionist that doesn't accept the causality of illness from bacteria, or virus. I can't imagine where he is coming from on that, especially since he is known to reject out of hand the idea of sin. Western medicine is certainly full of pitfalls, and charlatanism, but physiology contains an established body of facts.