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Oz is a dangerous snake-oil huckster, and Democrats want to make sure Pennsylvania voters know it [1]
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Date: 2022-10-05
Fetterman’s ad is more fun, but probably will have less reach than the multimillion-dollar ad buy from the PAC.
x Before there was Dr. Oz, there was Dr. Nick.
They say the Simpsons always predict the future – and once again, they nailed it. pic.twitter.com/hx5ivJtpdg — John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) October 3, 2022
Oz’s most-recent quackery, pre-campaign, was pushing hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that Trump and the far right embraced, to treat COVID-19. Oz backed his claim based on a French doctor’s research as published on YouTube. Oz owns shares in at least two of the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drug. What a coincidence, huh?
Over the years, he’s hocked a litany of “miracle” treatments that range from useless to dangerous. Like raspberry ketones—“the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat” (it supplanted green coffee extract as “the magic weight-loss cure for every body type”), or putting a bar of lavender soap under your sheet to prevent leg cramps, or making personal health decisions on your astrological sign.
The Post details how Oz hosted a doctor who pushed the use of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone often used to treat infertility, as a weight-loss regimen in conjunction with a dangerous 500-calorie a day diet. Oz did tell his viewers in that segment that they should consult a doctor before embarking on a diet of fewer than 1,200 calories. A bunch of studies had been done on HCG prior to Oz’s show, disproving its weight loss benefits. And after that show aired, the FDA sent letters to seven different companies warning they were making unfounded weight-loss claims. The FDA said it sent those letters after “it had received reports of blood clots in the lungs, cardiac arrest and death among people who injected themselves with HCG.” But Oz had the doctor promoting HCG on the show again.
In 2012, Oz promoted selenium supplements, calling them the “holy grail of cancer prevention.” (That’s after his 2011 claims that a diet of “endive, red onion, and sea bass” would reduce the risk of ovarian cancer by as much as 75%.) Selenium is a naturally occurring mineral found in some foods, and the subject of several medical reviews, none of which found cancer-fighting benefits. The National Institutes of Health, however, does warn that “extremely high intakes of selenium can cause severe problems, including difficulty breathing, tremors, kidney failure, heart attacks, and heart failure.”
Oz might have missed the “do no harm” part of his medical training, and certainly wasn’t adhering to it when it came to the dogs he was using for research projects.
He’s a quack, a dangerous one, who sure seems to have put celebrity and wealth and power above his Hippocratic oath. If—as a licensed medical doctor—he’s that willing to play fast and loose with people’s lives, he sure wouldn’t take an oath to the Constitution seriously as a senator.
This guy has to be kept far away from that seat.
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