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Is Dr. Oz a Quack?

6/12/2015

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Is Doctor Oz a quack? 10 physicians have had a cow wrestling with this.

They’re accusing. They want Columbia University, where the doctor is the surgery department vice-chairman, to heave Oz, saying he’s a sleaze, peddling stuff not backed by science.

Columbia has a spine, some balls, and said free speech is the issue here. Oz stays. But ball-less Oprah Winfrey has cancelled Oz’s radio show from her network.

Dr. Henry Miller leads the “hang-him-high” posse. He's from Stanford. The doctors' handwritings read loud and clear. Oz has been "promoting quack treatments and cures..." For those of us blissfully unaware, the cardiothoracic surgeon also deals in fat-loss treatments and techniques.

Arthur Caplan, who dealt with medical ethics at New York University, said Dr. Oz was "promoting fairy dust."


And get this: 40% - or nearly so - is the percentage of claims Dr. Oz makes on his show that have zero medical backing. So says a study done by BMJ.

You'd like to think a doctor should be taken at their word, televised or not, and that the Hippocratic Oath is not just an ornament on a doctors' office wall, but you'd be wrong to trust too much. Even Oz, appearing before a U.S. Senate panel dealing with consumer stuff, admitted that some of his products didn't pass scientific muster.

Oz, apparently, views his show job, not as a snow job as his detractors decry, but as a cheerleading job, wherein he discusses many means, matters, and mores of weight loss and fat.  Granted, cheerleading is a noble hobby, but his watchers would probably confess: don't show us your pom-poms, give us the straight goods on weight-loss products.


Adipose accuracy and veracity aside, Dr. Oz is certainly an entertaining duck. His daily show - is watched by two million or so. And iHeartMedia has increased Dr. Oz’s radio exposure...While what he espouses may have less truth than a convict's story, if people do get some benefit from his musing's, how much harm is really being done?

Oz says he's a victim because many unsavory characters illegally use his name when marketing their dud-stuff.

Whoa – victim! Victimology, the perfect study for this century! Everybody’s a “vic” these days. Let’s consult the victims’ hierarchy table, constantly updated, to see if he deserves most of our voiced good will, sympathy, oohs and aahs.


Oops. Aha. Dr Oz is a man. Strike one. He looks white – so strike two. But he's not a White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant WASP, so hold at strike two. He's a Muslim. His parents were born in Turkey. That's got to count for a lot. He’s like an ethnic. If he were a Christian, and unethnical (as well as unethical) he'd be toast. Stay at strike two..

Dr Oz, however, would rather we stay, back a thousand years ago, to when every village had a healer. Google doesn’t show results for medical care as of thousand years ago. Is Dr. Oz quacking quixotic?  

Ever heard the term: a pig flew by my window? Well, James Randi created the Pigasus award to dishonor hoggish frauds. He's given a Pigasus award to Dr. Oz three times.

Alternative medicine seems to be at play in the Ozian universe. Oz says he believes in it, which is to say, he believes in anything and everything. Alternative medicine is easier to get the hang of than your right baby toe. You don't need any education or a degree of any dedication to espouse its wows, and the medicines one stocks can be tree bark, dried callus skin, face-pimpled-squeezed-juice, or whatever.

Take it from me. As someone who has lost fat four times, four different ways, none of which involved quackery or exotic, alternative medicine means, losing weight (fat) isn’t easy. It takes dietary changes and diligent exercise and dutiful daily-data recording of one’s ship-of-state.

So why, really, would an expert surgeon like our Oz persist in giving false hopes to heavyweights? Is he simply a narcissist who loves to hear his own voice, or is he a messianic madman who actually believes any and all avenues to drop fat should be explored and enunciated upon?  His critics claim he sure has an unscientific way in dealing with folks who'd like to deal with their weight.

Dr. Oz's website is chock full of nuts, or at least chock full of information extolling nuts - of the food - not fruitcake variety. Indeed, with all the articles about weight and fat, with catchy titles, if Oz is a quack, he seems like a caring one. (Of course a wit once said: "if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.")

While Dr. Oz may be an original thinker with some strange ideas on weight loss, quackery, lest we forget, has been around since “medicine” men were making house calls to chimps in trees, and chumps for fees, moving elixirs, potions, all medical promotions...

And beware. Dr. Oz is no shrinking violet. His reaction to the 10 physician inquisition was dismissive. Go take a powder, captures his tone...

“We will not be silenced” was his response on his show. He played the free speech part strong, and skirted the substance of the arrows shot his way.

Small wonder that weight-loss points or positions Dr. Oz offers create more heat than light, so far as his detractors are concerned.

But with billions being spent on “quick” fixes, and with so much information, misinformation, and completely contradictory information out there, do those busy body doctors - who would slam and wham Dr. Oz - could they perhaps have a severe case of sour grapes? Could they be jealous of Oz’s success and celebrity?

Lately, however, Dr Oz has bended to the whines. His show has just hired Michael Crupain MD., a preventive medicine expert. He’ll make sure the fall running of the show is on the up and up, medically speaking.

Lots of food for thought for us to chew on - as we digest the meal that is the wonderful (and wacky?) world of Oz. 

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