Dr. Oz's Problem

Red palm oil. Green coffee beans. Raspberry ketone. Some of you are wondering what the heck I'm making for dinner, but some of you will recognize the common characteristic: all of these have been promoted by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the most famous physician in the country. I'm prompted to write about him by this New Yorker profile, which is excellent reading. It author, Michael Specter, tries his best to figure out why a talented, well-trained cardiac surgeon is sitting down on his own television show with psychic healers, fad-diet pushers, and the likes of Joseph Mercola. (In case you haven't run across him, consider yourself fortunate. His eponymous web site, which I will certainly not link to, is a trackless fever swamp of craziness. If you want to hear about how vaccines are killing you, or how cancer is actually a fungus, or how to heal your ulcers with vinegar and your melanoma with baking soda, well, Mercola is your man). When Oz says that Mercola is “challenging everything you think you know about traditional medicine and prescription drugs,” it’s hard to argue. “I’m usually earnestly honest and modest about what I think we’ve accomplished,” Oz told me when we discussed his choice of guests. “If I don’t have Mercola on my show, I have thrown away the biggest opportunity that I have been given.” I had no idea what he meant. How was it Oz’s “biggest opportunity” to introduce a guest who explicitly rejects the tenets of science? “The fact that I am ...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Snake Oil Source Type: blogs