The show biz career of Dr. Mehmet Oz has enjoyed a meteoric rise ever since he started in television back in 2003 on the Discovery Channel. The first guest on that show was one Oprah Winfrey, who dubbed the charmer, “America’s Doctor”. Dr. Oz now spends his time writing best-selling books on diet and beauty, and hosts a hit TV show. One wonders when he has time to practice cardiology anymore.
Less cardiology would seem to be a tragedy. His useful book Healing From The Heart made a profound impact on me when I read it after my own heart attack in 2008. But in an unprecedented frenzy to win TV viewers and boost ratings, the skilled cardiologist-turned-entertainer is now in danger of becoming a pathetic caricature of his former well-respected self.
You may have witnessed the latest embarrassing low point in which he trotted out a trio of his smarmy cosmetic surgery pals to demonstrate their expensive and oddly disturbing anti-aging procedures on live audience volunteers, all women, of course. The rest of the star-struck crowd cheered as if this were an old time religious revival, and as if it were perfectly normal to eavesdrop on syringes filled with who-knows what injected beneath a patient’s eyes in public by a doctor who kept asking her camera guy: “Can they see this?”
If you did catch this show, you might agree that some of the medical advice Dr. Oz is now peddling is what the watchdog site Respectful Insolence has aptly described as “ranging from fairly pedestrian to pure quackery”. Continue reading
You may wonder why anything this obvious even needs to be reported as news in the first place. Yet that’s what’s happened this week over the issue of whether taking vitamin supplements can ward off cancer and other serious diseases better than eating healthy food does. Pitching this supplement claim is like a dream fantasy for legitimate supplement manufacturers and snake oil salesmen alike, so both groups will be disappointed by the “news” out of the University of Texas.
Years ago, while working on a street outreach program feeding the homeless, I observed that virtually every one of our clients was a smoker. (In fact, researchers now estimate that about 94% of the North American homeless population smoke). These are men and women whose health is already severely compromised because of their living conditions, mental health issues, addictions or disease – not to mention lack of money for smokes.
Although 
