September 15, 2016 | No Comments
Mehmet Oz — Ivy League-trained surgeon and daytime TV star — has been called a charlatan by fellow physicians for promoting “quack” medical cures. He’s been investigated by Congress for fraudulently promoting “magic” weight loss pills. And more than half of his medical advice is unsubstantiated — or flat out wrong — according to the top British medical journal.
But for Donald Trump, Oz’s show is a safe space, a haven shielded from tough questions that offers a platform to say, in effect, whatever he wants.
The two taped an hourlong show on Wednesday to air on Thursday, and early reports suggest Trump’s discussion with Oz was light on details.
“The Dr. Oz Show” said, in a press release, that Oz took Trump through a “full review of [his] systems” including his cardiovascular and respiratory health. And, according to a preview clip released by the show, the only “medical records” that Trump released on-air were two one-page letters from his a New York City hospital and his doctor, the colorful gastroenterologist Harold Bornstein. Bornsten’s earlier missive on Trump was widely ridiculed for its hyperbolic prediction that Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Attendees leaving Wednesday’s taping mostly remembered the way Trump talked about his height of 6’3″ and weight of 236 pounds, which classifies him as overweight according to his body mass index.
In an election where Trump’s unorthodox moves have brushed aside traditional politicking, having a reality TV star-turned-presidential candidate rely on a TV doctor to discuss his well-being may be the least surprising development.
But the stakes are real for Trump’s sit down with Oz.
Both candidates face questions about their health, particularly after video surfaced showing an ailing Hillary Clinton stumbling to a van this past weekend (her campaign later disclosed that she has pneumonia). And Trump has steadfastly refused to disclose detailed medical records.
Oz is hardly an impartial figure to evaluate the health and fitness of the next potential resident of the White House. He’s been pilloried for years for making dubious medical claims on-air and for placing greater importance on the financial or business opportunities of his TV show than on solid, scientific medical research.
HE’S BEEN CALLED OUT BY FELLOW DOCTORS — He’s been dragged before a Senate subcommittee to defend his adulation of weight-loss supplements like those coffee beans. His Harvard degree, his MBA and his affiliation with Columbia University as a practicing cardiothoracic surgeon and director of the Integrative Medicine Center haven’t insulated him from being seen, as The New Yorker put it in a lengthy expose, “the operator.”
Below, POLITICO rounded up just a sampling of the ways that Oz has been discredited by the medical, health care and political establishment ahead of what many expect to be his softball interview with Trump.
QUESTIONABLE MEDICAL CLAIMS — For years, Oz has been dogged by charges that he has perpetuated questionable medical advice on his show. He has promoted a raft of scientifically unproven therapies and downplayed the risk of concussions for kids. He’s given airtime to prominent anti-vaccine advocates and their widely repudiated theories, and was hauled before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection to talk about the deceptive marketing practices of some supplements he’s promoted.
A 2014 study that appeared in the British Medical Journal found that medical research either didn’t support or flatly contradicted half of Oz’s TV recommendations.
FELLOW DOCTORS DON’T WANT TO ASSOCIATE WITH HIM — Oz may hit TV ratings gold week after week, but that doesn’t mean his fellow physicians respect him. A group of doctors in 2015 sent a letter to the vice chairman of the Columbia University department of surgery (where Oz practices medicine), calling for his dismissal. One of the docs who sent the letter called Oz a quack, fake and charlatan.
In The New Yorker’s long profile of Oz in 2013 fellow doctors seemed eager to dish about him. “Oz has a huge bully pulpit, with the entire Oprah empire behind him,” said David Gorski, an associate professor of surgery at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and the editor of a prominent science and medical blog. “He can’t simply dispense with facts he doesn’t find convenient.”
CONGRESS HAS INVESTIGATED HIM — Oz’s dubious medical advice earned him the attention of Congress, where he appeared at a 2014 Senate hearing for his role in promoting weight-loss aids on his show and for saying that green coffee extract was a “magic weight loss cure for every body type.”
Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) scolded him: “The scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of the three products you called ‘miracles,’” she said. “When you call a product a miracle, and it’s something you can buy, and it’s something that gives people false hope, I don’t understand why you need to go there.”
EVEN OZ’S BOSS THINKS HE’S FULL OF YOU-KNOW-WHAT — The head of Sony Pictures Television and Oz’s big, big boss indicated as much in an email, released as part of the WikiLeaks Sony dump. Oz is “smart as hell,” Steve Mosko wrote in an email to the NFL Network’s Rich Eisen, and “full of s—.” Not that anyone on the business side of TV is arguing, since other WikiLeaks emails combed through by Vox suggest that Oz firmly places business concerns above his scientific training, and that’s something most business leaders would disagree with.
Ben Schreckinger contributed to this report.