I am not
sure whether you have missed the storm in a teapot caused by an ongoing hearing
of a US Senate Committee. The committee is investigating bogus claims by
producers of dietary supplements. Dr Oz of The Dr Oz Show was castigated by Senator Claire McCaskill for ‘melding medical advice, news, and entertainment in a way that harms
consumers.’ Dr Oz is an interesting character. Like the unfortunate Dr Phil he
is also a product of Oprah, that masterful purveyor of everything
pseudo-science. He is known to support faith healing, and homeopathy among
other goodies. Dr Oz actually is a medical doctor with impeccable specialist
credentials. He holds a professorship at Columbia University’s department of
surgery. I have no reason to doubt that Dr Oz is anything but a superb
cardiovascular surgeon. The problem with him – essentially – is that he uses
his medical credentials during his show to peddle quackery. The lay audience
that his show targets (courtesy of CTV in our neck of the woods) has every
reason to assume that his advice has been vetted as far as the supporting
evidence is concerned. That does not appear to be the case. McCaskill confronted Oz during the hearing I mentioned with the following three examples of
miracle drugs promoted by him on his show: ‘(Green coffee extract) — “You may think magic
is make-believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they found the
magic weight-loss for every body type.”(Raspberry ketone) — “I’ve got the
number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat.” (Garcinia cambogia) — “It may
be the simple solution you’ve been looking for to bust your body fat for good.”
All of these supposed miracle drugs are at best placebos. Oz proceeds to
calling his ‘magic’ and ’miracular’ weight-loss placebos during the hearing
‘crutches’. He claims that they help people jump-start their weight-loss
programs. There is zero evidence for that claim.Oz also
promoted an anti-aging substance for the efficacy of which existed no evidence
at the time or today. This kind of stuff made the man a household name and
pretty rich. I do think that medical professionals presenting such shows should
stick to medical mainstream evidence as opposed to abusing their credentials
and the trust they engender among us audience members to peddle nonsense.
Ultimately, Dr Oz professional oath obliges him to ‘first do no harm’.
Encouraging his audience members to purchase unproven – or worse, known not to
work – concoctions is professionally unacceptable, and yes, it does cause harm.
Oprah
meanwhile, who discovered and ‘made’ Dr Oz, promoted during two specials of her, at that time,
top-ranking talk show a book called The Secret, a bunch of new age self-help
nonsense. It sold the reading audience such remarkable insights as this: ‘You cannot ‘catch’ anything unless you think you
can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought.’ So
everyone, the flu you picked up, HIV you acquired, it was all a matter of
inviting it with your thoughts. Oprah presented on one of her shows a woman who
had developed breast cancer, proudly pronouncing that she would eschew all
mainstream medicine in favour of thinking good thoughts. I don’t know how that
one went for her. Oprah, whenever there was an opportunity to promote quacks on
her show, went right for it. She busily promoted notorious actress Jennifer
McCarthy’s conspiracy theories about vaccines and autism. On Oprah’s website
under the header ‘Inspiration’ she has this to say about McCarthy: ‘ Since
her son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004, Jenny has been an outspoken
advocate for parents fighting the same battle.’ McCarthy actually campaigned
against childhood vaccination, resulting in untold suffering among children who
were not protected by their parents. McCarthy’s theories were known to be false
at the time Oprah decided to promote her as much as they are known to be false
today. The number of autism cases scientifically linked to vaccines is zero at the
time of writing.
David T.
Tayloe, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatricians expressed his concerns about the high media profile quacks can receive all too
easily these days for their views this way: "I think show business crosses the line when they give
contracts to people like Jenny McCarthy. If you give her a bully pulpit,
McCarthy is going to make people hesitate to vaccinate their children. She has
no medical or scientific credentials. It disturbs us that she's given all these
opportunities to make her pitch about vaccines on Oprah or Larry
King or U.S. News or whatever. We have to scramble to
get equal time—and who wants to see a gray-haired pediatrician talking about a
serious topic like childhood vaccines when she's out there blasting the academy
and blasting the federal government?"
Now, you’d
say, let the buyer beware, and there is some truth in that. But, in the case of
Dr Oz there are the necessary medical credentials to assume the man is not
selling me snake oil. Sadly he does so frequently. In Oprah’s case we all knew
that she had funny ideas about self-empowerment and strong thoughts and
whatnot, and we also knew that she was clueless about medicine. At the same
time, she managed to pick titles for her book club that outsold Stephen King.
People, in very large numbers, listened to Oprah. That’s why what these sorts
of people sell to us in matters of health and medicine should be held to higher
standards. I wonder what obligations TV companies and cable companies have with
regard to the information they transmit, too. After all, having folks like Dr
Oz on your line-up and knowing that they frequently transmit health related
bogus advice to your lay audience makes you to some extent responsible for bad
choices audience members will make based on the advice of your medical doctor.
Udo
Schuklenk teaches bioethics at Queen’s, he tweets @schuklenk
