Part Two: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard

fuckable hat. Yes, that was actually the first name I pitched for this podcast, but Sophie said that that means nothing and no one will listen to it. We will lies on my name and saying that I turned down his ideas. That's just not the case, so they I think we can all agree that one of the best things to do is to lie about things your colleagues didn't do, because it's funny. I agree with it. Thank you.

Onto the show. We're talking about Dr Odds um And as we left the last episode off, he had just you know, gotten Oprah right, Uh, started his TV career, got an opera hard Um, so he started his TV career, and he also starts right around the same time he gets on TV for the first time. He starts a daily morning radio show on Oprah Winfrey's Serious x M channel. Never a good idea, Serious x M, No terrible idea. What is it about giving people three hours of an

interrupted airtime? You know, there's just something about it. I I you know, this is an opinion that's pretty controversial within I heart radio. I think radio should be illegal, um. And I think it should be a felony, punished by prison time for for being on the radio or having a radio. Thinking about the radio, I think the only form of entertainment that should be legal is specifically my podcast.

Yeah podcast and yes, yeah, and and there should legally only be one Sopranos podcast allowed, which, as it turns out, is the case. So I think if we, if we could get Chuck Schumer's ear, we can make this happen. Um. We will tack this onto the pot bill, no one will notice. So Dr Oz has the Doctor Oz Show. He's got a radio show on winfries S x M channel where he covers very scientific topics like how God changes your brain and the happiest people in the world.

Now I found a new York Times article that was written just a few months into his tenure with his TV show, kind of at the start of his his burst into stardom. Um and the interviewer who talked to Oz for this article seems as impressed as everyone always is by the manic, somewhat in human pace at which memot Oz works. By this point, he'd also written six books with titles like You the Smart Patient, You on a Diet, and You Having a Baby. It's like the

series The Cole and whatever. And he co writes these books with another doctor. I can't tell you how much of the writing was a lot of times. I'm not saying this is the case with Dr Oz because he's a wild workaholic, but a lot of times, when you have a guy that's his kind of famous and they write a bunch of books, they write like ten percent of the book and they have someone else, a co author or a ghost writer, do the rest. I don't

know if that's the case here. There's one dam who's writing most of Good Will Hunting, and then there's a Ben Affleck who gets top book, and I I do believe Matt Damon writes most of his books. Yeah, so nine million copies of his various titles are in print by this point, like the first year of his show, So he is he is a very wealthy and successful man pretty much out the gate like money. Getting the

start on Oprah kind of guarantees it. Basically, if Oprah likes you, um enough to put you on her show more than once, you're going to get rich. Damn. Yeah, I just I just should have spent my my youth trying to get on Oprah. We all should have. Well, so um Dr Oz gets a semi regular column for Time magazine because again they see this guy get famous and like, we gotta get some of that Oprah money too. We get this guy on Time, people will start reading

Time again and yeah, it's interesting. They give him a column, um, And in two thousand eight they included him on their list of the world's most one hundred most influential people. So before they hire him to a column, they call him one of the world's most influential people. And as soon as he gets listed as one of the hundred most influential people on the planet, Dr Oz calls his dad right like finally, Yeah, this has gotta be the thing. How could he not be impressed by this. Am I

enough for you, Papa. So when he tells his dad, his dad's first question is what numbers? How are you? And this is not a ranked thing, like it's not the top hundred, like going to one. It's just like these hundred people are all very Yeah, it's not a listical um. But doctor Oz in this interview, seemed to acknowledge that the fact that his dad reacted that way said a lot about both you know his dad and about their relationship. He told an interviewer, quote, he wants

to know what number? Are you kidding me? There are six billion people on the planet. It's a rounding error. God, But but like, but like what number? Though? How high are you? Motherfucker? Are you? You're basically me? Yeah. So that interviewer, along with The New York Times, wrote quote, it's also the kind of thing that goads the sun to climb mountain after mountain, seldom pausing to enjoy the view. The Good Doctor did admit to engaging in a number

of time saving measures over the years. He did numerous columns which were often just recycled from other columns or chunks of his books. He provide the same list of skin moisturizing or metabolism boosting tips and different magazines or

online articles. Even so, his workload was enormous. The Doctorage Show was instantly one of the most popular shows on the planet, and memit was contracted to record a hundred and seventy five hour long episodes per year, which is a fucking brutal work schedule on its own, and the man continued to practice as a surgeon, albeit at a reduced rate. The New York Times interviewer who visited him in two thousand ten seemed to find his behavior and

kind of his compulsive workaholism somewhat unsettling. I never saw him without a portable larder of baggies, plastic containers and thermosis of food and drink, and all of it, every crumb, every drop was healthful low fat Greek yogurt mixed with brightly colored berries, spinach slaw, raw almonds, raw walnuts soaked in water to amplify their nutritional benefit, a dark green concoction of juices from vegetables and cuting, including cucumber and parsley.

Roughly every forty five to sixty minutes, as if on cue, he would ingest something from his movable buffet, but only a little bit his Porsche, and assiduously regulated like an intravening, like an intravenous drip of nutrition. It was the most efficient, joyless eating I have ever seen. That is so weird. I'm sorry that it's so uncomfortable to just He's cool, dude, Like that's you know, he's living life in the in the most drab way possible, just trying to just trying

to make TV shows and do heart surgeries. You know, who has time to enjoy anything when you're dead? And efficient evening eating He's like, I don't eat or drink anything that I would enjoy. Yeah, you're welcome. That's just so unsettling. I mean, you know what, I have known a couple of people in my life's all very skinny, who have told me like I just don't really like eating, Like, yeah, there's some foods that I prefer to others, but I just don't really enjoy it one way or the other.

Like I've know, like some of those people wound up on the soilent thing, and I guess, like, I mean, yeah, fine, it's like it's whatever. You know, it's your life. You want food, eat monkey food. But don't be surprised when I judge, you know, yeah, like it's uh, that's weird. At the start, the Doctor Oz Show was broadly inoffensive

from a medical perspective. He gave a lot of fairly good, common sense health advice health advice, and provided a lot of people with a friendly medical face willing to explain things their doctors might not have the time or the

bedside manner to properly lay out. But Oz's fascination with alternative medicine was present from the beginning, and as time went on, he veered more and more in that direction, following both the topics that consistently drew the most viewers and the topics that were easiest to put together, because a hundred and seventy five hours of content a year is a lot. I mean really though, Like at some point you run out of ship to talk about and you have to just be like, uh, pendulums over the

heart do they work? Yeah? Yeah? Punching people in the dick? Could it? What? I mean? You know, we we have to do. I don't know how much content we have to do per year, fifty two weeks, two hours a week. Uh yeah, we we do like a hundred and ten maybe, like with some of the episodes that go over a hundred and twenty hours of content here for this show, and that's a lot um a hundred seventy five hours

of video content. Is he like, you can't. There's there's not that much good and also entertaining medical advice that you can give in a year, let alone every single year. I mean, just like there's only so many organs to talk about, you know, after a while, you just got to invent ship. Yeah, And it's this thing. It's this kind of this inevitable churn of capitalism leading us all into this this specific kind of nonsense because you can't

not have content legally you're contracted to. But also you have this whole team of people whose ability to pay their rent and whose ability to to to afford their homes to keep their kids in school is dependent upon you doing this show outside of just the fact that he's rich, Like like, he's fine, but he like, it's this thing. You have to keep putting out the thing, and you will never have enough meaningful ship to put

out to do it. So you start, in his case, doing nonsense about mediums and ship and in our case doing episodes about Dr Oz. When you run out of bastards, eventually you just gotta find one on tea. We're not out of bastards. But like last week, I spent thirty hours reading about the protocols of the Elders Zion. I needed an off with you know God, that is that is one of my favorite, absolutely real documents to read. Yeah,

that's why we brought you on. Actually, yeah, I'm actually one of the Elders of Zion and I got some protocols for you. Oh good times. So for an example of the kind of nonsense creep, I guess you'd call it that. Like advanced upon his show. In March of two thousand twelve, Doctor Oz did a show titled Medium Versus Medicine. Oz's guest was a psychic who claimed she could communicate with the dead. This was one of several, and by this point probably dozens of episodes dedicated to

people who claimed to talk to the dead. Energy healing was, you know, on the fringe, certainly, but at least it was something that when he started doing it, there were scientific studies saying there might be something to it. Those studies have since been to to a large extent discredited. But when he started doing that, there was some evidence it was a thing to try. You know, he wasn't completely out of left field. People were at least testing

at episodes on mediums. Talking to the dead is well outside of plausible deniability territory, right, Like, you're just doing nonsense at this point. You know, it depends how they're talking. If you go up to a dead body and start talking to it, you are technically talking to the dead. Now, that would be a fun show. Dr Oz breaks into morgues and talks to corpses. Yeah, how did you die? Just just just having his bodyguards mace police officers rolling

into a crime scene, be like, who did this? Had this good? Are you okay? I am a doctor? Do you want some almonds? They're soaked in water for more nutrition? So yeah, he had. Yeah. Dr Oz had among his psychic guests famous grifter king John Edwards on his show Not the Politicians, The Talks to Dead TV show guy. Yeah, and he praised the reading that he received from John Edwards, saying, quote,

let me tell you what changed my life. I've learned in my career that there are times when science just hasn't caught up with things, and I think this maybe one of them, which is almost exactly what he said about John of God, the guy who raped hundreds of people. That's how, you know, like to stay far away from anything when he's just like, man, this is uh, this is a brand new, groundbreaking territory, and you can go

all wrong and it's it's one of those things. Part of how he's like the intelligent way to frame this is you start with the truth thing, which is there are things science can't explain. One of those things is the nature of consciousness and what happens to it after you know, vital sciences. We don't know. That's not an objective answer to that. But it going this way is kind of like being like, yeah, you know, we can't explain like the slit box experiment. Like there's a bunch

of ship in physics. I don't know, I'm not a science guy, but like you know, particle and wave ship, you can't explain that. You can't explain magnets, Yeah, how do they work? How do they work? It's this It's this jump from yes, there are things we can't explain to so let's listen to this man talk to the dead. Millions of people gather around, gather around. He's going to channel you're dead on Yes, Um, maybe not not a reasonable way to take a reasonable starting point. Yeah, especially

when you're a doctor on TV. Yeah, and I want to quote from a write up I found in the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association. Quote. During another show, Oz interviewed Dr Mossara Fali, a miracle here healer to Sylvester Stallone, Prince Charles of England, and others, regarding his use of irrodology. According to the Whitely debumpd bizarre belief, each part of the iris corresponds to a specific area of the body, and a person's state of health could

be diagnosed by examining particular regions of the iris. If you're expressing his amazement at Dr Ali's diagnostic abilities, oh stated, I want to applaud Dr Mossara f Ali because these are ancient traditions and they have been around for centuries.

So who am I to has missed the other than a very well educated man, doctor doctor met he had at Yeah, It's like, you know, there's a lot of cultures who say that you should remove the clitterist surgically because it's it's it's it's healthier, and it stops dangerous masturbation. It's ancient. Who are we gonna say this is a bad idea? Who are any of us to say anything's wrong? Oh my god, I love it too, just like I was amazed by his ability to look into my eyes

and diagnose that my dad will never love me. How did he know? How did you know? It does bring me enjoy that Prince Charles got fucked with. I wonder what his eyes said. It's funny it said the same thing. It said, your dad will never love you. That's all he does. He goes to famous people and he goes your dad will never love you. Your dad will never

love you. There's this. One of the big aspects of this guy's success and of the success of the things he pushes, is Orientalism, right, um, Like this idea of like the forbidden and strange and wondrous and magical East and all of the we don't understand all of these, like, oh, India is so mysterious, YadA YadA, um. What if you were to say, like, well, for centuries, tobacco companies have said that tobacco can cure like different ailments. Who are

we to dismiss these ancient traditions? The queues owe could be real exactly, Like it stops people from stuttering, do

more cocaine. I mean, yeah, just the idea. And I've always found this in general to be the biggest load of Horseshit is when people have have said, you know, this is like an ancient healing technique, and it's like, you mean like bleeding people with leeches, you know, you mean, like cutting off someone's leg because he got a fucking a small infection on his ancient It's this thing with Dr Oz, Like it's one thing if you're just like traveling another part of the world, you see some sort

of medical or treatment you've never seen before, and you're like, well, who am I? Who am I to say anything about? Right? Like, I don't know. Dr Oz is a doctor on TV talking to millions. You're literally the person who should be saying something about the legitimacy of this, right Yeah, Yeah, you're you're the guy. You're the person, you are, in fact, the person who should say something about you're the most

famous doctor in America. Yeah, And that's what that that right up in the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association notes, quote who doctor Oz is a trained clinician and scientist, someone who can read a scientific article with a critical eye. He is someone who can filter out the noise of the placebo effect or discern the simple carnival tricks of Charlatan. The problem is that most people

in his audience cannot. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's he has a literal responsibility to tell people that these guys are full of ship. But he also has a responsibility to his show sponsors and to to the network for ratings. You know, you know who else has a responsibility to the show's politicis. I think that's got to be the first time. That's got to be the first time it's ever been relevant. So fucking good. Anyway, here's products uh,

we're back talking about Dr Oz having just a great time. Um. So obviously the fact that Doctor Oz, I mean probably the fact that most of his audience couldn't discern whether or not any of these nonsense treatments were real, um, is a big part of why the Doctors Show became an overnight success. Before very long, it was being watched by four million viewers every single day over the next

half decade or so, he won two Emmys. His guest list included First Lady Michelle Obama, who loved Dr Oz for his focus on healthy diets for children and in general his crusade to get Americans to lose weight. Doctor Oz claimed through Medicine the through Math that I cannot verify that his show inspired Americans to lose three million cumulative pounds per year. I don't know. Maybe they based that on what, Like did people call in to say

how many pounds they've lost to the show. I mean, I'm sure he found some way to like make the claim or whatever. But it's it's very it's I don't know. Maybe it is one of the things that he does that is we'll talk about. There's problems with some of the diet tips he gives people, actually significant ones. Um, but telling like inspiring people to lose weight is not usually bad for their health, can't be. Yeah, sometimes people take it too far and health problems. You know, it's

a mixed bag. I guess we'd say, but the other stuff isn'to mixed bag. So I guess we'll call that his his great success. Um. So, yeah, it is good. I will say it isn't equivalently good that doctors continually pressed his audience of millions of people to eat more fruits and vegetables, fruits and vegetables, to get better sleep, to exercise regularly, and to get their flu vaccinations. That's all rat right, But should I could have that? Give me? Yeah,

you don't. You don't have to have You don't have to be a doctor to say that, Yeah, eat piggies. But he's charismatic. People like him. It's good that he does that at least. Yeah, I don't trust me, so they won't give me the show, but they should because Yeah, the unfortunate part is that this guy gained because he's he's handsome. A lot of a lot of a lot of ladies out there think Dr oz is hot Um.

He's he's very charismatic. Um, he's very charming, and he gains this enormous influence with Middle America, and he uses that influence to do some really fucking questionable ship. And I'm going to quote now from a write up in the A. M. A's Journal of Ethics. He has told mothers that there were dangerous levels of arsenic in their child's apple juice. There weren't and suggested that green coffee is a miracle cure for obesity. Federal regulators discovered altered

data in hyped coffee being evidence. The Food and Drug Administration tested for arsenic and apple juice and found the vast majority of apple juice tested contained to contain low levels of arsenic, and given these levels, was confident in the overall safety of apple juice consumed in this country. Dr Oz also featured two guests on his show who claimed that genetically modified foods were cancer causing, despite repeated

safety reports that found no adverse effects. Man, I mean, he's like, he's very he's getting there, Like I'm I'm watching him slowly go from mement to mangela. You know, well, come on, let him. I guess that you want to be fair, Robert, but let's go for it, all right, we're doing but no, we're watching it like turn into a snake oil salesman, and it's it's very exciting. Yeah. So Dr oz Is enthusiasm for alternative medicine has had the effect of creating instant fads over any health product.

He even vaguely suggests on his show when he mentions the purported health the fits of white mulberry, red palm oil, or brown seaweed, all of which he's claimed can do things like cut weight, reduce aging, or beat the flu. Those products fly off the shelf. Oz often doesn't endure specific brands, but he doesn't need to. Online retailers watch closely and immediately slap, as seen on Doctor Oz on the Scientific Products. Yes, I've seen this. Yeah, this is

where we get to the big harm. He did one episode that focused on so called relaxation drinks and included a close upshot of five cans of beverages he said might help calm you down. Just a Miller High Life. Yeah, he just puts a can of Cult on the table. Billy Dee Williams walks out, it's still reserved. Trust me, you'll be calm and shit, you might yell let your mom. Yeah, you will very calmly put your hand through a axcab window.

As soon as the episode aired, a quote Liquid sleep aid called eye Chill bragged on their website Dr oz is talking about a new way to wind down with relaxation drinks. They are the newest trend in helping you relax and calm down and the best news is they contain natural ingredients already known to promote relaxation. Mulberry. I remember the eye that turned into like an entire thing. There's so many about We're about to talk about it. Yeah. Um. And and also if there was a Laudanum drink, I

would be buying it. Um. So the problem with all with this is that all of these different relaxation drinks are filled with a variety of chemicals like melatonin and theonine and tourine. These drinks are unregulated as they are not medicines or dietary supplements, but the chemicals they include all have actual impacts on the central nervous system. Pregnant women and children are often advised to avoid products with some of these chemicals, but the beverages in question rarely

note this. No data exists on how these chemicals might impact people in the quantities they are added to in these beverages, or when combined with other chemicals, or when combined with medications people drinking them might be taking responsible Doctors writing for the journal for the journal Nature Neuroscience, wrote a warning about these beverages that specifically called out

I chill by name. Quote existing research on the potential benefits and harms of some components of relaxation drinks suggest that they may not always be safe. Indeed, the FDA issued a warning last year to the manufactures of melatonin laced brownies, citing safety concerns from the literature, including effects on the autonomic, nervous system and visual system, and increased

expression of symptoms in a sleep disorder. Other components of relaxation drinks, such as l phonine or amino acids such as taurine, may be considered safer consumption only at some doses by the FDA, but relaxation drinks are not subject to such regulations, nor are they required to disclose the amounts of their ingredients. Oh my god, I mean, first of all, did you say melotonin brownies? Yeah, buddy, what the fun? Like I want to eat and just get

tired immediately. Like that is very strange. It's like, here's the thing about brownies. I've never eaten one and been like I just want to relax, Like no, I'm trying to get a little sugar rush. To be honest, a sleepy Toi'm brownie delightful. I would be very down. Listen, pot brownies are very different. It's not. It's not the same as relaxation. Like one is like, uh an ambient brownie and the other one is like a brownie that makes you hungry for more brownies. Pot brownies make sense.

Ambient brownies exist. I would love one, thank you. I mean, I guess I'd rather do that than just swallow an ambient But man, that is I'm like, I'm like gets to sleep and also got a brownie. Sounds awesome. It's bad for your health. I'll tell you that much a parent.

Late um am, I remembering this correctly, Robert. But wasn't the eye hill like like the bottle and the marketing like similar style to like an energy drink, similar to like a five hour energy that was like the aesthetic No, no, no, I think those were those were They had like a

weird different shaped plastic bottle. But like the problem is that again number one, you've got a lot of people with like who are on medications that the should interacts with, which is crazy that like literally a relaxation drink could be contraindicated for your prescription medication. Okay, so everything dr Oz recommends, I guess outside of like death psychics comes

with this caveat um. Some of the herbs and natural medicines that he recommends do have health impacts, but they also have consequences medications they might not interact well with. Dr oz does not bring this up when he shotguns half asked advice out to an audience of millions. That article in Nature Neuroscience that I referenced warning about the relaxation drinks, Oz recommended it's and read ten thousand times.

So the article warning people that these things can be contraindicated and um might have impacts on your health and your central nervous system read ten thousand times. Dr Oz's episode suggesting these drinks listened watched four million times. God damn yeah. People started to notice that this was a

problem by the mid oughts. Doctors had been complaining for a while, but in two thousand thirteen, Forbes wrote a listical laying out the silliest things Dr oz Is suggested on his show, including the fact that having two hundred orgasms a year would extend your life by six years. Here's how he explained that bit of math on his website. Dude, I'm about to live to two hundred years old. I never die in motherfucker. I never died and I get one hour at least once a dirt fun here's his website.

If you have more than two hundred orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years. Dr Oz says he bases the number on a study done it University that surveyed people on the amount and quality of sex they had. They looked at what happened to folks that are receiving a lot of intercourse over time and the fact is it correlated? Wait wait, wait, wait, what is it sex? Because he didn't say nothing about sex.

He said orgasms, and I do that on my own, you know, he talked, he talked to them about the the amount and quality of sex they had, but like

it's correlated. So again he's basically lying here because you number one, what is the possibility that people who are having a lot of good sex are in better health and that's why they're able to have a lot more good sex because they're like, they're physically healthy, and so it's easier for them to like, what if what are the odds that like, if you're having more sex, you're more social, you're more likely to have a long term

romantic partner that increases your lifespan. Yeah. Again, I'm of all people never going to be the guy to say there's not health benefits to sex. They're sure is doctor os is exaggerating this. He's he's taking an actual study that showed some interesting stuff and he's turning it into a lie. Yeah, he's turning it into like pretending he has quantifiable data and that like correlation and correlation is

causation like that, that's that's what he's trying to do. Yeah, there there is data that suggests that regular intercourse reduces men's mortality risks by fifty percent, Which doesn't mean that fucking stops men from dying, particularly because it's men who benefit in this way. It means that men are less healthy than women tend to die faster, and when men have partners that they live with, they are more likely to have a medical problem. Noticed if they have a

heart attack, someone's going to be there to call them. Like, there's a lot of reasons why this is the case. Yeah, they're not dying alone, you know. Yeah, it's not the fact that just fucking magically adds like reduces your age by six years if you do it. Enough, Like that's nonsense. It's nice to think it, though, and makes it nice to think it. I'm going to mend out that article, will show it to my girlfriend and say, hey, you gotta help me live longer. You know, not coming enough.

I'm gonna do that. We gotta do this more. Yeah, just start fucking in public and when the cops come, be like this is medicine. It's like, do you want me to die six years earlier than I should? I have a right to this. Doctor said I should funck more now on its own recommending that people get more sexes is you know fine. I'm I'm very pro sex, but I am anti encouraging people to misunderstand health science.

The nature of doctor Oz's audience and the sheer breadth of things he suggests makes it difficult to analyze the total health impact of his show, but there are some dire case studies. As Vox notes in their right up quote. There's the case of a man who followed as a suggestion of curing insomnia by pouring uncooked rice into socks, heating them in a microwave, and wearing them to bed. The man got second and third degree burns on his feet, and the reason he got burned is because he was diabetic.

He didn't have the same level of feeling in his feet. If he had gone to a doctor and said, hey, I heard about this thing that might help with insomnia, the doctor would say, well, you're diabetic, you don't have as much feeling in your feet. You might call it. Burn yourself. Dr Oz, as you're saying, hey, this will help you sleep, do it whoever you are. Again, you're talking to four million people. It will be bad advice

for some of them. I mean, it's like this all feels very much like when Trump was telling everyone about the wonders of hydro, kind of talking about that, and then people are eating fucking fish food or like fish tank cleaner and dying and people how could how could people be so stupid? And it's like, people are stupid. You can't tell them to eat the fucking fishball cleaner. Yeah,

they'll do It's they'll fucking do it. Um. So this guy sued, but the case was thrown out because the judge determined that Oz cannot establish the physician patient relationship through TV. I agree with the judge. That's my problem with his show is that he is a physician purporting to be giving medical advice, but is also not taking anyone's individual circumstances into account, and, more to the fucking point, not liable if he does any of the irresponsible things

that would lend a physician doing their job traditionally in trouble. Um, I mean it is medical malpractice, whether or not he's legally liable for it or not. I I would agree, um, And I'm going to continue that quote from Vox. Not everyone agrees with the judge's reasoning. Rochester, New York medical student and blogger Benjamin Maser has been publishing anonymous stories sent to him from health professionals about the impact Oz

has had on patient care. One reported that her dad had a heart attack and five stints placed in his heart, which required him to take aspirin and plavix to prevent blood clots. He was watching Dr Oz, who said plavix was not necessary, so he stopped taking it. About a month later, he had another massive heart attack and coated and had to be shocked back to life. Continued, my dad admitted to following doctor Oz's advice and not acting

his own cardiologist. Man, Yeah, that's really bad. Did he have a did he have like an alternative or was he just like decided one day that pau it was, if I know my doctor Oz, I'm sure it was, you don't need to take plavits. Eat these different heart healthy foods and avoid these foods, and that'll do all that plavits will do. Yeah, eat some beans and put your face in some boiled water and you should be fine.

I suspect it was dietary advice that if you're someone who doesn't really need plavix, is fine or might even help you to not need it later in life if you health your habits. But the problem is, again the way he's framing it, there's gonna be a lot of people who are like, just had stints placed in the heart. I don't need planvits, you know, doctor Oz. The TV doctor said, I don't need this medicine. I just need more in my belly. The TV doctor also said he

can talk to go, so I'm gonna go talk. I mean, you will be talking to ghosts faster if you follow exactly. I want to talk to ghosts. I'm gonna stop taking up lavis and have a stroke now. On his show, Dr Oz claims that the trust of his audience is the entire reason for his relevance. Quote. The currency that ideal in his trust, and it is trust that has been given to me by an audience that has watched

over six hundred shows. He repeatedly references the fact that he is responding to the very real and very understandable, unfilled needs of Americans who feel alienated from modern healthcare, which is an expensive and often inhumane labyrinthine bureaucracy. True is true, Yeah, absolutely true. How you exploit it is a very different thing. But the thing he is replacing it with is by and large nonsense. And I'm gonna quote from that right up in the Journal of Ethics again.

When it comes to epistemic boundaries, dr Oz admits he applies different standard of evidence compared to those accepted in the medical establishment. When challenged by a reporter for The New Yorker about his questionable evidentury standards, he replied that all data could be differentially interpreted. You find the arguments that support your data, he said. And it's my fact versus your fact. It's not that he doesn't offer data.

It's common for dr Oss to offer some plausible mechanism from test tube experiments conducted by manufacturers, combined with personal anecdotes from his owner consumers experience to support the products he's promoting. A study of eighty recommendations made on The Doctor Show in early two thousand thirteen found that published evidence supported forty six percent of recommendations, contradicted fifteen percent,

and did not support thirty nine percent. Got to love a good like coin flip on whether or not he's uh fucking lying to you and yeah, having an adverse effect on your health. If your doctor said, hey, you know forty six percent at the time, I give pretty good advice, you would be like, I think I'm gonna get another doctor. But he would reframe it to be like, I'm back here and fun. If you assume medicine is

like baseball, I'm a great doctor. Yeah job now. To his credit, the journal does note that a decent chunk of the blame for doctor Oz's success lies in the very, very flawed state of mainstream medical science. Quote we settle for incomplaint, selectively published data in journals heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical companies, and for outcomes that don't give firm answers.

While not on part without offering anecdotes as evidence. The fact that debates persist about what constitutes sufficiently high, unbiased quality evidence to support decisions in the profession as a whole creates a wedge that doctor Oz seems to exploit.

So again, this is the Journal of Ethics being like the fact that you can pay to get a study done, the fact that we pharmaceutical companies lobby to allow them to market things in dishonest ways, the fact that doctors are bribed by companies like Produce Pharmaceutical with vacations to commend people take medication that is not in their best interests to take. That's why this motherfucker has a job. And the fact that healthcare is expensive, right, the fact

that we don't have single pair of healthcare. It all combines to the fact that a lot of people who are not idiots. I'm not saying you can be. I'm sure there's people who are brilliant electricians, who fucking are brilliant at whatever, who are great at whatever it is they do, but they're not fucking doctors because most of us aren't, and it's hard to get I am very fortunate that I have a couple of good friends who are doctors, and I am luckier than I can. One

of them is a guy who was on the show recently, Cavajota. Um, I'm luckier than I can that I can say to be able to like every now and then send them a message being like, hey, what should I do here? Yeah, it's a question of, like, I'm having this problem. I don't know what kind of doctor to see to like get this dealt with. I don't know whose job this is, and I don't want to like my um my ex a while ago had a non cancerous brain tumor and

it was a fucking nightmare figuring out. It took a series of different doctors and tests to figure out what kind of doctors she needed to go to to get the medication that would help. And it's of course people are like, well, this guy is explaining things and he's nice, and he's saying that I have the power to deal with this, change my diet if I do this, if

I do that. Um, he's giving us alternatives to dealing with the bureaucracy of medical institutions in this country, which I have Kaiser and Um, I I had to go to a rheumatologist and I tried to get a hold of him on the phone, and they sent me through six different call centers to finally get to his specific office. And then I asked the lady carry get the extension so that I don't have to deal with that, and she's like, oh, sorry, we're not allowed to do that.

And so now now I'm just recording every phone call and just you know, freestyling to the hold music because it's the only thing I can do. I'm like, you know what, I might as well turn this into content, because this is fucking ridiculous. You know, there's like the amount of bullshit you have to go through makes people like Dr Oz feel like a good alternative, you know, yeah, yeah, absolutely, and it's it fucking sucks. Um. It's just really fucking sucks, um.

And it fucking sucks because there's a lot of wonderful people who are part of the medical system, like the fucking doctors um in the in the e er who were with my mom in her last days, like incredibly competent and compassionate and amazing people who in their entire careers will never be able to do as much good as Dr Oz does harm because he has four million people watching him every day. It's a bummer. Yeah, yeah, wow, Capitalism is actually a bummer. But it's the water we

swim in. So here's some fucking ats. We're back. So. In two thousand four, mem at Oz was called before a Senate subcommittee to answer questions about his unfounded claims about dietary supplements. Missouri Senator Claire mccaskell went off on him, saying, I don't know why you need to say this stuff, because you know it's not true. Why when you have this amazing megaphone and this amazing ability to communicate, would

you cheapen your show by saying things like this? And he just pulled out a lot of money and he just started making it rain all over congut. Do you know how many houses I have? She pointed out several examples of the things he cheapens his show by, saying he had called green coffee extract a quote magical weight loss. Here recent research has recent research has suggested that long term use of green coffee extract causes bone density loss

in animals. But you are, in fairness, you're losing weight. Your bones are lighter, that's weight. Bones are heavy as hell. It was it was everywhere. When that came out, it was that literally not just like it's not like bed bath and everywhere, get like bones, you can fly like um. And again those are studies and animals, but it's the kind of thing where a responsible doctor would say, well, some studies and animals have shown that this might call

bone to cause bone density loss. So unless you know your weight is a really disastrous health situation and your bone density is fine, I wouldn't recommend this. Doctor us is just saying it's a magical weight loss here. It's not wrong. Yeah, Oz called raspberry keytone quote the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. This

is a fun one. First of all. Part of why people, well, actually part of why, part of why people are attracted to stuff like this is that like raspberry keytone, that's natural. It sounds like, oh, if I just like getting raspberries, that's gonna help me lose weight. This chemical in a natural, healthy fruit. Of course, it makes sense that like some wonderful plant based medicine would be able to help me

lose weight. Raspberry keytones don't come from raspberries. They can, but it takes ninety pounds of fresh raspberries to produce a single dose. As a result, they are manufactured synthetically, a fact Dr Oz did not feel the need to explain because again, he's really critical of GMOs and it might seem hypocritical to note that raspberry keytones are actually synthetic lab nonsense. Um. I love when people say things like it's it's natural. It's like it's I think cyanide

is natural. There's like, there's a lot of like natural poisons out there. Fucking snake venom is natural, the fucking arsenic, and the apple juice that he's worried about is natural. It is possible, based on animal studies, that these keytones may have some ability to reduce or slow weight gain, but no studies have ever been conducted on how raspberry keytones impact human beings. There have been reports that they increase blood pressure and heart rate in humans. Doctor Oz

does not warn about this. Likewise, when Dr Oz told his viewers that garcina cambogia maybe the simple solution you've been looking forward to bust your body fat for good, he did not also warn them that it can interact negatively with diabetes medications, painkillers, and psychiatric medications. Oh my god, why would you need to warn people that, Look, what are the odds someone looking to lose weight has diabetes medications? Zero? What are the odds that someone who has diabetes is

sitting around watching Dr Oz's show? Zero? What are the odds that a middle class American is addicted to pain killers? Zero? Zero? During the Senate inquiry, Senator mccaskell pointed some of this out, and she told Dr Oz quote, when you feature a product on your show, it creates what has become known as the Doctor Oz Effect, dramatically boosting sales and driving scam artists to pop up overnight using false and deceptive

ads to sell questionable products. In the wake of the which was a fairly bad day on Capitol Hill for him, Doctor Oz released a somewhat contrite statement where he noted I took part in today's hearing because I am accountable from my role in the proliferation of these scams, and I recognize that my enthusiastic language has made the problem worse at times. Good so far, pretty good, so far.

Oz added in his statement, to not have the conversation about supplements at all, however, would be a disservice to the viewer. In addition to exercising an abundance of caution and discussing promising research and products in the future, I look forward to working with all those present today and finding a way to deal with the problems of weight loss scams. God, yeah, I'm just talking about I'm just

asking the question. We had to have conversations about this, you know, a conversation would be noting, for example, green coffee extract causes bone density loss and perhaps to be worried. That's a conversation. Well, you and I have had about these things as a conversation. Yeah, I love people are like, I'm just asking the question. I mean, I'm not a doctor. I'm a guy who's addicted to an unregulated plant. Oh my god, which I just took more of while standing

next to my unregulated gun. Dude, you're living the unregulate right now. So um. Dr Oz, also making this statement, pointed out that he believed the greatest disservice he'd done to his audience was to not recommend specific products, which had provided room for a white industry of shysters to stick his name on their website. So like, oh, I was just saying green coffee extract and a bunch of companies I couldn't verify started selling with my name on it.

I should have recommended a specific brand. Yeah. What I need to do is cut deals with specific companies so that you can only be taking their bone density lost drugs. Yeah, I mean exactly good calls. Fucking amazing. Yeah. So, in awake of this day on Capitol Hill and this amazing response, physicians across the country asked Columbia University in the letter, basically, what the funk why is this guy still on your faculty.

Columbia claimed it was because of their commitment to quote the principle of academic freedom into upholding faculty members freedom of expression for statements they make in public discussion. Hell yeah, dude, that's like, yeah, they're like anti cancel culture letter. You know, they're just like, stop trying to cancel dr Oz. It's freedom of speech, your freedom of speech. Yeah, I mean, doctors also are held to different standards than the rest

of us. Come on, if, like your uncle Jimbo says, hey, you know, take some green coffee extract, it will help you lose weight, nothing wrong with that. You might not be good advice, but that's just a guy saying a thing. Doctors are helped do a different standard. Yeah, it's on you. If you listen to your crazy uncle Jimbo, it is definitely on the doc. If he recommends you lose some bone density so that you look better in that dress,

it's it's, it's so. On April fift two, fifteen, ten prominent physicians sent a letter to Columbia University calling Oz's faculty position they're unacceptable, in citing his quote egregious lack of integrity. The only change wrought by the congressional inquiry and the flood of condemnation from the medical community seems to be that Doctor Oz started endorsing specific supplements and pseudo medicines. God, he's Alex Jones. He's Jones in it hard.

He's so much smarter than Alex though. You focus it just on the health, none of his nonsense like political ship. Everybody's gonna love you and you'll make way more money. Yeah. A two thousand eighteen analysis of his show by The Health News Review found quote in the Doctor Oz Show.

Thirteen out of nineteen sixty eight point four percent shows had ads relating to general show content um fifty seven point nine percent had specific products mentioned by the host using their commercial name, and thirty six point three percent of shows mentioning products by name named more than one product. It also found that seventy eight percent of the medical statements made on the Doctorage Show did not align with quote evidence based medical guidelines. So if those guidelines mattered,

then make more money. Dog. Half a decade earlier, forty six percent of his statements are more or less fine. Uh, now it's down to Jesus. So we're seeing again he met the quality of the because again you're running out of good content. You only have so much good medical advice you can give when you're doing an hour a day a d seventy five times a year for fucking

fifteen sixteen years. Fruit exactly the actual amount of things that an average person can reasonably do to improve their own simple health doesn't really take that long to explain to you. You know, it's pretty simple stuff, and most

of us know a lot of it already. We know when we're I know that pounding cretum and coke zero isn't a wise healthcare decision, but you know it, and you can you know fucking you don't need a doctor Oz to tell you that you know, you just know, you know, you know that the fact that I bought the hundred dollar entire smoked leg of of of pig from Costco, the Giant for you can well, I know, I know, buying that and not also purchasing I don't know salad in order to have a sufficient I recognized

that was the poor health decision. Yeah, no one tricked me about and and no point that I think this hundred dollars worth of smoked ham is the solid healthcare move. You know, smoke, what could it's smoked. It's good for my cues. Oh, it's traditional medicine. Yeah, this is really good for all of my kidney Meridians. I need all them. Oh, my Meridians are fucking rucking right peaking in Meridians. Bro. Let me fucking tell you my Meridians are as hard

as a goddamn rock. Feel my kidneys, Feel my kidneys. It's just like, why is your kidneys swollen? The Doctors Show is still on the air. In two thousand eighteen, President Trump appointed doctor Oz to a Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition as part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Is still on that council under Joe Biden two years later, No politician is dumb enough to want to piss off doctor Oz. You're never gonna hear

Joe Biden throw it. Well except for except for Claire McCaskill. God bless me. Um Like she was the only one who had the guts to stand up to door. I think other people did. I'm not an expert on what went down in that congressional thing, but she was seems to be the main one who was really angry at him.

Which good on you, Claire. I love that a bipartisan decision is just like, let's share this grifter, you know between administrations like good, you know what, all agree that you should be able to lie about healthcare as an image. That's that's is when he gets appointed to this council. Two years later, during the COVID nineteen pandemic, he drew. He endorsed hydroxy Clarkuin. Later that year, he endorsed reopening schools, saying,

I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in the Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us two to three percent in terms of total mortality. What the fuck two of the card. That's barely anybody dying, that's barely hundreds of thousands of deaths. He said two to three percent, as if that's not a huge number of He's losing his goddamn mine. And it's one of those things. Not

making a point proer against gun control either way. But if somebody against gun control said, what keeping these things legal is only gonna cost us one percent of the country, you'd be like, you're fucking maniac, you are a dangerous person. But he's like, we gotta and he didn't. Ye. This outraged a lot of people, and Oz apologized as he apologized for batting hydroxya he e Daisy did. He claimed to regret that his comments had confused and upset people,

and basically pointed out the lance. It wasn't saying two to three percent of the country was going to die. It was I think more like two three percent of like or something like it gets sick and like it was he but the way he phrased it was, it's only gonna cost us to three percent of the country. I don't care what the actual study. Again, I don't care what the studies. I care what you said to your audience of millions. And also I care about the

fact that in any case, that's fucking evil. Yeah, that's an evil thing to say. Yeah, it's it's it's it's pretty wild to just look at two to three percent of the country as like expandable if it means that my fucking dirt bag gass fifth grade or can be stuck inside in a school all day and listen, I get it people with kids, they want their kids to go back to school. But you that's you don't say

the quiet part out loud. You know. Yeah, it's one thing to say, hey, look, living in a society, there's all all kinds of of of cost benefits sort of analysis or we have to do. Like right, cars improve a lot of efficiencies in certain ways, and people like have them. They're also gonna cost x many lives. You know, Um, we could change these sorts of laws, but it would

it would lead to this sort of problem. You know, we have certain freedoms, um that may cost lives and like to be like that that that's just living in a society, right, there's no our society is not angled around absolutely more reducing mortality in every way and there's a cost to not having these schools open, and it's a very real cost, and like we have to, Like, that's a way to say that. I'm not saying that's

the argument I'm making because I'm not. I'm thinking, no, I don't think we should open schools out until we actually have I don't like of the fucking country vaccinator or whatever. But like, um, but that's a way you could That's a way you could make that argument and not sound like a gibbering sociopath. And it's weird to like, you know, be like all right, it was a poor choice of words, and it's like, bro, at this point, saying words out loud to millions of people is your job. Yeah,

you're choosing to do the job. You could never work another day in your life, and you would never you you're rich, you don't need to do this. You're choosing to. So go funk yourself with that explanation. Fucking fix some hearts already, stop talking. We're getting to that. So today, Dr Oz works to continue to monetize his brand with his wife and business partner, who he also writes books with.

His daughter seems to be getting in on the grift too, with books like The Dorm Room Diet, which she wrote when she was in college. I think it's just free pizza and dick on the dorm room Diet. Hey, you know, if you pour coffee into instant ramens works, I've done that, by the way, the kind of proud of it. It's real good if you add in vodka. Um. He is worth tens of millions of dollars and is not in

any danger of being worth less any time soon. We've talked a lot about the harms of his specific recommendations and the disinformation he spreads. But at the end of this all, I keep coming back to that two thousand ten New York Times article. Specifically, it's in when I think about what maybe his worst crime against medicine quote

on the stairs at Columbia Presbyterian apropos of Nothing. He began talking about certain Japanese, Sardinian, and Costa Rican populations that live unusually long, and said that their shared trait was activity, activity, activity. His first column for Time magazine, Living Long and Living Well, ran in a section called how to Live one hundred years. At another point in his Rockefeller Center office, he said that so many people thrill on being to being on television because quote, there's

an element of eternity to it. You are storing you, You are taking your life force for that brief moment when you're on camera, and you're storing that for all eternity, which makes you someone who will never truly die. That is a fucking Bunker's way of looking at being on TV. That isn't It's goddamn. He's literally one year away from wanting to be buried with his cats. You know, like this dude wants some pyramids and some live cats in

a casket with him. This is he's a pharaoh. Yeah, I'm going to continue the quote, and he described his own investment in television by saying, I've always felt that when I looked at my tombstone, it shouldn't say mem at Oz banged out ten thousand open heart operations. I've probably done five thousand. Am I any better at it than ten thousand? He shook his head. It's just a different number on the tombstone. No, it's not. It's five thousand other people who's there's a humor. It's not about

like your how better it? You're already great at it. It's about saving additional lives. Oh my god, it's that's wild one of the he has dramatically. He still does perform surgery, I think sometimes he certainly was in the late OTTs. Because he's a doctor. He just doesn't do nearly as much. He used to do a lot more, and he's he's cut it by more than half the amount of actual hearts and it's the one thing he's

good at. I mean, I almost he's amazing. So one of the things that I should note here is that right now, even with the assumption that every available training position for cardiothoracic surgeons is filled, um, we are looking at a projected shortage of fift d cardiothoracic surgeons or

twenty of the workforce. There is a desperate need for the thing that he's definitely one of the best in the world at a tremendous and terrible need for it, and he has stopped doing that in order to give people bad medical advice that will hurt some of them on TV. And I'm want to be really clear here, I am not saying that just because you become a cardiothoracic surgeon, you have to do that until the day you drop. You don't. You can quit. I uh, you can.

And that's not immoral. It's not evil to be like I've done enough. A good friend of mine was a cardiologist for thirty something years and quit to travel around the world as a photojournalist. And I don't think there's anything immoral. You do not owe the world doing just because it's valuable and there are enough people doing it forever. I am not, and you don't. You don't have to quit to do some other valuable job. You can just quit to enjoy your life, be with your family. I'm

not saying that. But he didn't quit to be with his family. He quit to give people bad health advice. That he is. He is doing something that should be illegal instead of performing an additional five thousand life saving surgeries. That's evil. Yeah, that that is bad. That is that is definitely immoral to to like have the ability. It's like being Superman and having the ability to save someone from a burning building, but being like, funk, dude, I'm kind of on my way to do this TV interview

that's gonna get me more. Yeah, but I'm I'm gonna sell people pills instead. Lex Luthor can suck it. You know, I got pills to move. The way that he phrases that is incredibly telling, right, Like it shouldn't say memod Oz banged at ten thousand open heart operations? Am I any better at it than ten Thousand's like that's not I care that you get better at it to the extent that it improves patient outcome, but like I don't care.

Like the the thing that's good about performing ten thousand open heart operations is presumably somewhere near ten thousand people have had their lives extended. Because that's amazing. That's tens of thousands of cumulative, cumulative years get added to the lives of people who are loved and who do things themselves, who who do incredible like who have their own ways of contributing to society, who have children. Like it's such a sick way of looking because it's it's like, I'm

already really good at it. So I decided I'm gonna go get into TV. Now. It's like it's like if he if he'd been like I, I, you know, I did my car, I perform five thousand surgeries. Now I want to become an actor, like you have that right, absolutely, I'm never gonna say that. I mean, it depends on the movie. But yeah, sure, yeah, if you're in Michael Bay movies, we might have another talk. But that's again, it's not that he's decided he wanted to go into TV.

It's not that he decided to go into an entertainment. It's that he decided to do a job. To go from doing a job where he was unequivocally saving lives to doing a job where he often gives people advice that could shorten or at least reduce the quality of their life. I mean, I guess he got tired of helping people and was like, you know, time to make some fucking bank. Yeah it's I mean, it's not just

make some bank. But he's like, man, I saved ten thousand lives, I'm gonna have to kill ten thousand just to fucking net neutral this ship. You know. Yeah, you know, he's just trying to he's trying to balance the scales of his good and evil. It's so fucking frustrating. Um, I really dislike this man. Yeah he's so handsome though, dude, I mean very handsome. He's very handsome. Uh. He made

a lot of money, so that's good. And uh, you know, he's he's he's out there every day given given hope to people who are currently dying of a very very treatable ailment and saying, nah, dog, put your feet in some hot right, put your feet in some hot rise, and see what happens, dude, Just see what happens. You know, Like someone's got to be doing that job. It's this fucking thing part of the doctor os problem, and the part of it that that he he is, he is

leaning into. But it's not as fault is this thing that's a broader problem that I've gotten trapped into. A lot of that. Everyone who is a public figure is at risk of getting trapped in um, which is the fact that if you're good at something and also have some measure of fame or popularity, you start to think you can extend your skills to everything. I was in the gym the other day, since I'm in Texas with

my family, um, and since I'm vaccinated. Uh, and you know, everyone wears a mask, but I've been going to a gym, um, and my family's vaccinate. It's like it's the thing we

get to do now, Okay, you're allowed. Yeah, I've been going to a gym and the gym's have like news programs on right, and I saw Doctor Oz on and it was Dr oz True Crime, because I guess Dr oz has added a true crime thing where he's like talking about this woman who murdered her kids and interviewing like the ex wife of the husband of the woman who murdered her kids, and like do this thing. He's like,

you don't have any why are you doing this? Like because because it's popular with the same people who like the show, And why why Like why not why not stick your hand into this thing that is is deeply painful for a lot of people and make money off of it? Um? Why not do it? Because if you're if you're fame missing good at one thing, there's no

reason not to do absolutely everything. I I just hate it. Yeah, it's especially since it's it's again he he has the god given skills to actually do good and help people, and he chooses you know, this ship, And I gotta say,

I blame his dad. You fucked up, dude. I mean, you did a great job by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and what YadA YadA, But you know, maybe you should have maybe you should have maybe been more encouraging for him to just maybe you know, pick one thing and stay with it rather than you know, venture

off into television. I will say, at least with the true crime stuff that like, I know, he's like he's a little bit kind of like getting into kind of our territory here with the podcast business, and I don't like that. But I'm glad I don't have a true crime podcast that he's currently cannibalizing. If he starts a Sopranos one, I will lose my fucking mind. If dr Oz decides one day like I want to do a prestige TV rewatch show for CNN, that'll be a dude, odds,

you'll be on my goddamn list. I don't think this podcast publishes anymore the one that he was doing. I don't see any new episodes. That's well, I mean he's doing a true crime show. That's That's as close as you get to the podcast business. And yeah, you know what I'm saying, those are the number one pods out there. Dude, pisses me off. Just my odds. Al Right, guys, that's the episode. Have any any plugs? Yeah, plug the plugs. Uh my name is Matt Leeb and uh, you know

I'm on Instagram Matt Leap jokes. Yeah, I'm on the Graham. I'm also on Twitter at Matt Lee but we'll follow me on Instagram. Uh and yeah, and if you like the Sopranos, uh, pod yourself a gun, it's pod yourself a gun. Baby. Well, get out there and again find dr os in the streets. And Sophie, what what is the legal definition of incitement? I'm not really agal reasons. I'm not quitted into that question. All right, Well, uh, just just go out and wander the streets. Um, angry

and and and agitated? Yeah, without a clear goal. Yeah, angrily wander the streets, agitated with an unclear goal. That's what I want all of my listeners to do. H