Please do not elect Dr. Oz – He is a disgrace to our profession

Can we please not do this, Pennsylvania?

By “this” I mean send Mehmet Oz to the Senate.

Dr. Oz, as he is known to American television audiences, is planning to take his hat off before the next Senate election as a Republican in Pennsylvania. While nothing is certain in politics, his considerable popularity likely made him a leader in the first place.

I greeted this prospect with the same enthusiasm I had with dysentery.

It is clear that for many years, Oz was happy to use his reputation as a cardiovascular surgeon and medical scientist to serve his own fame and promotion, and not who let strange little things like the truth stand in their way. Stroll down a checkout aisle at the grocery store near your house, and chances are you’ll see his smiling face on the cover of a magazine hawking some unhealthy weight loss claims. He was promoting pseudoscience on his show for yearsFrom obesity “remedies” like green coffee and garcinia cambogia to “homeopathic starter kits,” so this is nothing new.

What is even more worrisome during the pandemic is his willingness favoring treatments like hydroxychloroquine no value for COVID patient care, going as far as touting the above drug Fox and friends. As I wrote before, he even appeared on Fox and “recommended that the death rate from COVID-19 has only increased by 2-3% that comes from reopening schools across the country which can be a worthwhile trade-off. “Medical misinformation is literally killing people, and it’s unconscionable that anyone who should have known better would contribute to it. And Oz certainly should and knows better.

It is said that Oz will see a space for himself in the main Republican field. GOP is full of outstanding characters undermining the severity of the pandemic, dismiss the importance of vaccination, and defame public health officials mission to keep the American people as safe and healthy as possible. The people who voted for those people were the people Oz found himself capable of attracting. That is the basis that he will need to grasp in order to make his candidacy a success.

That he seems to like his chances is an extremely unsettling thing.

The US Senate had a medical doctor trying to cut through the concepts of ethics and scientific evidence as a way to raise support for himself. in the person of Rand Paul. He is a shame to doctors everywhere, and as a doctor, I consider him a disgusting disgrace. The idea of ​​him and Oz trying to outdo each other in terms of numbers they’re willing to roll out is a nightmare for me.

Of course, it’s possible that Oz saw inside the space of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis whose voices are responsible for medical science. Joining the ranks of the most serious pandemic disinformation sources will burn his reputation in the health industry to a much greater extent than he is prepared to undermine. worn it so far. I’d love to be confused in my concerns about his running plans, and heaven knows what my opinion of him has nothing to do with but a boost.

At this point, however, Oz has waived any claims in favor of the doubt. His habit of letting his image sell magazines making dangerous and bizarre health claims doesn’t inspire confidence in imagining the length of time he’s poised to win the polls. and willing to make dangerous and outrageous claims about the pandemic are on par with the course in Republican politics today. Believing he’ll start to stand on principle now means letting go of all the times he’s been right on it over the past few years. As America moves through another holiday season mired in a pandemic, a candidate for the Oz Senate is another big tumor in an already overflowing coal warehouse.