Among the many unexpected selections, this one was a surprise. President-elect Donald Trump said this week that Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is as well-known for his title as America’s Doctor as for the numerous questionable health claims he has made from that position over the years, would be leading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Maybe that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, Trump supported Oz during his failed 2022 Senate campaign, and instead of disclosing his medical records to the public, Trump went on Oz’s program in 2016 to have an on-air physical. In addition, Melania Trump is fond of him.
His Instagram feed also links to the iHerb store, and he currently describes himself on his website as a global consultant and stakeholder for the online supplement and wellness retailer business. Perhaps that won’t last long.
According to Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel, and senior director of ethics for the nonprofit, nonpartisan government watchdog organization Campaign Legal Center, he would be barred by federal law from making choices that would affect his financial interests. Therefore, if he is making decisions pertaining to such interests in his capacity as CMS’s head, he would have to divest from them.
Additionally, Dr. Richard Besser, the president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the former acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, finds Oz’s pick to be utterly perplexing.
According to Besser, this role has historically required a person with extensive knowledge of health insurance and health policy to oversee extremely complicated schemes. More than 100 million Americans, including those with disabilities and those with lower incomes, receive health care from CMS. In addition to being a television physician, Dr. Oz is a surgeon. His television style has been centered on the individual’s responsibility in their health, and the person in this role is crucial in ensuring that our government is addressing the demands of the entire nation.
According to Besser, a lot of the specific measures that Oz advocated on his television program throughout the years were supported by dubious scientific data. For example, a 2014 study published in the BMJ examined health claims made on 40 randomly chosen episodes of The Dr. Oz Show, a syndicated daytime television program that aired from 2009 to 2022. They discovered that almost half of the suggestions offered on the show lacked scientific backing.
A request for response from Oz’s team was not answered. The Trump transition team promoted Oz’s credentials. According to a statement from Karoline Leavitt, the spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition, he is a distinguished physician, heart surgeon, inventor, and world-class communicator who has been leading the way in healthy living for decades. Dr. Oz has accomplished a lot, and he will continue to fight hard to restore America’s health during President Trump’s second term.
In a 2015 exclusive interview with NBC News, Oz defended himself by claiming that his television program was not a medical program. In addition, he stated that he had not sold any goods off the show and denied any conflicts of interest. Additionally, he stated that he would not use terms like “miracle” and even mentioned that there are parts of my work that I wish I could go back and change.
However, once a notion has been extensively promoted on television, it is difficult to retract. These are eight health claims made by Oz over the years that have little to no scientific support.
Green coffee extract, the magic weight loss cure
Oz traveled to Washington in 2014 to get assistance in combating online marketers who were using his name and likeness to promote weight-loss products. Instead, senators questioned him about the several diet products he had advertised on his show after implying that he was contributing to the issue.
According to then-Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., addressed Oz during the Senate hearing, “when you feature a product on your show, it creates what has become known as the Dr. Oz Effect,” which drastically boosts sales and causes scammers to appear overnight using fraudulent and deceptive marketing to promote questionable products.
Senators gave a number of instances from Oz’s own show, but his assertions regarding green coffee bean extract dominated the session.
Scientists claim to have discovered the secret weight loss remedy for all body types, despite your belief that magic is a myth. Oz stated in a 2012 program that this wonder medication can burn fat quickly.
McCaskill remarked, “I don’t understand why you need to say this stuff because you know it’s not true.” Why would you lower the quality of your presentation when you have such a powerful megaphone and amazing communication skills?
Oz retorted: I fervently research the topics I discuss on the show, and I genuinely do believe in them. I am aware that they frequently lack the scientific support necessary to be presented as reality.
Later that year, a business that sold the green coffee extract that Oz had promoted paid the Federal Trade Commission $3.5 million to resolve a complaint alleging that the business had utilized the findings of a faulty research to make fictitious weight-loss promises to retailers. In the same year, two researchers withdrew their study that purportedly demonstrated the weight-loss effects of green coffee bean capsules. According to a statement posted on the website of the open-access scientific publication that published the work, Joe Vinson and Bryan Burnham are withdrawing the paper since the study’s sponsors are unable to guarantee the accuracy of the data. Retraction Watch was the first to report the retraction.
By October 2014, The Washington Post reported that nearly all references to green coffee bean extract had been removed from Oz’s website. The episode had also been removed from YouTube, with an explanation blaming a copyright lawsuit.
Supplements and the holy grail of cancer prevention
Although Oz’s comments on green coffee extract garnered significant media attention, he promoted other weight loss supplements on his show.According to Vox, he reportedly declared that raspberry ketone was the best miracle in a bottle for burning fat. In a 2013 episode, he referred to Garcinia cambogia as the easy way to permanently lose body fat.
Writing forScience-Based Medicine, Dr. Harriet Hall conceded that Garcinia cambogia may have a role in helping patients lose weight by assisting motivation and enlisting placebo effects, but the data at that point didn t show a clinically relevant advantage over old-fashioned diet and exercise.
According to the 2014 BMJ survey, nutrition and nutritional advice were mentioned in most of Oz’s health suggestions. He claimed in a 2011 episode that a diet of 500 calories per day, along with the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, which is released during pregnancy, might cause weight loss. (The study finds no proof that HCG is a useful weight-loss aid.)
The Washington Post reports that in a 2012 episode, Oz promoted the cancer-preventive properties of selenium, a mineral in soil that, according to the National Institutes of Health, is in charge of, among other things, shielding the body from the harm caused by severe viral infections.
According to the NIH, there is evidence that those who have a selenium deficiency—which is extremely uncommon in the United States—may be more susceptible to developing certain cancers, such as those of the colon, rectum, prostate, lung, bladder, skin, esophagus, and stomach. It is unclear, though, if taking supplements of selenium lowers the risk of developing these cancers. Moreover, excessive levels of the mineral are associated with health hazards, and selenium supplements may conflict with other prescription drugs. Extremely high intakes of selenium can cause severe problems, including difficulty breathing, tremors, kidney failure, heart attacks, and heart failure, the NIH states.
Endive, red onions, and sea bass are anti-cancer foods that can lower the incidence of ovarian cancer by up to 75%, Oz told his audience in a 2011 show.
Three years later, the journal Nutrition and Cancerrevisited those claims in a 2014 papertitled Reality check: no such thing as a miracle food. The authors noted, for example, that while kaempferol a flavonoid found in endive had demonstrated cancer inhibition in lab studies, it was unclear whether those findings would translate to people consuming endive in usual dietary quantities. They warned their peers to be cognizant of the public health messages that are taken from their individual studies.
Apple juice and arsenic
Oz suggested in a 2011 episode thatapple juice contained unsafe levels of arsenic, citing tests from a New Jersey lab. The Food and Drug Administration performed its own tests and found no evidence of any public health risk from drinking these juices.
The FDA further said that Oz failed to note whether he was referring to organic or inorganic arsenic a crucial point, as organic arsenic is not likely to cause harm, while the inorganic canpotentially be dangerous. In response, a spokesman for The Dr. Oz Showat the time, Tim Sullivan,told CBS News, We don t think the show is irresponsible.
Sullivan said, We think the public has a right to know what s in their foods. The position of the show is that the total arsenic needs to be lower.
AConsumer Reports studypublished several months later did find that some juice samples had high levels of arsenic, most of which, the study said, was inorganic.
Lavender soap for restless leg syndrome
I know this sounds crazy, but people put it under their sheets, Oz said in a 2010 episode of his show,according to Business Insider. We think the lavender is relaxing and may be itself beneficial.
A comparatively innocuous claim, to be sure, but nonetheless, the suggestion that placing a bar of lavender soap under the bedsheets can help ease restless leg syndrome is a dubious one, and it wasdebunked by Life s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.
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