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Oz goes to Washington: Magic beans not worth a hill of beans on the Hill?

6/20/2014

7 Comments

 
by Marilyn Wann

This week, Oz (he's not my doctor!) was called before the Senate's subcommittee on consumer protection for his promotion of ostensible weight-loss products.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the subcommittee chair, said, "The scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of the three products you called 'miracles.'…I don't get why you need to say this stuff because you know it's not true." 

Oz's excuse, basically: "You gotta give 'em hope." (His version is a toxic mimic of Harvey Milk's rallying call for queer pride.)

Oz testified: "My job, I feel, on the show is to be a cheerleader for the audience, and when they don't think they have hope, when they don't think they can make it happen, I want to look, and I do look everywhere, including in alternative healing traditions, for any evidence that might be supportive to them."
Dr. Oz green coffee beans Senate McCaskill
Photo by Orion Cooper
Does he imagine that without false hope from a magic bean, people will give up on eat-less/exercise-more weight-loss efforts?

Or is his weight-loss advice a classic shell game: Keep people leaping from one magic bean to the next magic bean. Instead of stopping to ask why magic beans fail so predictably, people who regain weight after buying the purple-with-yellow-spots magic bean will still be eager to buy the orange-and-fuchsia-striped magic bean, or the lime-green-with-black-chevrons magic bean, because...HOPE.

During the Senate hearing, a Federal Trade Commission official testified that their surveys find more consumers are victims of fraudulent weight-loss products than any other type of fraud they ask about.

The very existence of a $66 billion/year (and growing) weight-loss industry is proof that their products fail to produce on their promises. If any one of them worked, wouldn't they all go out of business?

Even with ostensibly sensible eat-less/exercise-more approaches, we know that nearly everyone who loses weight will regain it within a year or two. And many people will gain back more.

Instead of a misnomer like "weight-loss" industry, why not call it what it is:  the weight regain industry?

How about a more reliable definition of hope? The hope of living well in our very own bodies.
7 Comments
Terry
6/20/2014 03:13:14 am

Isn't his oath "First do no harm"?
I don't watch the show. I tried but everyday there was some new supplement to take and the man made my head spin. When I first started seeing his name with these bogus diet products, I thought that someone had misappropriated his endorsement. But I was wrong. I thought "Who could be that stupid?" Apparently, Dr. Oz.

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Janet C.D. Fish
6/20/2014 05:33:17 am

Marilyn, I wonder what role money played in his decision to try to give "hope" through his sure fire weight loss approach.

My approach is to be ME, as I am. I'm grateful to have my body, as it is at any given moment. I am happy where I am, as I am. I'm fat, so what, big deal. Others need not concern themselves with my size.

It feels good to have hope. But hope based in empty promises winds up being lost hope. So, Dr. Oz was, in effect, offering his listeners the outcome of lost hope.

Onward we go! Love! Life! Music! Colors! Form! Grace!

Janet

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Lynne Murray link
6/20/2014 07:25:23 am

Wizard of Oz quote of the day: "Ignore the man behind the curtain." He's admitting to being all smoke and mirrors, and saying that makes selling lies okay. Is there a hot air balloon we can send this guy off in, preferable over a large body of water?

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Robin link
6/20/2014 08:28:31 am

As long as people have "hope" in false science, Oz will have a very well-paying job.

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Sherrie Myers
6/20/2014 08:32:10 am

I listened to that part of the hearing where Oz was saying he was only offering hope. He sounded like he was grasping for any straw to justify himself. What I took away from it was basically: " It doesn't matter if it is an effective product or not as long as people will give me their money because they believe in me and my credibility."

And yes, at one point he was an eminent cardiologist. But he has since sold his birthright for a bowl of pottage. I think that fame and money seduced him away from real medicine and now he's got to answer for it.

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firecat link
6/20/2014 05:23:02 pm

I HOPE he gets the book thrown at him.

Reply
Elissa Singer
6/23/2014 02:13:00 am

Most Medical Doctors have exactly one course in nutrition.
One.
The fact that we as consumers of their services entitles us to more than a semesters worth of out of date information that was memorized for a grade.

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