Dr. Oz complaint letter may backfire, undermining efforts to expose his ‘fear mongering’

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Recently I wrote about a letter sent to Lee Goldman, MD, the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University complaining about Dr. Mehmet Oz’s promotion of pseudoscience on his television show, which reaches millions.

As odd as it seems given how vociferously critical I have been of Dr. Oz’s promotion of quackery on his TV show, I must admit that seeing this letter, written by Dr. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution, and signed by several doctors with ties to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), was an incredibly bad idea.

Dr. Miller is a huge booster of GMOs, having served as the founding director of the FDA Office of Biotechnology. Miller’s letter, after the initial embarrassment it caused Dr. Oz, is probably now seen by him and his producers as a godsend that gives them the pretext to counterattack and to tar all the physicians—not just Dr. Miller and company, but other bloggers, me, and all the rest of us who have been criticizing Dr. Oz for the last five years over his promotion of quackery and pseudoscience—as being industry shills of some kind and to make it stick in the public mind.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for pissing off Dr. Oz over the TV snake oil peddler he’s become, but, I wonder, did Miller stop to think what the consequences might be if he actually succeeded in publicly embarrassing Dr. Oz in the national media without a clear idea of what his endgame would be? I don’t think so.

Dr. Miller’s little publicity stunt could wind up backfiring spectacularly, leaving the rest of us who care about all the quackery Dr. Oz spreads, not just his fear mongering about GMOs, to deal with the consequences.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the variety of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: A publicity stunt against Dr. Oz threatens to backfire spectacularly

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