Among Dr. Mehmet Oz’s achievements are ten Emmy awards, a syndicated television show, an Ivy-League medical degree, and a rapport with Donald Trump, who appeared on his show in 2016.
Oz, like Trump, is seeking to follow his success on television with a career in Washington, D.C. The celebrity doctor announced on [November 30] that he’s running for US Senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican.
Though Oz has received some plaudits, he’s also garnered plenty of controversy in the medical community for pushing unproven medical treatments and diets.
In a 2015 letter to Columbia University, where Oz is a professor, 10 doctors said he promoted “quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.” A 2014 study in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal found that of 40 randomly selected episodes from Oz’s television show, his health recommendations were based on evidence just 46% of the time.
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Oz has expressed concerns about genetically modified foods, though scientific studies agree that they’re safe.
“I do not claim that GMO foods are dangerous, but believe that they should be labeled like they are in most countries around the world,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
But a majority of countries do not require labels, according to the Genetic Literacy Project.
More importantly, the Food and Drug Administration says foods should only be labeled if they threaten health or the environment. Legally mandating labeling, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), “can only serve to mislead and falsely alarm consumers.”
