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Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal
circletimessquare writes Dr. Mehmet Oz serves as vice chairman of Columbia University Medical Center's department of surgery. He is a respected cardiothoracic surgeon but his television show has been accused of pushing snake oil. Now other doctors at Columbia University want Dr. Oz kicked off the medical school faculty. Dr. Oz has responded on his Facebook account: "I bring the public information that will help them on their path to be their best selves. We provide multiple points of view, including mine which is offered without conflict of interest. That doesn't sit well with certain agendas which distort the facts. For example, 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." In their letter, the doctors accuse Dr. Oz of quackery: "Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops. Worst of all, he has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain."
he's irresponsibly pandering to ignorance to raise his profile
ignorant think he's informing them and giving them "choices"
but this is merely a logical fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
a choice between quackery and sound science is not a choice
it's preying on the science illiteracy of many and steering them to make uneducated bad choices that hurt their health. all to turn a quick buck and bask in the blessings of idiots
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As long as he was peddling magical dietary supplements and weight loss pills he was a lovable scamp and was allowed to carry on with his mischief. But as soon as he dared cross Monsanto, he is a quack that must be squashed.
I thought Jamie Oliver comprehensively put this guy on the quack-heap: https://youtu.be/WA0wKeokWUU
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
they're jealous because they want to be successful snake oil salesmen?
so according to you, the only reason to oppose snake oil salesmen... is because you want to be one?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
can you legitimize that accusation please?
i oppose dr. oz's dangerous quackery and i'm not getting any monsanto money. i am inclined to think these doctors are equally principled
but if you flesh out your accusation with actual proof, i would be inclined to change my view
and i'm talking about actual money going to these actual doctors at the *Columbia University Medical Center*. not some unrelated researcher getting funds in a distant unrelated department in another school ten years ago. i am absolutely certain a huge university like columbia and a huge corporation like monsanto have some sort of overlapping financial investment/ contribution
there's also plenty of criticism of monsanto from columbia faculty. it's not a monolithic ideology, it's a university
so you need to give valid proof, not a lame smear. you have to do better than "evil corporation... rich doctors... all connected... HURRR DURRR." this is not alex jones where every low iq paranoid conspiracy theory is automatically gospel truth
finally, if you have such a dim view of financial investment coloring people's opinions, why do you not consider dr. oz's financial stakes in the crackpot "cures" he pushes as a serious ethical problem? your accusation of financial impropriety trumping morality has much more meaning when leveled at dr oz
but these guys have an agenda that's as clear as day
no. fucking bullshit. dr oz is the one with an agenda as clear as day. you have to prove your accusations against these doctors or you're just a low life smearmonger
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sorry but whether you believe GMOs are a good thing or a bad thing, it is NOT a principled stand to be against truth in food labelling.
Quackery they could tolerate. But how dare he question the nutritious yummy GMOs whose manufacturers are pumping millions of dollars into endowments for those other Columbia University medical faculty. While he's enriching himself, those poor souls may lose out on lucrative $$$. Can't have that.
(That's not to say dr. Oz is not a quack - he certainly is a snake oil salesman, but these guys have an agenda that's as clear as day)
Rather Dr. Oz has an agenda in spinning his response so it looks like his accusers have an agenda.
Police: Joe robbed a grocery store last week and shot five people this week!
Joe: It's not fair to say I robbed the grocery store. The owner was greedy and ripping people off!
I stole this Sig
consistently avoids any discussion of the hard medical facts about the dangers of marijuana, ignoring significant findings and reports.
While Ill agree with your claim on oz being a kook, can you please explain this? because it seems for every study that says it is bad, another one shows up that says the one claiming bad is all BS. Citations???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Being able to make more changes faster to a system that is not fully understood may be a terrible thing.
Being able to make more changes faster that then get propagated to unwanted species as well as anything in Jurassic Park is not only not a good idea, but ultimately self-defeating.
Being able to make changes that only exist to allow more use of glyphosate, being able to insert fish genes into plants, being able to play god in the same manner as the boy next door in Toy Story, yeah, that might ultimately be a bad thing, too.
Personally, I try to eat older foods, less sweet fruits, etc.
"because we do in the lab intelligently"
Give me a fucking break. Our understanding of biologic systems is still in its infancy.
"what we have been doing informally for thousands of years"
And slowly -- don't ever forget slowly.
" is threatening to you"
I hope it doesn't threaten anybody. But the evidence is still out. Glyphosate on wheat and gluten intolerance? Maybe.
"sign of your ignorance and science illiteracy."
Ahh, now I remember why I come to slashdot. The ability to interact with incompetent know-it-all assholes outside a work setting.
Corn and carrots did not exist in their current form a thousand years ago, we agree on that; however, there is a very large difference between the artificial selection our human ancestors performed and what Monsanto is currently doing by splicing sheep DNA and injecting it into vegetables - often for no other reason than to sell patented pesticides that pair with their crop seeds. I'm not saying gene splicing is "wrong", as a man of science, I'm in favor of pushing boundaries but there's a difference between that and artificial selection using nature's own rules. There's also no reason why people shouldn't be informed about exactly what they are putting into their bodies. That's not a decision you or any scientist has the right to make. Less we forget, DDT, Thalidomide and Agent Orange were all deemed "safe" by experts at one time, my friend.
Even if you remove the health risk argument, there are other legitimate concerns. Have you tasted Parisian food lately? I dare you to find a french beefsteak tomato that has as bland a flavor as our U.S. equivalent - one reason for that is because we've bread our beefsteak tomatoes to have skins thick enough to survive truck transport but in the process we've inadvertently bread out the flavor.
Also for someone claiming no special interest, you seem pretty determined to counter EVERY single comment on this article that's not in line with your views.
can you legitimize that accusation please?
Well, going down the list of signers http://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8... I notice
GIlbert Ross, M.D.
President (Acting) and Executive Director
American Council on Science and Health
I am not completely for or against ACSH. Elizabeth Whelan, their founder, was an advocate for some issues I agreed with and some issues I disagreed with. I met Whelan a couple of times. I liked her. She was adding information about some controversial debates, and she was particularly useful in taking on some politically correct positions that had a weak science base. As I recall she was defending GM food, and also taking money from Monsanto.
Most admirably, she was taking on the cigarette industry when it was still a "controversy," especially in magazines that were getting a lot of cigarette advertising, notably almost all the major women's magazines.
But Whelan was also trying to round up "unrestricted" grants from industry to write supposedly unbiased or objective reports on major controversies. To her credit, they tried to give all the scientific evidence, although they seem to have run into problems with that.
The one I remember was their report on that fat substitute, Olestra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... This was not a life-or-death issue, but olestra had a few side effects, the most noticeable of which was diarrhea. Procter & Gamble managed to get the FDA to allow them to refer to "diarrhea" by the euphemistic term, "loose stools," which I thought was misleading. At any rate, when I read that report I realized why you can't get an objective report sponsored by a corporation with a financial interest. Whelan couldn't even use straightforward language and arguments to defend olestra, because P&G's lawyers made them follow the FDA-approved wording.
Whelan's big disappointment was that the industry wouldn't support her (the way they do for the more partisan think tanks like the Manhattan Institute), so she gave up that economic model. I don't know where they get their money from now, but I assume they disclose it. In a way it's a shame, because Whelan failed because she was too honest (but not completely candid). Or to put it less flatteringly, you can't be a little bit of a prostitute.
But let's go to the signers at the top.
Henry I. Miller, M.D.
Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy
& Public Policy
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Scott W. Atlas, M.D.
David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Hoover did not deign to include its funding sources in the "About Us" section of its web site, and I'm not going to track it down. But as I recall, when Hoover was first created, the Stanford faculty complained that they were an independent institution using Stanford's name but without academic accountability to Standford, and they were funded by corporations that had a financial stake in some of the areas of their research.
Miller was one of the founding members of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition which was founded by Philip Morris to challenge the evidence of harm from tobacco http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...
I remember reading Miller's defenses of GM food. I happen to think that GM food is (probably, mostly) pretty safe. But if Miller believes in the free market, he ought to let consumers know which foods are GM and which aren't, so they can make their own free-market decisions. I don't know if Miller takes any money directly from those corporations. But the organizations he works for, like the Hoover Institution, ACSH, and ASSC, do. So that's where his paycheck ultimately comes from. So in that sense the parent's accusation is true.
Oz has
Yes, and people are dying because we don't know how to compensate for this yet. So much for knowing what we're doing.
> you have this notion that transfer of genes between species is some weird thing humans just invented
It's obviously not, or weeds wouldn't be growing resistant to Monsanto's herbicides at what must be an alarming rate to them. Nonetheless, there's a probabilistic thing here -- the rate at which RoundupReady is spreading is obviously partly caused by the huge attempted corn monoculture, and the vast amount of glyphosate sloshing around the environment (making this gene eminently useful in the current environment). Most genes don't propagate across multicellular species anywhere near this quickly, or we probably would have noticed by now.
>agay, you have this bizarre irrational fear
I think you're responding to someone else now, but I'm sure that doesn't matter to you, because you still have this (unfortunately not bizarre) general asshole-ness and superiority complex. Work on it.
"in my opinion this guy is like Jenny McCarthy"
When Jenny McCarthy found out that what she was saying was wrong and harmful, she largely retracted her entire position. Oz knows what he's saying is wrong and harmful, but he keeps doing it, for the money.
There are actually a few differences that can have real consequences. For example, simple cross breeding is a fairly slow and limited process that gives us time to see if a problem is developing. It is further limited by the need to stick with plants that can cross-breed in the first place.
Another factor is that not all genetic modification techniques lead to the plants breeding true. The next few generations may be substantially different from the original.
If the work was being done in a verifiable cautious manner, it might be OK, but there is a history of modifications that "can't escape to the wild" being spotted in the wild. It's somewhat amusing the number of weeds that gained roundup resistance from roundup ready canola. Also amusingly, in spite of Monsanto's claim that only their transgenic techniques could have produced roundup ready crops, traditional breeding has managed it in a few cases including in coca.
Why do you omit the most important fact when attempting to conflate genetic modification with evolution? You know, that pesky fact that evolution maintains balance because ALL creatures are evolving. GMO foods do not.
The second most important fact is that people in the US are not demanding a ban, they are demanding labeling so that they can choose. Your statements, nor the big GMO companies, address that simple fact. They treat the request for label as if it were a ban.
Lastly, evolution does not allow the types of modifications genetics is allowing. Look at how many GMO vegetables contain Fungus, Insect, and Animal DNA. Attempting to claim it's the same as evolution is an absolute lie.
You insult someone else as being ignorant as your last defense... pathetic, and transparent.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Another inarguable point is that the plants bred a thousand years ago have had a thousand years of human testing.
Do you have a link to the murdering bitch's retraction?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
... and like... alternative crystal healing... so... why is he not simply tased when he sets foot on the property? Possibly have some gentlemen run out with a big butterfly net, then give him a shirt with really long sleeves... and then give him a nice quite room with pillows on the walls.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It's like watching "The Simpsons" for parenting advice.
a quick search will find http://www.iflscience.com/heal...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I heard GW Bush claim Saddam had WMDs too, and that didn't happen did it?
Actually, that one did. It resulted in both "Gulf War Syndrome", and a pretty big scandal where Monsanto brokered the deal to sell the machines to manufacture chemical weapons to them from a German company, said deal routed through France. But nice try.
PS: Plus we sold them the Sarin the used against their Kurdish separatists directly, so we knew they had it at one time, and were just hoping they hadn't used it all up so we could say "Aha! Stockpiles!".
You want proof?
How about we start with this:
He has more or less publicly admitted that he hawks stuff which there is insufficient evidence for.
He's a paid shill, with little medical credibility, because he advocates which he is paid to advocate.
Which means he has now stayed into being entertainment, but not fact or medicine. But he sure as hell isn't acting as a credible medical professional.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
We did a similar thing with the wild boar, by selectively breeding from the ones that were fatter, less aggressive, and with smaller tusks.
But if we tried till the end of time we couldn't get one to fuck a jellyfish.
Not the same thing at all.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Here's a recent link where she denies changing her position in any way. I'm afraid she's still a murdering bitch.
Actually chinese snake oil actually works - it' made from water snakes with a high Omega 3 content and is still sold today. It has proven efficacy at a topical liniment to relieve inflammation mostly in joints..
American snake oil was made from rattlesnakes who ate mice and contained no Omega 3 and didn't do anything. So it's really a pejorative of the patent medicine industry in the US, and a known working product in Asia. It says more about the person using it that doesn't know this than it does about anything else.
That is it's not really hokum the pharma industry just fucked it up without knowing what they were doing and never tested it properly. If you watch Ben Goldacre's Ted talk you'll see the exact same thing happens today and if you look at the history of scurvy it's been going on for at least 500 years.
And they always say they're right of course.
Need Mercedes parts ?