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Physicians Against Dr. Oz’s Misinformation – A Battle They Cannot Win?

A handful of physicians are collaborating to take Mehmet Oz, MD, to task on what they’re calling outlandish claims and bad medical advice. Their suggestion is to no longer pay attention to that man behind the curtain.

David H. Gorski, MD, PhD, at the blog Science-Based Medicine went after Dr. Oz for hosting segments about faith healing and consulting psychics. Dr. Gorski pulls no punches, saying, “Dr. Oz has in some ways imitated Oprah and in some ways gone her one better (one worse, really) in promoting the Oprah-fication of medicine. And this season has been a particularly bad one for science-based medicine on The Dr. Oz Show.”

(Dr. Mehmet Oz may be using his “Degree in Thinkology” to come up with some of his show topics.)

Val Jones, MD, the woman behind the curtain at GetBetterHealth.com, joined the crusade against Dr. Oz, saying that he’d descended from “competent and caring cardiothoracic surgeon whose research interest was reducing preoperative stress” to “America’s chief snake oil salesman.” She is organizing a campaign to drown out the bad information with better messages. (As a disclosure, ACP Internist‘s blog contributes to and draws posts from GetBetterHealth.com.)

ACP Member Peter A. Lipson, MD, also wanted to clear the air about primary and secondary prevention of heart attacks, “one of an internist’s most important tasks, given that heart disease is one of the three top killers of North Americans.” Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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