The New York Times is getting an anti-Republican hit piece in early for 2022. Correspondent Trip Gabriel devoted nearly 2,000 words to the U.S. Senate campaign of Dr. Oz, the television doctor who is now a candidate in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary, for a front-page story Monday, “Dubious Advice From TV Doctor In Senate Hunt.”
A wealth of evidence now shows that the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were not effective at treating Covid-19 and carried potential risks.
But in the early months of the pandemic, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician with a daytime TV show, positioned himself as one of the chief promoters of the drugs on Fox News. In the same be-the-best-you tone that he used to promote miracle weight-loss cures on “The Dr. Oz Show,” he elevated limited studies that he said showed wondrous promise.
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When a Veterans Affairs study showed that Covid-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine were more likely to die than untreated patients, that advocacy came to an abrupt halt.
So when new information came in, Oz stopped promoting the drugs? Scandalous!
As Dr. Oz jumped last month into the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania, where his celebrity gives him an important advantage in a crucial race, he tied his candidacy to the politics of the pandemic. He appealed to conservatives’ anger at mandates and shutdowns, and at the “people in charge” who, he said, “took away our freedom.”
(One poll shows Oz ahead of the early Republican pack.)
But the entry into the race of the Cleveland-born heart surgeon…also brought renewed scrutiny to the blemishes on his record as one of America’s most famous doctors: his long history of dispensing dubious medical advice.
Gabriel would not let the hydroxychloroquine go.
In ebullient language, he has often made sweeping claims based on thin evidence, which in multiple cases, like that of hydroxychloroquine, unraveled when studies he relied on were shown to be flawed.
This part was hypocritical, given the Times itself took the threat of arsenic in apple juice seriously.
He has warned parents that apple juice contained unsafe levels of arsenic, advice that the Food and Drug Administration called “irresponsible and misleading.”
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….misinformation about the coronavirus emanating from the Trump White House and conservative news sites helped politicize the nation’s response to the pandemic, with deadly consequences in many Republican areas of the country.
Although Dr. Oz spoke strongly in favor of masks and vaccines on Fox, his championing of unproven treatments early on sharply contradicted infectious-disease experts like Dr. Fauci who urged caution.
That’s rich, given Dr. Fauci himself insisted the public shouldn’t be wearing masks, to preserve them for health care workers.
Gabriel played around with statistics to lay still more death at Dr. Oz’s feet.
In Pennsylvania, as around the country, counties that voted by large margins for Mr. Trump in 2020 have had lower vaccination rates and higher death rates from Covid than counties that voted heavily for President Biden.
Gabriel found a surely unbiased source (a potential election rival) to call Dr. Oz “a quack.”
“I can’t believe he took the same oath that I did when we graduated,” said Dr. Val Arkoosh…who is running in the Democratic primary for Senate. “That oath is about first doing no harm and always putting your patients first. I just think he’s a quack, to be honest.”
Incidentally, Dr. Oz’s career was launched on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Will the paper go after the reliably liberal host for launching the dangerous Dr. Oz?
