
Oz was one of six experts invited by the subcommittee to testify during the hearing, but once all the experts had delivered their prepared testimony, the members’ attention fell squarely on Oz, by far the most famous person in the room that day.

“You don’t want to be on a pulpit talking about how passionate you are about life and thinking, ‘Well, if I use that word it’s going to be quoted back to me.’” “When I feel as a host of a show that I can’t use words that are flowery, that are exultatory, I feel like I’ve been disenfranchised, like my power’s been taken away,” said Oz.

At one point during the hearing, when McCaskill confronted him with his claims about a pill that could “literally flush fat from your system,” and “push fat from your belly,” Oz blamed what today might be called “cancel culture” for policing what he could or couldn’t say on his show. In the pre-pandemic world of 2014, Oz’s testimony sounds a bit like the desperate waffling of a high school student who just got caught cheating on a science test. And his performance in the hearing itself - relentlessly pushing back blaming his critics rather than taking responsibility for his own misinformation - sounds eerily like practice for politics in 2021. Although conservative celebrities have by and large struggled to match Trump’s success in parlaying widespread name recognition into right-wing staying power - see, for instance, Caitlyn Jenner and Kanye West - Oz’s long and lucrative career as an advocate for alternative medicine, essentially one long campaign against the medical establishment by a man with his own media empire and an "M.D." after his name, makes him as reasonable a candidate as any in an increasingly populist party. It remains to be seen whether Trump will endorse another candidate after Parnell’s early exit.īut with the GOP field in a deepening state of disarray, Oz might be just what the doctor ordered. He has no real political credentials to speak of, aside from the occasional appearance on Fox News as a guest medical commentator. His ties to Pennsylvania are slight: a long-time resident of New Jersey, he attended the University of Pennsylvania’s medical and business schools as a graduate student and only began living and voting in Pennsylvania, where his wife’s family lives, in 2020.
#Dr. oz tv show today trial
Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), the subcommittee's chair, grew visibly agitated at Oz’s evasiveness, blurting out, “I’ve tried to do a lot of research in preparation for this trial and the scientific community is almost monolithic against you.” It was a hearing, not a trial, but McCaskill’s slip was telling: The committee was trying to put pseudoscience on trial, and Oz was the star witness.īy all the usual standards, Oz’s electoral prospects in Pennsylvania are slim. At one point during the question-and-answer portion of the testimony, Sen. He brandished print-outs of scientific studies to defend his statements about various weight-loss supplements and cited transcripts of his TV appearances to show how advertisers had taken his words out of context. From his spot behind the witness table, Oz refused to back down.
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Oz Show,” his daytime cable program on health and wellness, laying into him for his endorsements of the miraculous powers of green coffee extract and the fat-burning magic of raspberry ketone. For the duration of the hour-long hearing, members of the subcommittee lined up one after the next to grill “America’s Doctor” for statements he made on “The Dr.
