Dr Oz

===

he's starting w. senate? does not live in Penn?

grift?

SEE JAY B FOX

self fund campaign so sorta // trump reality TV --> pol

gotta figure this out some day , 420 fix covid BS; is hetrumpianPR whore?

bigthunk aschole claims credit/legit for attacks

anomaly?

mma 320

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/dr-mehmet-oz-tells-fox-friends-real-threat-humanity-virus-not-global-warming...

bigthunker alex b aschole claim to fame is take-down (around Serelini?)

===

bs?

===

yikes

===

AN 10 26

A cadre of elite techies, financiers, and high-level Trump administration officials have spent a year quietly charting an extraordinary and rapid campaign to persuade Americans to use apps and other artificial intelligence-powered tools to manage their healthcare and medical records.

As that campaign has unfolded, administration officials have granted tech companies an unusual opportunity to nudge the nation’s health department toward a loosely regulated future for AI health apps in which the government reimburses them for services as it does medical professionals.

In February, federal health officials invited those businesses — including tech giants Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, and Google — to a listening session on conversational AI products for patients, such as chatbots. Representatives from at least 35 industry organizations attended the meeting held by the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for regulating health apps as medical devices. Companies were prompted in advance to explain their AI products and how they access patients’ sensitive medical information.

But the meeting did not appear on the FDA’s public calendar or regulatory notices, nor was the public invited. Rather, the invitation for a select group to help shape federal policy governing AI in healthcare was extended in a chat room on the messaging service Slack.

“This is a great opportunity to support HHS’ goals and share your state-of-the-art understanding of safe Conversational AI development and monitoring to help FDA shape future guidance,” CMS senior policy adviser Morgan Taylor wrote in the Slack workspace.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has not formally announced the chat room through federal regulatory channels, though CMS officials have talked about it at industry conferences. Legal experts said the chat room resembles a federal advisory panel, which would be required to operate in public view.

KFF Health News reviewed thousands of Slack messages, meeting transcripts, and video recordings that reveal how the Trump administration has granted the industry a direct line to top government officials — including former head of the Department of Government Efficiency Amy Gleason.

The conversation took place behind the scenes as federal health officials publicly worked to integrate AI and other technology into nearly every aspect of healthcare, a plan they’ve branded the “Health Technology Ecosystem.”

“We wanted to give industry a chance to play in the sandbox of government-supported healthcare,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said in September at the public launch of an initiative that allows health apps to bill Medicare for AI services such as wearable device tracking. Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered an enthusiastic endorsement of AI in healthcare, claiming it is “much better informed than any doctor in the country.”

Meanwhile, HHS staff even promised that a recently launched Medicare App Library would serve as a lucrative pipeline for those businesses to get new users. The library's webpage currently promotes only two dozen commercial apps to millions of American seniors and those with disabilities.

As Trump officials sell it, Americans will get easier access to their medical records so apps can swiftly provide health or wellness advice. In practice, however, so will the tech companies.

Doctors, meanwhile, are increasingly worried about how patients use and share their medical records with the nascent technology.

“Some of these tools just aren’t ready for primetime,” said John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association. “We don’t have enough data about them. We don’t understand how they work, how they’re using the information. There’s no liability if these tools get things wrong.”

CMS officials declined to answer several questions about the Slack workspace, including about its legality.

“CMS is focused on giving Medicare beneficiaries greater access to their health information and useful digital tools while promoting an open, interoperable healthcare system,” Gleason, now chief product officer for the newly created Office of Health Technology and Products at CMS, wrote in an emailed statement. “The Health Technology Ecosystem is an open, voluntary technical collaboration. CMS will continue working with patients, providers, payers, technology organizations, and other stakeholders to make health information more accessible and useful to the Americans it serves.”

The FDA did not respond to a request for comment.

The Conversation Begins

The behind-the-scenes effort to funnel more Americans to AI-powered health apps began in August 2025 in the Slack workspace.

“Welcome all!” Gleason wrote. “Please be sure to read the Code of Conduct and see the Channel list as well to help you find channels that are relevant to you.”

Gleason is best known for serving as the acting administrator of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, as it gained access to millions of Americans’ sensitive personal and financial data, including at the Social Security Administration.

As her work with DOGE wound down last year, Gleason welcomed a variety of tech leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs to the chat room.

The Slack workspace’s participants include representatives from major digital wellness companies like Oura Health, AI companies like Palantir, and investment outfits like 8VC, a venture capital firm associated with Kennedy’s son Finn. While the Slack’s member count has ballooned to 1,700 over the past year, only a handful of patient advocates, doctors, and hospital representatives are in it.

The code of conduct Gleason shared on Slack in August 2025 documented that CMS had quietly established a technology working group.

The document also set ground rules for the Slack workspace, noting that the group does not constitute an “advisory committee,” nor would it be used “to obtain advice or recommendations for HHS, CMS, or any HHS/CMS officials.” The code also advises that federal employees “are prohibited from endorsing any product, service, or enterprise.”

Joseph Daval, a former FDA lawyer who is now a research specialist at Harvard Medical School, reviewed messages from the Slack workspace at the request of KFF Health News. He said the chat room in some ways resembles a federal advisory committee — an independent panel that can be formally stood up by an agency head, Congress, or the president to ensure agencies act in the best interest of the public rather than industry.

The law on advisory committees “was passed in part out of a concern about interest group capture, about anticompetitive capture of agency policymaking, about corruption,” he said.

Daval said the chat group looks like a committee, with members interacting with one another and building consensus on preferred courses of action.

If it were a formal advisory committee, though, Daval said, it would be subject to certain “membership requirements having to do with independence and fair balance.”

A ‘Sales Engine’

Over a series of video calls, CMS officials promised tech leaders participating in the Slack workspace that the agency would promote their health apps.

Jacob Shiff, the chief AI and technology officer at CMS’ Innovation Center, told industry representatives in a Zoom meeting in February that he hoped the agency’s work would be a “sales engine” for the health apps.

“We’re going to have a directory of all the organizations,” Shiff said in a video recording reviewed by KFF Health News. “The people on this call who hopefully will have amazing solutions that work will be the winners, and you have every incentive to obviously drive down your costs so you can be extremely profitable and scale. So hopefully we’re selling — or enabling you guys to thrive.”

A recording of the call had been publicly available through a Google Drive link but was made private the day after KFF Health News asked about comments made during the meeting.

CMS did not respond to queries about how the agency has decided which AI-powered health apps appear in the Medicare App Library or why federal employees have promised to promote the products.

Days before publicly launching the Medicare App Library, CMS officials promised AI tech leaders during an informal meeting that the new webpage would become an important distribution channel for health apps because Medicare enrollees would place trust in products listed on the CMS website.

“If medicare.gov is promoting it, for lack of a better word, then yeah, it would be an app that I would trust and explore,” CMS’ Taylor said during the April 7 meeting, channeling enrollees, according to a transcript of the call.

The Medicare App Library’s webpage encourages older and disabled Americans to manage health conditions such as obesity, cancer, or diabetes using two dozen AI-driven apps developed by some of the world’s largest corporations, including Microsoft and Google. Many of the apps promise in their product descriptions to give insight, perform analyses, or develop plans that will help patients lose weight or manage diabetes.

CMS officials have suggested to tech representatives during at least two meetings this year that those apps will be prioritized for a new agency program that reimburses companies for AI chatbot advice or wearable device tracking, according to video recordings.

CMS has not publicly divulged all the criteria it uses to decide which apps are listed in its library, but the webpage promotes apps still in their infancy.

Among them is Slothwise, a health app launched this year from a San Francisco apartment by a young, self-described biotech entrepreneur and triple citizen of Russia, Israel, and the U.S. The app says it “knows your whole health” by analyzing medical records and tracking health data for $9.99 a month. It has been reviewed on the Apple and Google app stores only a handful of times.

“I trusted slothwise with my health info because it was endorsed by medicare,” one reviewer wrote in a Google review in August. “Connecting info was smooth and I learned a lot about my health.”

In a statement, Slothwise CEO Sofia Sigal-Passeck did not answer questions about the size and medical expertise of her current team, nor about the availability of a doctor to consult with patients who use the app. The app, she said, is only “informational” at this time.

“I’ve spent years building at the intersection of AI and complex biological data,” Sigal-Passeck wrote in an email. “A small team is not the same thing as an inexperienced team. Slothwise is built by physicians, PhD researchers and engineers.”

‘No Regulation, No Rulemaking’

What’s often less clear — and buried deep in lengthy privacy policies — is that these apps are tapping into the intimate details of patients’ medical records to fuel their AI-driven analyses.

Tech vendors have lobbied the government to treat these apps, once they are vetted and authorized by a third-party organization, like a patient requesting records. That position gives apps sweeping access to pull sensitive health data from the national network through which providers electronically exchange medical records, called the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA.

A small but influential group of those tech company executives directly made the case to federal health officials during a formal meeting in May, arguing that when health apps request medical records they should be treated as if they are standing “in the shoes” of a patient.

On Slack, tech vendors have lobbied for a “frictionless pathway” for verified users, after they’ve consented once, that allows the app to gain limitless access to patients’ medical records from the TEFCA network.

Ryan Howells, a healthcare management consultant who lobbies for a Washington, D.C.-based digital health tech organization called the CARIN Alliance, has spearheaded an effort for patients — vis-à-vis apps — to more easily access medical records. He has regularly noted in Slack that health apps accessing TEFCA must be vetted by a third-party organization — one of which he sits on the board of — and agree to a code of conduct, developed by the alliance he lobbies for.

“What more can you do to have trust in these apps?” he wrote in a March Slack message, responding to concerns about how much patient consent is needed for apps to access medical records on the network.

Kristen Valdes, the CEO of b.well, a company that also connects apps to the TEFCA network, made a similar argument.

“My opinion is that we need to stop protecting patients from themselves,” she wrote in the same message thread. “Full stop.”

Howells did not respond to an emailed list of questions from KFF Health News. In an interview, Valdes told KFF Health News that her comment reflected her frustration at the “paternalism” of the healthcare system, which she said has historically made it difficult for patients to access their records. Although, she said, “there are going to be good and bad apps.”

Other tech leaders worried in Slack about the approach.

One startup founder cautioned the group to think about the pitfalls of giving health apps broad leeway to pull medical records.

“We might all be good, honest actors here but security & privacy systems have to be designed around the presence of malicious actors – especially if we want this system to scale up to thousands of apps,” wrote Jason Kulatunga, who runs Fasten Health, a medical records management platform.

Gleason, the CMS official, has publicly championed the vision shared by Howells and Valdes. In her speeches, she frequently urges doctors to accept patient medical records directly from apps and calls on them to “Kill the Clipboard,” also the title of a 2025 white paper co-authored by Howells that urges doctors' offices to abandon paper records.

Last month, Gleason spoke to a crowd gathered at a swanky hotel in Washington for an event hosted by the MAHA Institute, a think tank that supports Secretary Kennedy’s agenda. She laid out her work with tech companies over the past year as she discussed the Trump administration’s efforts to make medical records more digitally accessible.

As she told it, more Americans can now download an app and access their medical records.

“Once you’ve verified your identity you can just click a simple button and say, I’d like my medical records into whatever app I choose,” Gleason said.

She continued: “That was all done just — no regulation, no rulemaking — just by challenging industry to work together.”

-=-=

AN 10 26 TC

Dr. Mehmet Oz lashed out at a reporter after she challenged President Donald Trump's effort to shore up rural health care with a new $50 billion fund, despite the much larger Medicaid cuts included in the same law

The heated exchange came during an interview with Molly Martinez of Gray Media's Washington News Bureau. Martinez claimed the White House was providing a solution to a financial problem its own legislation caused.

Martinez pointed to projections showing that Trump's signature domestic policy law would reduce federal Medicaid spending in rural areas by $137 billion over ten years, while the administration has also advanced a $50 billion initiative to improve medical services in rural regions.

Oz, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, erupted at the numbers, raising his voice.

In a video she posted on X, Oz told Martinez, "You're repeating talking points that are not only wrong, but they're deliberately duplicitous.”

Martinez then asked him to explain what he believed was wrong.

Oz dismissed the $137 billion figure as an inaccurate depiction of what goes directly to rural institutions, arguing that Medicaid funding generally passes through the states to large hospital systems in cities and doesn't reach smaller, rural providers.

He argued that the administration's new rural health program delivered an unprecedented increase in resources for those communities.

However, Martinez didn’t back down and pressed the comparison again, accusing the administration of returning only a small fraction of what its law would take away.

"That is incorrect and dishonest and a deliberately duplicitous question," Oz responded.

Independent research backs the funding comparison based on the underlying figures. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the law which Trump signed on July 4, 2025, will result in a reduction of federal Medicaid spending across the country by $911 billion over a ten-year period, including the $137 billion for rural areas.

The Rural Health Transformation Program, which has a $50 billion budget, will provide states with funding over a five-year period from 2026 to 2030. However, according to KFF, this total represents about 37 percent of the estimated rural Medicaid reductions, even though the programs have different aims and time frames.

The grants also can't replace the lost Medicaid revenue, since federal rules limit direct payments to providers to 15 percent of a state's award and prevent using those funds to supplement existing Medicaid payments.

To support her figures, Martinez referred to the Congressional Budget Office and the Center for American Progress. She also mentioned the impact on rural patients who must travel long distances to reach hospitals.

After Martinez told Oz that she has spoken to people who find healthcare unaffordable and asked what he has to say to them, the former TV show host responded: "We're pouring money into places where the money should be spent."

-=-=

no lnx yahoo

The Baltimore Sun

MAHA Summit urges emphasis on early detection, preventive action in healthcare

Jonathan M. Pitts, Baltimore Sun

Tue, September 29, 2026

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.

Add Yahoo on Google

MAHA Summit urges emphasis on early detection, preventive action in healthcare

WASHINGTON — Alex Hardy spent seven years battling chronic sinus disease, undergoing five surgeries and taking 10 rounds of antibiotics. But the experience that ultimately drew him into the Make America Healthy Again movement, he told a Washington conference Tuesday, was what happened when he stopped looking to conventional medicine for an answer.

Hardy, CEO of MAHA Holdings, quit his technology job, moved to Costa Rica and changed his diet and lifestyle. Within three months, he said, his health dramatically improved.

"That experience radicalized me," Hardy told hundreds of attendees at the second annual MAHA Summit at the Waldorf Astoria hotel Tuesday. "I shouldn't have had to leave our country to get healthy."

Hardy's story offered a personal distillation of the philosophy underlying the daylong conference — that an American healthcare system built largely around treating illness after it develops should put far more emphasis on preventing chronic disease through nutrition, lifestyle and environmental changes.

The gathering brought some of the nation's most powerful health officials together with scientists, doctors, technology executives, food industry leaders, wellness entrepreneurs and athletes to explore topics ranging from the food Americans eat and the cost of healthcare to cancer detection, artificial intelligence, psychedelic medicine and environmental health.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin were among the senior administration officials who took part. Vice President JD Vance and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. closed the program with what organizers called a "fireside chat" that began at 5 p.m.

The theme Hardy cited ran through many of the 17 panel discussions held on a stage in the Waldorf ballroom, where three giant video screens loomed behind participants, flashing titles such as "Psychedelic Medicine: The Next Frontier" and "Democratizing Care," to name two of the sessions. Images of sun-splashed mountains and healthy food played across the screens between sessions, interspersed with panels displaying the logos of Anthropic, Noom, UnitedHealth Group and other companies represented by the roster of speakers.

Josh Ofman, CEO of biotechnology company GRAIL, described one manifestation of that shift during a panel on early cancer detection. The company's flagship product, Galleri, is a blood test designed to detect signals associated with more than 50 types of cancer by analyzing patterns in DNA fragments circulating in the bloodstream.

"If you think about healthcare today and what's possible that wasn't just a few years ago, clearly we have to make a transition from a 'break-it-and-fix-it' system to one of prediction and early detection," Ofman said. "An enormous transition has to take place."

Speakers repeatedly addressed what they described as a need to break free of traditional systems of healthcare that cost too much — and diminish Americans' quality of life — by taking action only when an illness has taken hold and becomes evident, then treating it as a discrete crisis, when, in their view, finding ways of detecting illness and making less catastrophic adjustments ahead of time is a more affordable, less traumatic approach.

One element of the problem is access, said Wyatt Decker, UnitedHealth Group's chief physician for value-based care and innovation, who joined a morning discussion on how insurance systems can bring the costs of care down.

Decker said his company is pushing for innovations that would allow patients to get health-promoting care before the crises hit — a rarity in the current system.

"Chronic diseases account for 90% of [healthcare] expenses, and people haven't been able to get access to care when it's not a crisis," Decker said. "And that creates a system that is not only extremely expensive but that also creates a terrible experience."

UnitedHealth Group, he said, has been developing and sharing with patients the kind of data that will allow them a wider array of clinics and forms of treatment, some more expensive and some less, depending on the individual's health situation — a freedom that can be better tailored to individual needs and save money.

"There's no correlation between the cost of healthcare and the quality you're getting," he said. "One thing we're doing is saying, 'We'll use data and analytics to help members navigate their healthcare. If they want to go to a higher-cost environment, they can."

Such a change, he said, can save Americans up to 45% on their total cost of care.

Several panels explored how AI can contribute to creating greater choice, more patient freedom, and simply granting ordinary Americans more capacity to understand what ails them and what can be done about it.

The unconventional grouping in one afternoon panel captured an element many MAHA supporters advocate — a reaching-out across established silos and categories — when the British comedian Russell Brand moderated a discussion on how governmental departments can be reformed to serve patients better.

The panel included Dr. Mehmet Oz, an administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which under Oz has proposed expanding accountable value-based care, in which providers have financial incentives tied to patient outcomes and total costs rather than simply being paid for each service they perform.

Oz promoted advancing a culture in which all Americans are cared for from the beginning of life into old age and in which telehealth and changes in the insurance industry might ensure the same level of care for those in both rural and urban America and praised Congress for passing legislation that he said provided $50 billion for rural healthcare.

That, he said, was a sign of a MAHA-influenced system becoming more unified across regions and more fully democratized.

Brand brought levity to the proceedings and, after standing on the floor among attendees for a "group photo" led a chant of "Say MAHA!"

The audience roared, setting the tone for a conference that grew more energized later in the afternoon when Kennedy and Vance took the stage to sum up the day's events.

Dozens of media members flooded into the ballroom before the pair took their seats, and it didn't take long for Vance to add to the upbeat mood.

"I must be at the wrong summit. I thought we were going to be talking about weight loss and acid, not AI," Vance said, to laughter, in reference to the GLP1 drugs discussed at some of the day's panels and a morning discussion about the experimental use of psychedelics in treating PTSD and depression.

Then the pair turned to some of the day's core themes — the potential dangers of AI, the problem of widespread fraud in the Medicare system, and the need to keep the MAHA movement going long after the Trump administration ends.

Kennedy finished by thanking Vance and Trump, his boss, for the administration's support in advancing MAHA and waved to an upbeat departing crowd.

Have a news tip? Contact Jonathan M. Pitts at jonpitts@baltsun.com.

an 10 25

Dr. Oz slammed after saying goal of health care system is to boost GDP by 'trillions'

---

MMA

National news media outlets nearly silent on potential Trump family self-dealing pharmaceutical scheme

Each of the major cable and broadcast networks buried the potential TrumpRx-BlinkRx conflict of interest

Written by Harrison Ray

Research contributions from Rob Savillo & Tyler Monroe

Published 10/16/25

Major cable and broadcast news outlets seem to have largely ignored a Wall Street Journal report that Donald Trump Jr. stands to potentially benefit financially from a deal between BlinkRx and the government-run TrumpRx pharmaceutical program. Apparently, neither The New York Times or The Washington Post covered the Journal’s findings either.

On September 30, President Donald Trump announced TrumpRx, a government-run platform scheduled to launch in 2026 that would funnel consumers to drug companies' direct-sale websites — precisely the service BlinkRx announced it could help facilitate in August. Donald Trump Jr. joined the company's board in February of this year, and also serves as a partner of the investment firm 1789 Capital, a “lead investor” in BlinkRx. According to the Wall Street Journal report, before the President's TrumpRx reveal, a BlinkRx representative “told one drug company that BlinkRx could be involved with running the site on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”

According to the Journal, BlinkRx has also organized a summit in December which will facilitate meetings between the country's top drugmakers, feature "'small group meetings' with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary", and “conclude with a dinner at the Executive Branch, an exclusive new club founded by Trump Jr. and his close friends.”

Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, explained of the announcement:

After derailing serious initiatives in place to finally let Medicare negotiate cheaper drug prices on some of the most expensive life-saving medicines, the President wants praise for pushing a mail-order scheme that experts say won’t significantly lower costs for patients — but will put more money in his son’s pocket. This is presidential self-dealing at its most craven.

This story fits a familiar pattern: The Trump family appearing to leverage the power of the presidency for self-dealing. But the story failed to garner much coverage in the national media. From October 7 — when The Wall Street Journal broke the story — through October 13, national TV news media seem to have ignored the apparent self-dealing. The cable networks CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and Newsmax each seemingly failed to cover the story. All original broadcast episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press also seemingly ignored the story during the study period.

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post also seem to have ignored the revelation during the study period.

National news media's muted response to this story suggests outlets view self-dealing involving the president's family as background noise. This kind of potential arrangement is likely problematic and certainly newsworthy — it ought to be covered that way.
## Methodology...

---

How Fox covers for Trump administration malfeasance

Monday night was a perfect case study

Written by Matt Gertz

Published09/23/25 MMA

The job of a Fox News evening host isn’t to cover President Donald Trump and his administration, it’s to give them cover. The network’s stars are shameless propagandists who employ a variety of tactics to hide the president’s misdeeds from their viewers. Their Monday night programs, which followed days of administration chaos and corruption, perfectly encapsulate how this process works.

Trump and his supporters, in just a few short months, have ushered in an unprecedented and radical transformation of American political life. A president who won office in large part by exploiting voter discontent over rising prices has exacerbated that problem through unilateral tariffs while simultaneously consolidating power, crushing dissent, enriching himself and his allies, and dismantling and remaking agencies that secure goals like public health.

The result is that any given day can feature several instances of wildly scandalous behavior, any one of which might have sunk a previous administration.

On Monday night, four such stories were circulating: Trump pushed out a U.S. attorney who had refused to prosecute his political opponent on insufficient evidence and replaced him with a crony; several outlets reported that his Justice Department appointees quashed a probe into a White House adviser who had been recorded taking a cash bribe; there was ongoing fallout from his top media regulator publicly threatening media companies over airing Jimmy Kimmel’s show; and at a White House event the president and his advisers issued a warning over Tylenol usage based on an unproven link to autism.

Any of those stories, explained in context, could prove devastating for the president and his team. But Trump has maintained high approval ratings with his supporters — and thus maintained lock-step backing from congressional Republicans — in no small part because his base gets information through the filter of right-wing media. And much of the right-wing media, fearing a revolt from their audiences, isn’t inclined to provide information that conflicts with their biases.

Here’s how each of those scandals played out Monday night on the panel show The Five and the eponymous programs of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity.

### Fox ignored Trump replacing a defiant prosecutor with a crony

What happened:On Friday, ABC News reported that Trump was “expected to fire” U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert because Siebert had refused White House demands to bring mortgage fraud charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who previously prosecuted Trump, because investigators did not find incriminating evidence against her. After Siebert left office, Trump publicly called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to “act fast” on prosecutions against James, former FBI Director James Comey, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) in what The New York Times called “an extraordinary breach of prosecutorial protocols that reach back to the days following the Watergate scandal.” The president subsequently appointed Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide and longtime Trump legal adviser with no experience as a prosecutor, to replace Siebert; she took office as acting U.S. attorney on Monday.

Fox’s response: Fox’s stars spent the years of Trump’s first term and Joe Biden's presidency complaining of a two-tiered system of justice in which federal law enforcement agencies were persecuting the right while letting the left off the hook. In reality, Republican and Trump-appointed officials kept finding sufficient evidence to prosecute Trump and his allies and didn’t find enough to do the same against his foes. But now that Trump is loudly and publicly demanding politicized prosecutions — and pushing out his own appointed prosecutor when he refused to play along — the same voices have gone silent: The story was not mentioned Monday on The Five or the programs of Ingraham, Watters, and Hannity.

Many such cases: Fox hosts have similarly ignored stories about Trump’s relationship with deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. killing research into next-generation vaccines; statements by an immigrant the Trump administration sent in error to a notorious foreign prison who says he was beaten and sexually assaulted by guards; reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent information derived from a classified email over an unsecured group chat; and an exodus of top Defense Department staffers over concerns with Hegseth’s management style.

### Fox excused Trump regulator threatening media companies

What happened: Two days after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel inaccurately suggested that the alleged killer of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk was part of “the MAGA gang,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr publicly threatened ABC’s affiliates and its corporate parent, Disney, with regulatory retribution. Nexstar, a large affiliate network which needs Carr’s approval for a corporate merger, subsequently said its affiliates would immediately preempt Kimmel’s show; soon after, ABC announced that the program was suspended indefinitely. On Monday, after widespread criticism of the administration’s effort to curtail speech and ABC’s capitulation, Disney said Kimmel would return to the air on Tuesday.

Fox’s response:Several Fox hosts used the news that Kimmel was returning to the air to claim that his initial removal had been a business decision unrelated to administration pressure. Hannity claimed that while those “on the left” had been “melting down” and falsely blaming Trump for Kimmel’s suspension, it was now proven to have been “a decision by ABC Disney, not the government.” Watters called it a “show-biz decision” and aired a chyron stating “ABC benched Kimmel, not Trump.” Ingraham agreed with guest Raymond Arroyo’s claim that “ABC deciding to put Kimmel back on, it does lay to rest this narrative that somehow the government was orchestrating his removal from the air.” Fox host and former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on The Five, “The government didn't decide it because he’s back tomorrow, so quite clearly the government didn’t force this.” Their talking point aligned with arguments that Republican politicians and Carr himself had offered about the case as they backpedaled away from its free-speech implications.

Many such cases:Fox hosts similarly made excuses when Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook over a pretext; when Trump failed to release Epstein documents as he promised; when a Democratic senator was violently removed from a Department of Homeland Security press conference; when a foreign government gifted Trump a plane valued at $400 million; when the administration sent people in error to a notorious foreign prison; and when top Trump aides discussed plans for military strikes in an unsecured text chain — and inadvertently included a journalist in the group.

### Fox aided Trump advisor caught in bribery scandal

What happened: MSNBC and other news outlets reported over the weekend that the FBI had recorded White House border czar Tom Homan accepting a bag of cash from undercover agents in September 2024 as part of a corruption investigation, and that the probe was subsequently scuttled by Trump law enforcement appointees. Homan, at the time a Fox contributor and a close Trump adviser pegged for a key administration role on immigration if Trump were elected, had reportedly indicated to the agents that he could help them win government contracts. In statements, top officials from the FBI, DOJ, and White House claimed the probe had not uncovered evidence of illegal activity — but notably did not deny that Homan had been recorded taking a bag of cash from undercover agents.

Fox’s response: Fox hosts regularly provide administration officials and other appointees an opportunity to field friendly questions that help them spin damaging stories. Ingraham gave Homan that treatment on Monday. After offering him softball questions about a new California law banning ICE agents from wearing masks and how the administration can “speed up” mass deportations, she asked him to respond to the story from “our always reliable MSNBC” that “you took $50,000 in cash in a bag from an undercover FBI agent to help them win government contracts in Trump's second term.” In his minute-long response, Homan denounced the “hit piece,” claimed that “nothing illegal happened,” and touted his own “sacrifices” and work for the president — but notably did not deny taking the bag of money. For her part, Ingraham let Homan ramble and ended the interview rather than asking a follow-up question to clarify that point.

Many such cases: Fox hosts similarly aided Kennedy after he purged top leaders from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Hegseth after he shared attack plans over an unsecured text chain.

### Fox cheered Trump pushing unproven Tylenol-autism link

What happened:Researchers have found that autism is largely a heritable condition and that the increase in cases over the years is due primarily to a broadening of the diagnostic criteria. But at a Monday event at the White House, Trump, Kennedy, and other top health aides “launched a broad offensive against the mainstream understanding of autism, claiming without new evidence that acetaminophen — the active ingredient in the common pain reliever Tylenol — was a cause of the disorder,” as The New York Times put it. Health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, previously called such evidence inconclusive, and the drug is “considered one of the few safe options to treat pain or fever during pregnancy.”

Fox’s response: Ingraham on Monday touted the administration for “sounding the alarm” over a link between Tylenol and autism in response to how “the number of children with autism has spiked unbelievably over the last number of years.” She then hosted Trump health officials Mehmet Oz and Marty Makary to tout the “growing body of evidence” in support of the administration’s position and to denounce contrary findings as “false.” Watters likewise highlighted the White House’s “major medical bombshell” before turning to another Trump health official, Jay Bhattacharya, to praise the administration for supporting “prudent medicine” and providing a “judicious evaluation” of the evidence.

Many such cases: Fox hosts similarly cheered after Bondi reportedly ordered federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury probe into various Obama administration figures on spurious grounds; Trump ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear targets; the president enacted various unilateral tariff shifts; and the Trump administration implemented a mass purge of FBI agents.

MMA //

### The Trumpist media is demanding politicized justice

06/14/23 1:24 PM EDT

### Jimmy Kimmel and the MAGA strong-arming of American media

09/18/25 12:00 PM EDT

### Fox averts its eyes from former employee Homan reportedly receiving a bag of cash

09/22/25

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swedenborg new church nyc wife?

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an 8 25

Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, disparaged “able-bodied” Medicaid recipients, alleging they spend hours each day watching television or engaging in other “leisure-time” activities instead of pursuing what he called their God-given desire to change the world. He asked why anyone would question the government would not want to get people to be wealthy.

The vast majority of “able-bodied” people who use Medicaid, a government safety net medical insurance program that does not provide income to recipients, are already working at least one job. In the majority of families that use Medicaid, at least one adult is working a full-time job. The majority of Medicaid users are children, people living with disabilities, or the elderly, who are unable to work.

“You want people to actually get out of their homes and go do things,” Administrator Oz told CNBC on Thursday (video below). “An able-bodied person on Medicaid today watches about 6.1 hours of television, or just hangs out — leisure time.”

“That’s a lot of time,” Oz insisted, claiming his data is sound.

IFrame Content

“No one’s gonna be happy sitting at home 6.1 hours a day doing nothing,” he insisted.

“Your desire to go out and do something, to change the world, is given to you by God, the moment you’re born,” Oz proclaimed. “We want people to go out there and live their fullest lives, so asking people to go out and either volunteer at a position, get educated, get engaged with your community, or go get a job, and we’re gonna help you do that.”

Complaining about critics, some of whom say the new work requirements are counter-productive or designed to kick people out of Medicaid, Oz retorted, “I don’t understand how you could possibly say, that’s a bad thing for America, for us, not to want to get people to be wealthy, to go out there and change their own lives for the better.”

Last month, Dr. Oz declared that the Trump administration will no longer “tolerate” what he called a culture that makes it “easy to be sick in America.” Framing childhood illness as a failure of parenting and physical activity rather than medical need, Oz linked obesity to national security and warned that industries would be forced to cooperate—or face government retaliation.

Critics blasted Dr. Oz’s remarks.

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AN 6 25

Dr. Oz — who has $200 million — says Americans must 'earn the right' to be on Medicaid

David Badash

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PRETENDS TO KNOW/CARE ABOUT SCIENCE?!

an 6 25

If you think viruses are fake, chemtrails are real and public health is a conspiracy, you’re probably up in arms about four hundred potentially diseased Canadian ostriches.

Federal inspectors are poised to euthanize the flock to contain a novel strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) that killed 69 ostriches on a remote farm in Edgewood, British Columbia.

After losing their court case to save the flock, the owners of Universal Ostrich Farms invited the dregs of the antigovernment antivax trucker convoy that paralyzed Ottawa to surround the premises to stop the cull.

The fate of the ostriches has become a cause célèbre in rightwing media. We didn’t hear a peep out of maga when Trump declared open season on migratory birds, but every self-respecting antivaxer is an ostrich fancier now. In keeping with their philosophy of governance by trolling, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and his wingman Dr. Mehmet Oz are stirring the pot.

Oz offered to adopt the enormous flightless birds and bring them to live on his 900-acre Florida estate because, apparently, we don’t have enough bird flu at home. “The Canadians should stop putting their heads in the sand,” he said, indulging in a little light colonialism. “We just have to get [the ostriches] out of Canada.”

IFrame Content

After initially rejecting the offer, a spokesperson said the farmers would consider it as a last resort. Oz’s grandiose gesture coincided with HHS’s abrupt cancellation of a $766 million contract with Moderna to finish testing a promising mRNA bird flu vaccine.

“I think this is an incredibly stupid idea,” said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. Oz is pitching the move as an opportunity to study the effects of bird flu in ostriches, but Rasmussen sees zero scientific value in his plan because “[t]here are no controls, no baseline immunological data, no testing, and no clear experimental objective.”

The birds wouldn’t pose an imminent threat to the health of Americans, Rasmussen says, but they would pose a risk to Oz’s employees and the birds could also spread the virus to wild birds and animals in Florida.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza can be lethal to people. Currently, the virus does not spread readily between humans, but if it mutated, experts say, it could cause a pandemic several times deadlier than covid.

The farm’s owners insist that their birds are healthy, but they actually have no way of knowing. Ostriches can be asymptomatic carriers of the virus, Rasmussen warns. The birds could be passing the bug around like the world’s tallest kindergarten class.

The longer the virus circulates, the more opportunities it has to mutate into something more dangerous. Experts fear that someday, somewhere in some innocent-looking duck or chicken or ostrich, the virus will mutate into a human-to-human transmissible variant. It’s a numbers game. That’s one reason why the Canadian authorities stamp out HPAI wherever they find it. Nobody wants to be responsible for Ostrich Zero. Another reason is that Canada is bound by trade agreements to stamp out HPAI and British Columbia poultry farmers are locked out of key export markets until the flock is culled. Finally, stamp-out is the law in Canada and the courts have found no basis to overrule CFIA.

Showing no awareness that Canada is a sovereign nation with laws, treaty obligations, and a justice system, Kennedy tried to browbeat the head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) into sparing the birds. Because “my fans love ostriches and hate the government” isn’t a persuasive argument, Kennedy insinuated that Universal Ostrich is actually an elite biomedical research outfit probing the mysteries of bird flu. The birds should be spared, he argued, because the flock is in a controlled environment where it can be studied.

However, court records paint a picture of a decidedly uncontrolled environment on an ordinary farm with lax biosecurity. The owners have produced no evidence to CFIA that any research is taking place on the premises and in the agency’s opinion, “the current physical facilities at their location are not suitable for controlled research activities or trials.” The farm has also been fined $20,000 by CFIA for failing to report the outbreak and failing to follow quarantine procedures. This lackadaisical attitude is particularly alarming because the farm is on the great Pacific Flyway, a river of migratory birds that runs from Patagonia to Alaska and is a major conduit for novel strains of bird flu. The ostriches live in giant outdoor pens that bring them into direct contact with wild birds.

To add insult to injury, the owners have invited strangers from all across the country to commune with the birds, creating even more opportunities to spread the virus. Rasmussen notes that “the avian freedom fighters of the True North are not abiding by quarantine protocols and are in the pens with the ostriches.”

Luckily, the Canadians don’t take our overexcitable Secretary of Health and Human Services any more seriously than we do. Asked about Kennedy’s pressure campaign, Canadian Minister of Agriculture Heath MacDonald said he didn’t think it was appropriate for Canadians to make major decisions based on social media. CFIA says it is still planning to euthanize the birds.

A normal HHS secretary might have qualms about egging on antigovernment protesters on friendly foreign soil, but not Kennedy. Dozens of protesters have been gathered at the farm for weeks and additional reinforcements rolled in recently. The atmosphere is festive with merch, live music and plenty of drumming for the ostriches.

However, if protesters tried to resist federal agents, the situation could devolve into another standoff like we saw at the Bundy ranch, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and the siege of Ottawa. In the winter of 2022, a convoy of antivax truckers laid siege to Canada’s capital city for three weeks. As a private citizen, Kennedy supported the convoy financially and assailed the Canadian government as “a monster” for freezing the occupiers’ bank accounts.

The Universal Ostrich conflict is unique because instead of protesting the containment of an existing pandemic, these extremists might be causing the next one. By offering to import the birds and killing the most promising bird flu vaccine, Kennedy and Oz are only too eager to help.

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an 6 25

Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s Administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is facing sharp criticism after suggesting that the more than ten million people projected to lose their healthcare under the current Republican budget bill do not matter.

The legislation as written requires that many Medicaid users work and provide documentation that they have worked at least 80 hours each month, or be kicked off the critical safety net. Many Republicans have been suggesting Medicaid users are intentionally not working so they can collect federal government benefits like Medicaid. But many Medicaid users do work, and many cannot find jobs.

“Go out there, do the entry-level jobs, get into the workforce. Prove that you matter, get agency into your own life,” Dr. Oz, the former television talk show host and promoter of allegedly questionable health supplements and other products, told Fox Business.

“It’s a much more enjoyable experience if you’re going through a life thinking that you control your destiny, and you’ll get better insurance at the same time,” he claimed.

IFrame Content

Nearly half of employers—about 46%—do not offer health insurance at all. Most exclude part-time workers from coverage. Gig workers typically receive no health benefits through their jobs. And many seasonal workers struggle to meet the monthly hour thresholds needed to remain eligible for Medicaid.

The Hill also reported that Dr. Oz said to people not willing to go back to work, volunteer, or take care of a loved one, “we are going to ask you to do something else. Go on the exchange, or get a job and get onto regular commercial insurance. But we are not going to continue to pay for Medicaid for those audiences.”

Critics blasted Oz.

“When asked about Medicaid cuts, the literal head of the federal agency overseeing Medicaid had this to say: ‘Prove that you matter.’ Absolutely incredible,” remarked Andrea Ducas, Vice President of health policy at the Center for American Progress.

“Health care isn’t a prize for being productive. It’s a right. And 16 million people could lose it if this bill passes,” warned the nonprofit Protect Our Care.

“Dr. Oz, who spent his career hawking colloidal silver as a cure-all, tells Medicaid recipients to ‘prove that you matter’ if they want health care,” charged Alexandra De Luca, vice president of communications at the liberal super PAC American Bridge.

Watch the video belowor at this link.

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an 3 25

The watchdog group Public Citizen on Tuesday released a research brief about the hundreds of millions of dollars Medicare Advantage companies have spent on lobbying ahead of a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Oz, a heart surgeon and former television host, is President Donald Trump's nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS)—an agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is led by conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Health experts and others have sounded the alarm about Oz since Trump announceded his nomination in November, with many opponents highlighting the doctor's investments in companies with direct CMS interests and his push to expand Medicare Advantage when he unsuccessfully ran as a Republican to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate in 2022.

Medicare Advantage is a type of CMS-approved health insurance plan from a private company that seniors can choose for medical coverage instead of government-administered Medicare. Critics often call it a "profit-seeking healthcare scam."

Public Citizen's brief points out that last year, "more than half of all seniors eligible for Medicare were enrolled" in these private plans that "cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and deliver inferior care compared to traditional Medicare."

"Since their inception in 2003, Medicare Advantage plans are estimated to have cost taxpayers more than $600 billion in overpayments," the document notes. "These overpayments are expected to grow to $1 trillion over the next decade."

"Just seven companies account for 84% of all Medicare Advantage enrollment," the brief continues. "While lobbying disclosures do not reveal how much is spent on a single issue, disclosures reveal that these seven companies spent more than $330 million combined lobbying on all issues over the last five years, according to data from OpenSecrets."

Those companies are UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, CVS Health, Kaiser, Centene, and Cigna.

Public Citizen found that in 2024, they collectively had 328 lobbyists targeting the federal government, with nearly 70% of them specifically working on Medicare Advantage. Blue Cross had the most lobbyists focused on such plans (99), followed by Humana (33) and UnitedHealth Group (27).

"If Oz is confirmed as the CMS administrator, attacks on traditional Medicare are likely to move into overdrive," Eagan Kemp, a healthcare policy advocate at Public Citizen, warned in a Tuesday statement. "We should strengthen Medicare by improving it and expanding access to it, not weaken it through further privatization."

The Senate Committee on Finance is set to consider Oz on Friday morning. Since Trump returned to the White House in January, the GOP-controlled chamber hasn't blocked any of his nominees.

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an 1 25

Trump Medicare pick Dr. Oz says uninsured 'don’t have right to health' in resurfaced clip

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YIKES SEE MEDICARE ADVANTAGE PVT bs

New Biden rule would rein in Medicare Advantage — but will Dr. Oz let it stand?

Jake Johnson Common Dreams

an 12 24

===

mma

Fox guests and medical contributors encouraged Trump's worst COVID impulses. Now they're running the show.

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 11/26/24 mma

Then-President Donald Trump repeatedly favored the Fox News hosts and guests he saw on his television screen over federal health policy experts as he managed the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and it had calamitous consequences. He's going even further as he prepares for his second term, picking familiar faces from the right-wing propaganda network to run the government health bureaucracy.

Trump, a Fox obsessive, staffed his first administration with at least 20 former Fox personalities, and he continues to rely on that method as he stocks his second one. But the network’s dominance among Trump’s announced picks to carry out his second-term health policy is nonetheless striking.

Anti-vaccine activist and Fox hero Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will lead the Department of Health and Human Services. He will potentially oversee former Fox contributor Dr. Marty Makary at the Food and Drug Administration, Fox medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as U.S. surgeon general, and frequent Fox guests Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Mehmet Oz at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (Bhattacharya has not been formally announced but is reportedly the top pick for the position.)

These picks, to an extent, show Trump aligning his health policy hires with his own Fox-molded views.

As president during the pandemic, he clashed with his official advisers when they contradicted what he was hearing from Fox personalities. The result was often chaos in decision-making, implementation, and public messaging.

Makary, Bhattacharya, Oz, and Nesheiwat received regular Fox airtime because on issues like the use of untested drugs such as hydroxychloroquine or nonpharmaceutical interventions like office and school closures, they tended to hew close to the Fox line — which also became the Trump line. If another pandemic hits, it is possible that they will be able to mitigate Trump’s worst impulses; they have real medical credentials, and Trump is likely to have greater confidence in them due to their shared past views.

But while Trump’s promotion of COVID-19 vaccines through Operation Warp Speed was an unalloyed triumph in his first term, Kennedy is a crank who was openly hostile to the drugs. And other members of the second-term team regularly went on Fox to warn about the purported health impacts of the vaccines and criticize mandates to ensure their use. That does not bode well for the prospect of a successful response should another pandemic hit during the next four years.

RFK Jr. at HHS is a Fox-fueled disaster for health policy

Fox hosts and other right-wing media figures like Tucker Carlson spent 18 months irresponsibly championing Kennedy as part of a strategy to return Trump to the White House. The network regularly promoted him as a Democratic candidate, then showered him with praise and vouched for his health views after Carlson ensured that he endorsed Trump.

The result is that Kennedy — who has pushed debunked claims about childhood vaccination causing autism, questioned the well-established science over whether HIV actually causes AIDS, and promoted kooky conspiracy theories about 5G cellular towers and chemtrails — is Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kennedy was among the biggest U.S. sources of anti-vaccine misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic, terming the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Other noted anti-vaccine figures and fringe crackpots claim to be advising him on the transition.

He also suggested that the pandemic may have been “planned,” that public health efforts taken in response constituted “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare,” and that the virus itself had been “ethnically targeted” to afflict “Caucasians and Black people” while sparing “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."

### Trump picked other people he saw on Fox to run health agencies

Several other Trump picks for top health posts were heavily featured during the Fox’s coronavirus coverage.

Oz, the television personality and grifter Trump selected to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, became a Fox regular in 2020. He made scores of network appearances at the start of the pandemic, particularly championing hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that right-wing media figures promoted as a treatment for or preventative to COVID.

Oz’s commentary attracted the attention of Trump, who reportedly urged aides to consult with the TV doctor about the outbreak. Oz subsequently ran for the U.S. Senate with the support of Fox star and Trump adviser Sean Hannity, but he came up short in the 2022 midterms.

Makary, Nesheiwat, and Bhattacharya also seemingly became Fox regulars because of their willingness to contradict COVID-19 guidance from federal public health agencies on its airwaves.

FDA selection Makary — who argued in a February 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed that the U.S. would reach “herd Immunity by April” — used his Fox platform in the months leading up to the emergence of the deadly delta variant to criticize public health officials for warning of new strains of the virus. He also criticized vaccine mandates, particularly for children, citing the vaccine’s purported health risks.

Reported NIH pick Bhattacharya — a signatory of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which called for building up herd immunity through “natural infection” — likewise used his time in Fox’s spotlight to criticize vaccine mandates. He agreed with Fox host Laura Ingraham during an August 2021 segment that the FDA approved COVID-19 vaccines “too fast,” saying, “The FDA approval does not change the fact that we don't have long-term safety data with the vaccine."

And Nesheiwat, the Fox medical contributor Trump selected as surgeon general, promoted the use of supplemental zinc as a COVID-19 treatment and repeatedly highlighted the purported health risks of vaccination for children and young men.

Their commentary was part of a massive and effective effort by Fox to undermine the COVID-19 vaccination program. Now, if confirmed, they will be running major federal health bureaucracies.

### The last pandemic — and the next one

Trump regularly leaned on Fox’s programming and personalities for advice, and the network shaped both his worldview and his administration’s actions. No event demonstrated the extent of the network’s influence more than his response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump didn’t treat COVID’s initial spread as an emergency because Fox was telling him that the media and Democrats were deliberately exaggerating the danger it posed.

He propped up hydroxychloroquine because the network told him it could be a miracle cure, refused to wear masks or socially distance because its hosts said those interventions didn’t work, and then urged the swift reopening of the economy they demanded.

He cut off support to the World Health Organization because one of Fox's stars suggested it and selected a White House adviser from the network’s green room to implement a “herd immunity” strategy.

The result was mass death.

The saving grace of the Trump pandemic response was Operation Warp Speed, an innovative program that sped the development of safe, effective vaccines against the virus. But Trump was out of office by the time the vaccines were deployed, and Fox responded with a yearslong campaign against the drugs. Fox regulars like Makary, Nesheiwat, and Bhattacharya pitched in by criticizing the safety of the vaccines or mandates for their use.

The four doctors Trump picked from Fox’s airwaves do have real medical credentials, and their selections have received some praise from public health experts.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist, said Nesheiwat is “a good appointment,” describing her as “very smart, thoughtful, interested in learning.”

Dr. Ashish Jha, who served in President Joe Biden’s White House, called the appointments of Makary, Oz, and Bhattacharya “pretty reasonable,” adding: “I have plenty of policy disagreements with them. They are smart and experienced. We will need them to do well.”

Indeed, they may take office as H5N1 bird flu spreads in American livestock and from livestock to people. If that virus makes the jump to human-to-human transmission, the U.S. health bureaucracy will be forced to grapple with another deadly pandemic.

Focusing specifically on Bhattacharya, Slow Boring’s Matt Yglesias offered the best-case scenario for how Trump’s health appointees could impact a pandemic response:

Bhattacharya’s criticisms of nonpharmaceutical intervetions during 2020 went further than I would have, and I don’t agree with him per se. That said, he is well-credentialed and smart and also aligned with Trump on the substantive question.

Four years ago, Trump had a lot of people in place who he didn’t have confidence in and didn’t listen to, and then he had a lot of unqualified people articulating his views.

Bhattacharya can do what an executive branch official is supposed to do and channel Trump-style views in a professional way.

What’s more, precisely because his anti-NPI credentials are unimpeachable, if a much deadlier virus comes around that shifts Trump’s sense of the cost-benefit balance, he would be the right person to deliver that message.

But as he further notes, “the most effective weapon against Covid was pharmaceutical interventions” — and in Kennedy, Trump has selected “an anti-vaccine crank” as Bhattacharya’s boss.

That means things could get bad fast.

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11 24 an

TV’s Dr. Oz invested in businesses regulated by agency Trump wants him to lead

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comm dr 10 22 an

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the state's Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, warned that Republican nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz is working with numerous people who pose "a direct threat to our American democracy" and demanded that he fire his staffers recently exposed as supporters of the January 6 insurrection.

Rolling Stonereportedon Sunday that at least two people working on Oz's campaign attended the rally former President Donald Trump held in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 before thousands of his supporters waged an attack on the U.S. Capitol and tried to stop lawmakers from certifying the 2020 election results.

"It really says a lot about Dr. Oz that he's hired people who want to quite literally overthrow American democracy," tweeted Fetterman on Monday.

[twt]

lee Snover, a campaign coordinator for Oz, was among the Trump supporters who marched to the Capitol after the so-called "Stop the Steal" rally. She also participated in a Zoom call four days before the insurrection about the Trump campaign's plans for "decertifying" election results in swing states and called for state legislators to push then-Vice President Mike Pence to interfere with the counting of electoral votes.

Political adviser Josh Bashline was also profiled byRolling Stone, which reported that he attended the "Stop the Steal" rally.

"Dr. Oz and his disgustingly radical campaign must fire these insurrectionist staffers immediately," saidJoe Calvello, a spokesperson for Fetterman.

The news regarding Oz's campaign staff is just the latest evidence that the celebrity doctor supports Trump's continued baseless claims that he was the true winner of the 2020 election.

Oz said in April that "we cannot move on" from the election and he supports the gubernatorial campaign of Doug Mastriano, who organized buses to Washington, D.C. for the January 6 rally and whose campaign event Oz attended over the weekend.

Along with members of Oz's staff, a consultant for his campaign, Larry Weitzner, told a former supporter of the Republican candidate that Oz was not "an election denier" even as Weitzner promoted the false claim that fraud had taken place during voting.

"He is not denying the [2020] election," Weitzner texted Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, before adding, "Massive difference between saying their [sic] was fraud, which most Republican officials and voters believe as well as real evidence, [versus] saying the election was stolen or denying Biden won."

As Rolling Stonereported, Weitzner was among the Trump allies who received an email from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on December 8, 2020, which read, "The goal is to arouse the country's anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before... If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger, they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors."

In recent weeks, Fetterman has taken aim at Oz's claim that"local political leaders"should have a say in whether people can legally obtain abortion care and hislong history of promoting unproven and dangerous wellness products on TV, and demanded he disavow Trump's plans to sow doubt about the integrity of the Pennsylvania election on November 8.

"Whether it's with his abortion views on the debate stage or with his employment of multiple insurrectionists," said Calvello. "Oz's extremism is on full display in the campaign's final week."

A pollreleased by the New York Times/Siena College on Monday showed49% of likely Pennsylvania voters currently plan to support Fetterman while 44% are backing Oz.

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dirty trick?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/john-fetterman-consequence-free-stigma/

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// hayes

Fox News’ prime-time shows are fixated on Pennsylvania’s Senate race as the post-Labor Day sprint to the midterm elections gets underway. The programs mentioned Democratic nominee John Fetterman more frequently during that period than the Democratic nominees in six other competitive Senate races combined, andRepublican nominee Mehmet Oz was referenced more than twice as many times as any of the other GOP candidates, according to a Media Matters review.

Fetterman appears to be the Democratic nominee Fox prime time hosts fear most. With their dramatic, ongoing fixation on Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, they are trying to bail out Republicans after Sean Hannity’s zealous promotion of Oz stuck the party with an unpopular nominee (Fox support was also crucial for the Republican nominees in Arizona, Georgia, and Ohio). The hosts’ deceptive attacks on Fetterman’s health and his record on crime have often aligned squarely with Oz’s campaign message.

Media Matters reviewed Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and The Ingraham Angle* from September 6 through September 27 for mentions of the names of the Republican and Democratic nominees for Senate in the seven states FiveThirtyEight identified as most competitive: Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina,** Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.

Fox personalities and guests uttered Fetterman’s name at least 120 times on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and The Ingraham Angle, Media Matters found. The Democratic nominees in the other six states combined for only 96 mentions on those programs; Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) was referenced the next most frequently, with 34.

Oz’s 48 mentions led the field among GOP candidates, with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) mentioned the next most with 19. Oz himself appeared on the programs 5 times over the period, more than any of the other Republican Senate nominees Media Matters examined.

The Pennsylvania race is the most discussed Senate election on all three programs, by sizable margins in each case. Sean Hannity, the sometime GOP political operative and adviser to Donald Trump, has given the midterm races significantly more attention than his prime-time colleagues. His broadcast has mentioned the Democratic and Republican Senate nominees a combined 171 times, compared to 79 for Laura Ingraham’s program and 73 for Tucker Carlson’s show. [grf]

the network’s stars are seemingly more interested in tearing down Democratic nominees than promoting Republican ones, with their programs referencing the former more often than the latter in every Senate race except for Wisconsin.

*Jesse Watters’ show, Jesse Watters Primetime, was not included in the study because it does not air in primetime; regardless, he devoted substantially less attention to the Senate races compared to his colleagues.

**None of the three Fox prime-time shows has mentioned the Senate nominees in North Carolina.

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blame addict

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/hes-not-from-pa-outsider/

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abortion

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/a-massive-gaffe-mehmet-oz/

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aha doh he's {reality?} TV guy

In 2022, Republicans have nominated well-knowncelebritiesrather than established politicians in three differentU.S. Senate races: Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance in Ohio, and football star Herschel Walker in Georgia.GOP strategists have been using a “these-aren’t-career-politicians” pitch to voters in all three races. But reporter Adam Gabbatt, in an article published by The Guardian on August 16, emphasizes that none of those Republicans have been performing well in recent polls.

“In Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and J.D. Vance, the Republican Party has three celebrities running for Senate in November,” Gabbatt explains. “The only problem? At the moment, each of them looks as though they might lose. Oz, a television stalwart better known as Dr. Oz to millions of Americans, is trailing his opponent in Pennsylvania by double digits. Vance, a bestselling author and conservative commentator, is behind in his race in Ohio, an increasingly red state that many expected Republicans to win. So far, the most notable point of his campaign was when Vance appeared to suggest women should stay in violent marriages.”

Gabbatt continues, “In Georgia, Walker, a former NFL running back, is running close against Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat. But Walker’s campaign has been characterized by a series of gaffes, and this week, more seriously, his ex-wife recalled in a campaign ad how he once held a gun to her head. The three men’s travails spell out a problem in selecting outsider, celebrity candidates. Each brings name recognition, but in some cases, have been unexposed to the media’s glare.”

Some polls released in late July or early August showed Georgia’s Senate race to be close. Walker was trailing the Rev. Warnock by only 3 percent in polls from Insider Advantage, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Research Affiliates, although a SurveyUSA poll showed Warnock ahead by 9 percent.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, had an 11 percent lead over Oz in a Fox News poll released in late July. And in Ohio, the Democratic nominee, Rep. Tim Ryan, was ahead of Vance by 3 percent in a late July poll conducted by Impact Research, although SurveyMoney’s polling in early August showed Ryan ahead by 11 percent. Ryan also had an 11 percent lead in a Center Street PAC poll from early August.

“The Pennsylvania Senate race is looking particularly dire for Republicans,” Gabbatt observes. “According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, John Fetterman, the Democratic lieutenant governor, holds an 11 percent lead over Oz. Among Republicans in Pennsylvania, just 35 percent say they are ‘enthusiastic’ about Oz’s candidacy, according to a Fox News poll in July, and 45 percent of Republicans say they ‘have reservations’ about the physician. Oz’s struggles are significant enough that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is considering diverting money away from Oz’s campaign ‘to seats that we feel we can win,’ Politico reported in July — a dramatic move given the Senate seat was previously held by a Republican.”

The Republican senator Gabbatt is referring to is Pat Toomey. Although arch-conservative, Toomey infuriated MAGA Republicans when he voted “guilty” in former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate in 2021 — and the two-term senator decided not to seek a third term in 2022.

If Fetterman defeats Oz in November, Democrats will be flipping a U.S. Senate seat that has been mostly in Republican hands for decades. Before Toomey, the seat was held by the late Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican who got along well with Pennsylvania Democrats like former Pennsylvania Gov./ex-Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell and Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. Near the end of his life, Specter became a Democrat, but he spent most of his years in the Senate as a Republican.

Presently, there is a 50/50 split in the U.S. Senate — 50 Democrats or allies of Democrats like independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and 50 Republicans — with Vice President Kamala Harris able to cast a tie-breaking vote. If Democrats are able to maintain all of the Senate seats they presently hold but flip the seats in Pennsylvania and Ohio, they would slightly increase their narrow majority but would still have to contend with the 60-vote requirement of the filibuster.

---

took farm subsidy?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/john-fetterman-dr-oz-fraud/

---

~ Fetterman

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-ramping-its-campaign-against-pennsylvania-democratic-senate-nominee-john

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an 8 22

A political action committee has put seven figures behind a campaign to call out Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz for his rumored ties to New Jersey.

According to The Hill, End Citizens United's $2 million advertisement is scheduled to air August 2 - 13 on television broadcasts, multiple cable networks, and streaming platforms in the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg, Penn. areas.

In the political ad, Oz —who is mockingly called "Jersey Oz— is being accused of "taking money from the pharmaceutical industry," the news outlet reports.

In a statement to The Hill, Tiffany Muller, president of the political action committee, offered details about the campaign. “Mehmet Oz is as New Jersey as listening to Bruce Springsteen while driving on the parkway to go down to the shore. That’s exactly why he’s out-of-touch with hardworking Pennsylvanians,” Muller said in her statement.

The End Citizen's United ad is the latest to air attacking Oz. A number of other Democrats, including Pennsylvania's Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman, have aimed to portray the New Jersey-born doctor as a carpetbagger.

Per The Hill, Fetterman has repeatedly mocked Oz over the issue and even flew an airplane banner along the beaches in South Beach. The banner read, “'HEY DR. OZ, WELCOME HOME TO NJ! ❤ JOHN' and enlisting the help of former 'Jersey Shore' cast member Nicole 'Snooki' LaValle.'"

However, Oz's campaign team has released a statement criticizing Fetterman's political tactics.

“Dr. Oz is busy criss-crossing the commonwealth and meeting with voters hearing how crime and inflation is impacting their lives, while John Fetterman is sitting behind his computer screen from his basement bunker refusing to meet with Pennsylvanians,” said Brittany Yanick, a spokesperson for the Oz campaign.

While the upcoming Pennsylvania Senate race is expected to be close, the RealClearPolitics polling average still projects Fetterman leading by approximately 8.7 points.

Watch the ad below or at this link.

:{:{}:

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an 7 22

Republican candidates and lawmakers are facing great challenges in the areas of campaign fundraising. A new analysis is explaining how they are being out-fundraised by their Democratic counterparts. According to Axios' Lachlan Markay, the biggest financial difference centers on grassroots contributions.

Lachlan explained the bigger picture writing, "Inflation, Trump-induced donor fatigue, and other factors are impacting the GOP grassroots, prompting Republican candidates to rely more heavily on high-dollar donors."

However, while the average Republican candidate is facing challenges securing small-dollar donations, Lachlan noted the one Republican who isn't having that problem. He noted that former President Donald Trump is "seeing huge small-dollar fundraising success" and "has hoovered up more than $60 million from under-$200 donors this cycle."

But, unfortunately for the Republican Party, Trump's massive haul isn't much of a benefit for the political party, collectively. Adding to that, he still isn't an official political candidate for any upcoming election. According to the report, only one Republican lawmaker is having substantial success with small-dollar donations: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.)

So what's holding the Republican Party's campaign fundraising together? "High-dollar donors," according to Lachlan, are still their driving force.

"The GOP's high-dollar donors are keeping the money race competitive," he wrote. "And Republicans' national party committees are breaking fundraising records."

He noted, "Super PACs backing candidates such as Ohio's J.D. Vance and Arizona's Blake Masters are making up for some fundraising shortfalls. Others, such as Pennsylvania'sMehmet Oz, are pouring millions into their own campaigns."

The top Republican super PACs are "the Senate Leadership Fund and the Congressional Leadership Fund"as they are "both out-raising their Democratic counterparts by substantial margins."

Lachlan concluded, "The GOP's fundraising problems — in addition to the elevation of flawed or extreme candidates — are contributing to fears of a Senate debacle in what should be a favorable political environment for Republicans."

---

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/dr-oz-declares-himself-a-police-surgeon-in-performative-campaign-video/

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/mehmet-oz-has-gone-dark/

===

---

post primary pivot? post jan 6 #5 beast hearing

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/dr-oz-general-election-rebrand/

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an ah 4 22

The GOP’s authoritarian MAGA insanity isn’t getting better — and it won’t: conservative

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia speaking at the 2021 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona on December 19, 2021, Gage Skidmore]

Alex Henderson April 29, 2022

In an April 28 column for the conservative website The Bulwark, Never Trump pundit Tim Miller reviews the new Jonathan Martin/Alexander Burns book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.” Miller’s disturbing takeaway: the far-right MAGA extremism that has overtaken the Republican Party — which Miller was once a member of — isn’t going away. And it won’t.

“So, I’ve been paging through ‘This Will Not Pass’, the book by my pal Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns,” explains Miller, a one-time aide to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. “And for all the SHOCKING REVEALS — with audio! — about Kevin’s cowardice, Mitch’s cravenness, and Kamala’s ennui, the thing that keeps striking me throughout is that none of the ostensible political professionals being profiled seems to understand the reality of the political situation they find themselves in.”

Miller continues, “By January 6th, (2021), Trump had been the number one story in politics for five years, upending all the conventional wisdom that came before. He was in the middle of an extended, multi-pronged effort to undermine our democracy. It may have been boobish, but it captured the imaginations of tens of millions of Americans. Yet most of the characters in ‘This Will Not Pass’ act as if they are caught up in some 24-hour fever that will subside with liquids and a good night’s rest.”

The Kevin, Mitch and Kamala that Miller is referring to are, of course, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Kamala Harris.

A “good night’s rest,” Miller emphasizes, isn’t going to cure the political sickness that ails the United States in 2022. Liberal democracy, according to Miller, continues to face a dire threat in the U.S. from the MAGA far right — and pundits and politicians who believe the GOP will return to traditional old-school conservatism are being hopelessly naïve.

“You fucking idiots. You maroons,” Miller writes with obvious frustration. “You really thought all this — waves hands — was over? That you were going to be let off that easy? That bipartisanship was coming back to Washington? That the radicals who stormed the Capitol wouldn’t get their dander up over Joe Biden? That the Republicans were going to bring back some old-timey comity?”

To illustrate his point, Miller points to a video from the Republican Accountability Project — an anti-Trump conservative group — that shows Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, and other GOP candidates expressing their unwavering devotion to Trump:

Miller laments that Republicans who have the courage to stand up and publicly call for Trump to be excised from the Republican Party — for example, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — are few and far between.

“Here is a reality check,” Miller warns. “This will not pass because people in power refuse to take on the risk required to force change. Some days, it seems like the only one who gets this is Liz Cheney. And that’s why, in the book, Kevin McCarthy’s bestie Jeff Miller is quoted as saying ‘Fuck that bitch.’ Because anyone who shows actual courage and bursts the comfortable bubble where these Republicans tell themselves that things might magically get better if they just keep on doing the same shit they’ve been doing for seven years must be debased, degraded, and expelled from the club.”

---

politico

no lnx

dr. Mehmet Oz has won the race for Donald Trump’s coveted endorsement in Pennsylvania’s Senate GOP primary.

In a key contest in the battle for the Senate majority this fall, the former president announced Saturday that he is backing Oz, praising the celebrity television doctor in a statement as “Pro-Life, very strong on Crime, the Border, Election Fraud, our Great Military, and our Vets, Tax Cuts, and will always fight for and support our under-siege Second Amendment.”

POLITICO previously reported that he had been leaning toward Oz, according to three people familiar with Trump’s thinking, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Trump recently met with both Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick in Mar-a-Lago and talked with multiple people about the GOP primary.

McCormick and Oz, as well as their allies, had been locked in a battle for months over Trump’s nod. With his loyal base and unparalleled popularity among Republican voters, Trump’s decision to pick Oz could have a significant impact on the contest. But Oz’s success or failure at the polls will also be closely watched as a test of Trump’s own hold on the party ahead of the 2024 presidential election, particularly since some of his candidates have faced challenges this year.

In Pennsylvania, Trump initially endorsed Sean Parnell for the Senate seat before Parnell dropped out amid claims of abuse from his estranged wife.

The choice between Oz and McCormick was even more fraught for the former president because Trumpworld is divided over the two front-running candidates. Some of Trump’s allies have strong opinions on the primary in Pennsylvania, and he risks upsetting friends in choosing Oz, just as he would have had he backed McCormick.

Jim Worthington, a Pennsylvania Republican appointed by Trump to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition, along with Oz, told POLITICO earlier this week that he’d spoken with Trump about Oz on several occasions, including most recently Sunday afternoon at Mar-a-Lago.

“I can tell you the president is definitely fond of Oz, for sure,” he said.

Oz and his wife, Lisa, had dinner with the former president and Melania Trump on March 16, a meal at Mar-a-Lago that lasted several hours, according to a person aware of the meeting.

Three days later, while speaking to an American Freedom Tour crowd in Ft. Lauderdale, Trump brought up the Pennsylvania Senate race and mentioned the celebrity television doctor.

“Does anybody like Dr. Oz?” Trump asked the crowd gathered in Florida, receiving cheers and applause.

But other Trump allies are using their platforms to criticize Oz.

Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist to Trump, ripped into Oz on his podcast recently: “How does Dr. Oz, probably the most anti-MAGA guy, and you got Fox nonstop pimping this guy out and Newsmax pimping this guy out, and that’s what it is — how does Dr. Oz, from New Jersey, [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s buddy, floating in from Jersey, how does he become a factor in a Senate race in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania?”

Jack Posobiec, a far-right personality who was a guest on Bannon’s show at the time, responded: “This guy wasn’t around in 2020, and he certainly wasn’t around in 2016. But suddenly he found his road to Damascus conversion, and he’s been this conservative in hiding the entire time? Wow, that’s news I think to everybody else in the entire movement.”

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As host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” Oz in 2016 had then-candidate Trump onto his program to conduct a health check-up, a decision criticized by some as a political stunt and a favor to Trump, who received a mostly positive report.

In his statement endorsing Oz, Trump said, “He even said that I was in extraordinary health, which made me like him even more (although he also said I should lose a couple of pounds!).”

McCormick and Trump met at Mar-a-Lago this past week for an hour, and had a “very productive” meeting that touched on his fundraising, polling and ads, according to a person familiar with their talk. Rob Gleason, a McCormick supporter and former chair of Pennsylvania’s Republican Party, also met recently with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, a source said.

Dina Powell, McCormick’s wife, served as Trump’s deputy national security adviser. McCormick also hired former Trump White House staffers Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller, and ex-Trump campaign adviser David Urban and Trump White House lawyer Jim Schultz helped McCormick launch his Senate bid.

On Oz’s side are Fox News host Sean Hannity and casino mogul Steve Wynn, who both actively lobbied for Trump to endorse the celebrity doctor, according to people familiar with their efforts. And, perhaps most notably, Melania Trump is a supporter of Oz in the Senate race.

A person close to Trump, discussing the former president’s thinking on the Pennsylvania endorsement, noted a phrase that Trump has often repeated when talking about Oz: “He’s been on TV in people’s bedrooms and living rooms for years.”

Trump at times has used a variation of that phrase, emphasizing in conversations that Oz has “been in women’s bedrooms” for years as they watched his daytime television program, something Trump believes would help Oz win suburban voters.

“There’s a certain level of trust usually associated with that,” the person said of Oz’s TV career. “Something the president understands intimately because it was key to his rise.”

Melania Trump’s support for Oz “reinforces that belief and the value of those intangibles” that a celebrity like Oz has, despite McCormick “in some ways being the more impressive candidate,” according to the person.

Conservative commentator John Fredericks, a Trump friend who served as his Virginia campaign chair in 2016 and 2020, had the former president on his radio show Wednesday. Fredericks, who met Oz at CPAC in February and just endorsed him, opened the interview with a question about whether Oz is a “MAGA candidate.”

“He’s a good man, too,” Trump said, describing his positive experience appearing on Oz’s television show for a health check-up during the 2016 election.

“He’s a high-quality guy, he is,” Trump continued. “I’ll be making a decision on that one.” Trump said a decision would come “maybe fairly soon.”

In an interview, Fredericks declined to provide details on any private conversations he had with Trump ahead of their talk.

Before Trump’s announcement, Fredericks said that Trump’s decision would be based on “what’s best for the country” and which candidate was most closely aligned with “America First policies,” before ripping into McCormick for his work as a hedge fund executive and his ties to the George W. Bush administration. McCormick served as under secretary in Bush’s Department of Treasury.

“It’s understandable that Trump views Oz’s name ID and celebrity status as positive attributes since he launched his 2016 presidential campaign in the same way,” said a former Trump campaign aide. “However, the major difference is that no candidate, especially one like Oz with an extensive anti-MAGA track record, will be able to galvanize grassroots voters like Trump has done in epic fashion.”

“President Trump’s continued popularity across Pennsylvania is undeniable, and Dave is proud to be aligned with his America First agenda,” said McCormick spokesperson Jess Szymanski.

With the primary contest still unsettled, Trump’s decision to endorse is a potential risk.

While Oz started the primary with a clear lead and officially announced his candidacy a month and a half ahead of McCormick, several surveys show the dynamics of the race have since changed.

An early March Fox News poll had McCormick winning 24 percent and Oz at 15 percent, but another recent poll found a dead heat.

Jim McLaughlin, McCormick’s pollster, said the campaign’s latest internal poll found the former business executive at about 25 percent and Oz at 14 percent. He also said Oz has an unfavorable rating of 51 percent.

“Republican primary voters in Pennsylvania have totally seen through him. They understand he’s not a Pennsylvania conservative,” he said. “You ask them, ‘What do you know about Mehmet Oz?’ They’re telling you he’s a Hollywood liberal.”

However, Oz’s campaign released an internal poll showing a different result, with him at 24.8 percent and McCormick at 21.6.

Other candidates in the Republican primary include Carla Sands, a former ambassador under Trump; Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator; and Jeff Bartos, a real estate developer.

FILED UNDER: ELECTIONS, PENNSYLVANIA, DONALD TRUMP,

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/donald-trump-endorses-dr-oz/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/dr-oz/

6$ salsa biden fault grift

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12 21 an

Some of you will be familiar with DARVO, an acronym for deny, attack and reverse victim and offender. DARVO describes the behavior of psychological abusers when they are being held accountable for their behavior.Donald Trump and his supporters clearly exhibit DARVO habits. Rather than accept blame for anything they do, they turn around and accuse those blaming them of creating the problem. Victimized Bully Syndrome (VBS), as I'm describing it, though, is slightly different from DARVO. With DARVO the abusive behavior comes first and DARVO only emerges if the attacker is asked to take responsibility. But with VBS the cries of being victims come first and are used to justify the underlying bullying behaviors. The bully under VBS is always already acting in self-defense.

Take this example: In a recent interview with Fox News, Dr. Mehmet Oz, candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania suggested that Americans had been victimized by President Biden's "one-size-fits-all" COVID-19 "rules that limit our freedom." According to Oz, U.S. citizens "want government to get out of their way to stop scaring them into submission."

If we set aside the sheer stupidity of a doctor suggesting that we need "as many different approaches as possible" to the pandemic, the critical takeaway is Oz's claim that Biden's policy is designed to victimize the public by scaring them, taking away their freedoms, and destroying their dignity. According to this logic, refusing to wear a mask, get vaccinated, or support public health policy is a valid defense, rather than bullying behavior that puts everyone in peril.

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===

11 21 an ah

:{:{}:

this week, Dr. Mehmet Oz officially announced that he has entered the GOP primary in Pennsylvania’s 2022 U.S. Senate race. The former cardiologist, who hosts “The Dr. Oz Show” and has often been the butt of jokes because of the unscientific “miracle cures” he has promoted, will be competing for the Senate seat presently held by Republican Pat Toomey. Journalist Liz Skalka discusses Oz’s widely criticized love of “quack science” in an article for HuffPost, but she also points out how important this Senate race will be.

Pennsylvania, a key swing state, has a Democratic U.S. senator — the centrist Bob Casey, Jr., who unseated Rick Santorum in 2006 and won a third term in 2018 — and hard-right Toomey, who infuriated MAGA Republicans by voting “guilty” in former President Donald Trump’s second impeach trial. Rather than face an aggressive primary challenge from MAGA Republicans who now consider him a RINO, Toomey decided not to seek reelection in 2022.

“Now that Oz, a Republican, has joined the fray in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race,” Skalka observes, “the celebrity doctor’s most out-there advice and treatments are certain to receive greater scrutiny, if not prominent placement in attack ads. Oz has promoted everything from raspberry ketones, berry-red pills promising to melt excess fat, to hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug falsely touted by former President Donald Trump and the right-wing as a COVID-19 miracle cure.”

Skalka adds, “Before becoming a nationally syndicated health influencer, Oz was known as a top heart surgeon with a prestigious faculty appointment and 11 patents relating to heart surgery. But his propensity for new age treatments and exaggerated marketing eventually became his calling card.”

Despite the fact that Oz promoted hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” in 2020, he isn’t known for having far-right politics. Oz described himself as a “moderate Republican” during a 2007 interview, citing President Theodore Roosevelt and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as two of his favorite Republicans — which could help him in the Philadelphia suburbs if he wins the GOP nomination.

While Philly Proper is deep blue — a Republican hasn’t won a mayoral race in Philly since the late 1940s — its suburbs in Bucks County, Delaware County and Montgomery County were known for favoring moderate conservatives in the past. Former two-term Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, a pro-choice conservative and Never Trumper who wasn’t afraid to say that he supported Roe v. Wade, was exactly the type of Republican who the Philly suburbs favored during the 1990s. But Trump and the far-right MAGA movement have been making Bucks County and Montgomery County much more Democrat-leaning than they were in the past.

If Oz wins his party’s nomination, Democrats will no doubt remind Pennsylvania voters of the fact that he was a medical adviser to Trump who promoted hydroxychloroquine in 2020. And certainly, the seat now held by Toomey is one that Democratic strategists would love to flip.

Presently, Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Mitch McConnell is hoping to become Senate majority leader again, but flipping the Pennsylvania seat from GOP to Democrat would slightly increase that Democratic majority — assuming Republicans don’t flip any Democrat-held Senate seats in 2022....Skalka notes some of the many “miracle cures” that Oz has promoted, from lavender soap for leg cramps to raspberry ketones for burning fat to green coffee bean extract for weight loss to a strawberry/baking soda mixture for teeth whitening. Coffee beans, before they are roasted at high temperatures and turn brown, are green; Oz sold extract from the unroasted beans.

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..Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, slapped down the hosts of “Fox & Friends” on Friday after they challenged his medical opinions…

===

http://www.alternet.org/media/his-trump-interview-goes-broadcast-here-are-6-times-dr-oz-made-mockery-medicine

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http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/michael-specter

not science beat

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/02/04/the-operator

Dr. Oz Show” frequently focusses on essential health issues: the proper ways to eat, relax, exercise, and sleep, and how to maintain a healthy heart. Much of the advice Oz offers is sensible, and is rooted solidly in scientific literature. That is why the rest of what he does is so hard to understand. Oz is an experienced surgeon, yet almost daily he employs words that serious scientists shun, like “startling,” “breakthrough,” “radical,” “revolutionary,” and “miracle.” There are miracle drinks and miracle meal plans and miracles to stop aging and miracles to fight fat. Last year, Oz broadcast a show on whether it was possible to “repair” gay people (“From Gay to Straight? The Controversial Therapy”), despite the fact that Robert L. Spitzer, the doctor who is best known for a study of gay-reparation therapy, had recanted. (Spitzer last year apologized to “any gay person who wasted time and energy” on what he conceded were “unproven claims.”) Oz introduced a show on the safety of genetically modified foods by saying, “A new report claims they can damage your health and even cause cancer.” He also broadcast an episode on whether the apple juice consumed daily by millions of American children contains dangerous levels of arsenic. “Some of the best-known brands in America have arsenic in their apple juice,” he said at the outset, “and today we are naming names.” In each of those instances, and in many others, Oz has been criticized by scientists for relying on flimsy or incomplete data, distorting the results, and wielding his vast influence in ways that threaten the health of anyone who watches the show. Last year, almost as soon as that G.M.O. report was published, in France, it was thoroughly discredited by scores of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Addressing such issues, however, is part of what Oz describes as “the undiscussed conversation—the one we need to have but don’t.” He describes modern medicine as a “civil war” waged between conventional physicians and those who are open to alternative cures for maladies ranging from anxiety to cancer; he considers it his mission to walk the line that divides them.

...

On October 17th, Oz broadcast a program titled “GMO Foods: Are They Dangerous to Your Health?” Oz was not subtle. “You’re probably eating them right now and don’t even know,” he began, darkly invoking “the brave new world of food. Are they safe?” Oz then introduced Jeffrey Smith, the author of “Genetic Roulette,” who says that engineered foods may cause many serious diseases, including colitis, asthma, and cancer. Smith has also made a film version of the book; Oz, for the sake of full disclosure, noted that “my wife, Lisa, was a narrator in Jeffrey’s film.” He added that no scientists were willing to share the stage with Smith. “So today we are doing something we have never done before,” Oz said. “After Jeffrey makes his points, he has to leave the stage before we can speak with the scientists in favor of genetically modified foods.” Other than to say that Smith was controversial, Oz did not indicate why no scientists would appear with him.

When I asked Lisa about her involvement, she said that Smith presented a point of view that needed to be heard, and that the safety of genetically modified foods has not been proved. “I think Mehmet and I both feel, in general, that our mission is to empower the viewer or reader,” she said. “To give them the most information and the greatest number of tools they can use to make their own choices.”

On the show, Oz identified Smith as a scientist, but Smith has no experience in genetics or agriculture, and has no scientific degree from any institution. He studied business at the Maharishi International University, founded by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Before the show aired, Bruce Chassy, a noted molecular biologist, wrote to Oz; he is a founder of Academics Review, a group of researchers who often debunk popular scientific claims. Chassy is professor emeritus in the department of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois. “As a public-sector scientist, researcher, and academic administrator with more than forty years’ experience, I am appalled that any medical professional would give a platform to the likes of Mr. Jeffrey Smith to impart health information to the public,” Chassy wrote. “His only professional experience prior to taking up his crusade against biotechnology is as a ballroom-dance teacher, yogic flying instructor, and political candidate for the Maharishi cult’s natural-law party.”

Graphic images of rats covered in tumors appeared on a monitor; the images were taken from a study, published in September, contending that the tumors were caused by genetically modified corn. The study was publicized widely throughout the world, but it was denounced by the European Union Food Safety Authority, rejected in a rare joint statement by the six French national scientific academies, and ridiculed by scores of scientists. None of that deterred Smith, who attacked the Food and Drug Administration for “ignoring” these problems. On the show, Oz never challenged him, although agricultural biotechnology has been under review by the F.D.A. for decades, and no agency, in the United States or anywhere else, has found evidence that genetically modified foods are metabolized by the body any differently from any other type of food.

There are many legitimate and articulate opponents of genetically modified products and, for that matter, of conventional medicine itself. But Oz has consistently chosen guests with dubious authority to argue those positions. Joseph Mercola, an osteopath, runs mercola.com, one of the most popular alternative-health Web sites in the country

---

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/04/arctic_apple_safety_dr_oz_sows_seeds_of_mistrust_on_gmos.html

Low-Hanging Fruit

Dr. Oz sows seeds of mistrust on genetic engineering.By Henry I. Miller and Kavin Senapathy

Dr. Mehmet Oz and GMOs.

Dr. Mehmet Oz does not recommend an Arctic apple a day.

Getty Images for Clear Channel apr 10 2015

Surgeon–turned–television doctor Mehmet Oz opened his show on March 10 with a “Dr. Oz Investigation” on the newly U.S. Department of Agriculture–approved “Arctic” apple, which doesn’t undergo the unappetizing browning that other apples do when it’s bitten, bumped, or cut. The episode, titled “The Non-Browning GMO Apple: Is It Safe?,” pushed the fallacy that there is some sort of “right to know” (via labeling) whether a food has been produced with the techniques of molecular genetic engineering (aka “genetic modification,” or GM).

reason the Arctic apple doesn’t discolor involves ingenious but simple biology. Enzymatic browning in apples is caused by the fruit’s intrinsic chemical reaction to cell injury, which ruptures the cells and triggers chemical reactions between the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and the substances that cause the apple flesh to turn brown. A family of four genes controls the majority of PPO production, and by inserting low-PPO-producing genes from other apples, scientists were able to turn off more than 90 percent of PPO production.

Ordinarily the development of a new apple variety would proceed uneventfully, but because the shut-off of the four genes was done with molecular techniques, the proposed commercialization of this new variety was met with unconscionable, irresponsible, and lengthy regulatory delays. (On the heels of the USDA approval, the FDA approved the Arctic apple on March 20, following a “voluntary” food safety review that dragged on for four years.)

Now that this remarkable fruit has jumped through the required regulatory hoops, Dr. Oz and other fear-mongers are trying to elicit totally unwarranted consumer apprehension about it. Oz opened his program this way:

Would you buy this apple if I told you it wouldn’t brown when you cut into it or took a bite? Would you buy this apple if I told you it was genetically modified to not turn brown? Well, a lot of people are banking on your answer. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently approved the first genetically modified apple. They’re calling them the Arctic apple.

It’s a safe bet that most people in that audience that day said no, they wouldn’t buy the apple. A whopping 98 percent of respondents to a Doctoroz.com poll cited in a January episode said that they wanted foods containing genetically engineered ingredients to be labeled. In addition, nationwide polls suggested that up to 80 percent of Americans want labels on foods that contain DNA—although, presumably, few of them realize that that would encompass virtually everything in their diets except highly refined foods such as oil, sugar, and salt. These exercises prove only that people know little about the chemistry and biology of what they eat. (Or about their own bodies, for that matter—they, too, are composed of chemicals, including DNA.)

This latest manifestation of New Age nonsense is vintage Oz. The FDA slammed him in 2011 for an “irresponsible and misleading” report on arsenic in apple juice, and in June 2014 at a hearing, members of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee grilled and thoroughly humiliated Oz for his hawking of fraudulent products. In addition, publications including the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and Slatehave criticized his anti-science views.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has no fewer than three times bestowed on Oz its Pigasus Award, which is given “to expose parapsychological, paranormal or psychic frauds that Randi has noted over the previous year.” The last two of these were for support of faith healing and psychic communication with the dead, among other things (2010), and “Refusal to Face Reality” for his continued promotion of “quack medical practices, paranormal belief, and pseudoscience” (2012).

Among scientists, Oz is known for his anti-genetic-engineering propaganda, which he promotes regularly on his TV program in concert with outspoken biotech opponents who lack medical or scientific backgrounds. In September 2014, Oz featured Zen Honeycutt, founder of the anti-genetic engineering organization Moms Across America, who shared her bias without a hint of skepticism or so much as a follow-up question from Oz.

Like many antagonists of genetic engineering, Honeycutt attempted to demonize glyphosate, an herbicide used in various types of farming, because some genetically engineered crops are used in conjunction with it. Honeycutt claimed that her son had been experiencing symptoms of autism, and she wanted his urine tested for chemicals used in farming. His doctor declined, so she used a private lab that supposedly detected glyphosate levels “eight times higher than found anywhere in Europe [in] urine testing.” She claimed that within six weeks of going “completely [genetic engineering]–free and organic, his autism symptoms were gone, and the level of glyphosate was no longer detectable.” She didn’t clarify what European data were used for comparison or why. There is no medical evidence that exposure to glyphosate has any connection with autism; in fact, glyphosate has lower overall health impacts than white vinegar (aka the chemical acetic acid) when used as a herbicide.

http://www.nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/eiq/equation.asp =

A Method to Measure the Environmental Impact of Pesticides

The EIQ Equation download dataset for all herbivides?

This sort of nonsense is part of a longstanding pattern. Oz’s wife and the co-producer of his program, Lisa Oz, is a supporter of brazen anti-genetic-engineering campaigner and self-described levitator Jeffrey Smith. An advocate of alternative health products—the manufacturers of which happen to sponsor her and Dr. Oz’s radio and television programs—Lisa Oz recently collaborated with Smith and served as narrator for his lurid and ludicrous anti-genetic-engineering movie.

Oz made an attempt to appear balanced on the March 10 program—he interviewed Neal Carter, apple grower and founder of Okanagan Specialty Fruits, the creator of the Arctic apple. When asked how to detect whether a nonbrowning apple is rotting, Carter explained, “It’s important to understand that Arctic apples are just like any other apple in this regard.” He described how only the enzymatic browning of the Arctic apple has been “turned off.” When an apple rots, pathogens have their own enzymes that make it turn brown. Thus, these apples will brown when they rot.

Why nonbrowning apples? “Apples as a whole apple are too big a commitment,” Carter asserted. “[B]y making it not go brown, it makes it more suitable for food service, putting apples in more places, increasing consumption.”

After his own reductionist description of how scientists turned off the browning traits, Oz cited unnamed critics who say that altering one trait might inadvertently affect others. To expand on these concerns, Oz brought on so-called genetic engineering expert and Consumers Union scientist Michael Hansen. On the program Hansen questioned the apple’s safety, claiming that the technique used can also potentially turn off other genes. (Testing has shown that it doesn’t, and that the Arctic apple is indistinguishable from its unmodified cohorts, except for lower levels of the enzymes that mediate browning.) link is to co page: http://www.arcticapples.com/arctic-apples-story/how-we-keep-apples-from-turning-brown

Neither Oz nor Hansen seems to understand that the entire apple industry owes the diversity of varieties to different gene expression patterns. A Golden Delicious apple looks and tastes different from a Red Delicious because different apple genes are expressed. Recent genomic sequencing shows there are about 57,000 genes in the Golden Delicious apple.

Hansen then invoked the issue of “fraud,” lamenting that without labels at salad bars and elsewhere, most consumers will see unblemished sliced apples and think they’re freshly cut. Thereby, Hansen turns a red fruit into a red herring. Do sliced cucumbers or radishes turn brown to warn customers of waning freshness?

Leading up to the segment’s conclusion, Oz gushed to Carter, whose company created the Arctic apple, “I treasure the fact that you’re here. It’s hard to have this conversation in America right now; the two sides aren’t talking to each other very much. I commend you for your transparency, and the fact that you’ve been willing to come here and articulate in a very tasteful way at many levels.” The tacit message was, of course, that Carter is a rare exception to the usual mendacious, obfuscating biotech proponents.

Oz then implored Carter to extend his transparency to labeling Arctic apples in the marketplace as genetically engineered (presumably so that consumers could avoid them). Carter didn’t bite. He responded calmly that the proponents of labeling are anti-biotech. “It’s being driven by other business objectives and I think that’s completely wrong.” For that reason, he stated that the fruits will be labeled with the Arctic logo, but not explicitly as genetically engineered.

Oz wasn’t satisfied, expressing concern that consumers might not know that Arcticmeans genetically engineered. The real debate, Oz claimed, is not whether products made with genetic engineering are dangerous, but whether consumers have a right to know so they can decide. But there is already plenty of voluntary GMO-free labeling around, while mandatory labeling fails every test—...http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2014/07/09/genetic-engineering-is-a-tool-not-a-category-stupid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2011/12/08/labeling-of-biotech-foods-is-unnecessary-and-unconstitutional/

Dr. Oz fails to understand that there is a centuries-old seamless continuum of genetic modification of crops, animals, and microorganisms, performed by a variety of pre-molecular techniques, some of which have drastically altered the foods that we consume routinely. Some have moved genetic material from one species or genus to another to yield outcomes that don’t exist in nature. Farmers and plant breeders have been creating new varieties of apples for millennia. The new molecular techniques for accomplishing this are far more precise, predictable, and conservative than older, unregulated techniques for genetic improvement. With the exception of wild berries, wild game, wild mushrooms, and most fish and shellfish, all of the foods in our diets come from organisms that have been genetically modified in some way; and about...http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2015/mar/22/donna-nesselbush/sen-donna-nesselbush-three-quarters-processed-food"...three-quarters of the processed foods in American markets contain ingredients from organisms genetically engineered with molecular techniques similar to those used to create Arctic apples.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration amongArizona State University,New America, andSlate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit theFuture Tense blogand thefollow us on Twitter.Touting consumer choice as a right is a subterfuge. When there is sufficient demand, market forces provide labels that people want, like *kosher, halal, or *organic*. Dr. Oz might think he can emulate Dorothy by clicking his heels three times and making his claims true—and he may have luck convincing others that they are—but science and common sense argue otherwise....>===...Henry I. Miller

Contributor

I debunk junk science and flawed public policy.....12/08/2011 @ 1:02PM 5,721 views

Labeling Of Biotech Foods Is Unnecessary And Unconstitutional...This piece was co-written with Gregory Conko.

Should the government require that labels on cans of marinara sauce contain information about whether the tomatoes in it were hand- or machine-picked? No way! Ridiculous and irrelevant, you’d say. Right on all counts. But that label makes as little sense as the demands of food activist and Forbes contributor Michelle Maisto.

Maisto’s latest Forbes article calls for compulsory, government-mandated labels to indicate foods that have been genetically improved. Yet the foods that Maisto wants to target are those manipulated with the most modern and precise gene-splicing techniques — and only those techniques. Such labels would not only put groundless fears ahead of science — promoting ignorance and hysteria among consumers — they would also be unconstitutional.never explains why

Product labeling that conveys essential information is important, but mandatory labeling of gene-spliced foods is a bad idea. First, it implies risks for which there is no evidence. Second, it flies in the face of worldwide scientific consensus about the appropriate basis of regulation, which focuses palpable risks, not the use of certain techniques. Third, it would push the costs of product development into the stratosphere. Finally, the requirement would constitute a punitive tax on a superior technology.

Maisto is misinformed in so many ways.

Let’s begin with her assertion that there’s “a lot of debate about whether or not it’s safe to eat GM [genetically modified] foods.” In the parlance of Maisto and other radical food activists, “GM” refers to products that come from plants, animals or microorganisms crafted with sophisticated gene-splicing techniques, in which genes are moved around precisely and predictably. Without any scientific basis, the term implies that gene-splicing is a meaningful “category” and that its use somehow gives rise to products the risks of which are higher or more uncertain than other techniques for genetic modification. However, a broad and decades-long scientific consensus holds that modern techniques of genetic modification are an extension, or refinement – that is, an improvement – on the kinds of genetic modification that have long been used to enhance plants, microorganisms, and animals for food.

One has to wonder whether Maisto knows that with the exception of wild game, wild berries, wild mushrooms and fish and shellfish, all the plant- and animal-derived foods in our diets – even the overpriced organic stuff at Whole Foods – have resulted from genetic modification that employs techniques that are far less precise and predictable than the ones that concern her. Likewise, is she aware that every major scientific and public health organization that has studied gene-splicing – from the American Medical Association to the National Academy of Sciences and dozens more – has concluded that gene-spliced foods are at least as safe, and probably safer, than conventional ones?

The safety record of gene-spliced plants and foods derived from them is extraordinary. After the cultivation of more than 3 billion acres (cumulatively) of gene-spliced crops worldwide and the consumption of more than 3 trillion servings of food and food ingredients from such crops by inhabitants of North America alone, there has not been a single ecosystem disrupted or a single confirmed adverse reaction.

What are the advantages of gene-spliced crops? Every year, farmers planting gene-spliced varieties spray millions fewer gallons of chemical pesticides and prevent less erosion of topsoil. In addition, many gene-spliced varieties are less susceptible to mold infection and have lower levels of fungal toxins, making them safer for consumers and livestock.

Now let’s get to the labeling issue.

Maisto complains that “food can be tinkered with at the DNA level and no one is obligated to say so.” True, but irrelevant. For one thing, with the exceptions mentioned above, all the foods in our diet have been altered “at the DNA level” – because that’s how changes in organisms occur. When plant breeders cross a tangerine with a grapefruit to get a tangelo or construct a variety of potato resistant to viruses, the genetic changes are mediated by alterations in the DNA.

p2: here are good reasons that such “tinkering at the DNA level” need not be revealed on labels. Federal regulation requires that food labels be truthful and not misleading and prohibits label statements that could be misunderstood, even if they are strictly accurate. For example, although a “cholesterol-free” label on a certain variety or batch of fresh spinach would be accurate, it transgresses the FDA’s rules because it could be interpreted as implying that spinach usually contains cholesterol, which it does not.

Following long-standing precedents in food regulation, the FDA requires labeling only to indicate that a new food raises questions of safety, nutrition or proper usage. But instead of educating or serving a legitimate consumers’ “need to know” certain information, mandatory labels on gene-spliced food would imply a warning.

The FDA’s approach to labeling has been upheld both directly and indirectly by various federal court decisions that have consistently struck down mandatory labeling not supported by data. In the early 1990s, a group of Wisconsin consumers sued the FDA, arguing that the agency’s decision not to require the labeling of dairy products from cows treated with a gene-spliced protein called bovine somatotropin, or bST, allowed those products to be labeled in a false and misleading manner. (In other words, the plaintiffs wanted the same sort of mandatory labeling advocated by Maisto.) However, because the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate any material difference between milk from treated and untreated cows the federal court agreed with the FDA, finding that “it would be misbranding to label the product as different, even if consumers misperceived the product as different.”

In another federal case several food associations and companies challenged a Vermont statute that required labeling to identify milk from cows treated with gene-spliced bST. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a labeling mandate grounded in consumer perception rather than in a product’s measurable characteristics raises serious constitutional concerns. Namely, it violates commercial free speech. The court found both the labeling statute and companion regulations unconstitutional because they forced producers to make involuntary statements when there was no material reason to do so.[didn't amestoy? prevent vt farmers from vol labelling their own product?]...">What’s more, consumers don’t need a mandatory “GM” label: The First Amendment protects the right of food purveyors to sell non-gene-spliced products and to advertise that fact to consumers by means of labeling. (This would be similar to the way that halal and kosher products are offered to consumers.)...Note to Ms. Maisto: If you really want to influence consumers’ views on genetic engineering try to gain at least a rudimentary understanding of the subject. We suggest two ways to start: the film Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution by the two of us. Maybe then your articles on this subject won’t mislead your readers.

Henry I. Miller is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University‘s Hoover Institution; he was the founding director&...Gregory Conko is a senior fellow at the Competitive...http://www.forbes.com/enterprise/" class="exit_trigger_set" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">EnterpriseInstitute.

Henry I. Miller,a physician, is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the Food and Drug Administration.

Kavin Senapathy is a science advocate and works for a genomics company in Wisconsin that doesn’t develop GE foods. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.

A group of 10 prominent doctors from around the country is taking aim at Dr. Mehmet Oz, calling on Columbia University to oust the popular TV doctor from its faculty.

In a letter addressed to Dr. Lee Goldman, Columbia's Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine, they write:

"We are surprised and dismayed that Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons would permit Dr. Mehmet Oz to occupy a faculty appointment, let alone a senior administrative position in the Department of Surgery.

"As described here and here, as well as in other publications, 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.

"Thus, Dr. Oz is guilty of either outrageous conflicts of interest or flawed judgements about what constitutes appropriate medical treatments, or both. Whatever the nature of his pathology, members of the public are being misled and endangered, which makes Dr. Oz's presence on the faculty of a prestigious medical institution unacceptable."

The author of the letter, Dr. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, told CBS News that in his view, "a person who endangers patients and is a menace to public health should not be on the faculty of a prestigious medical institution."

Oz -- in addition to being a TV personality first made famous on "Oprah" -- is a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon and vice-chair of the department of surgery at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he says "our mantra is we train doctors to save lives."

Miller said he felt compelled to speak out because of what he called Oz's "fear-mongering" on the issue of genetically modified foods, which Miller has written about in Slate and elsewhere.

"He's been so wrong and so misleading and so unconstructive and antisocial on that subject, I thought enough is enough," Miller said.

Oz has come under fire before for making unsubstantiated claims and promoting questionable products on his syndicated program, "The Dr. Oz Show."

A 2011 episode about arsenic in apple juice prompted an angry rebuttal from the FDA, which called his report "irresponsible and misleading."

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, blasted him for making such claims on his show when "you know it's not true."And last summer, Oz was called before Congressto testify at a Senate hearing about deceptive advertising for over-the-counter diet supplements after he sang the praises of green coffee bean extract as a "miracle" weight loss pill.

"I've got no problem with celebrity endorsements of any product but I do have a problem when a science-based doctor says something is a miracle when there's no science to back it up," McCaskill told CBS News' Nancy Cordes at the time.

At the hearing, Oz defended his approach and the value of introducing viewers to a range of alternative treatments. "My show is about hope," he said. "We've engaged millions in programs -- including programs we did with the CDC -- to get folks to realize there are different ways they can rethink their future," he said.

The controversy did not die down after his testimony. The company behind the"miracle" diet supplement in question later agreed to pay a $3.5 million settlement over false advertising. A study that purported to prove the product's weight-loss benefits turned out to be based on fraudulent data and was retracted.

Miller points out that such supplements are not regulated by the FDA the way drugs are, and do not have to meet the same standards for safety and effectiveness.

"If [Oz] is promoting products that have side effects, possibly severe side effects, that's a menace to public health. And he has millions of people adhering to his advice," Miller said.

Miller admitted he did not really expect Columbia to act on his letter and fire Dr. Oz, though he held out hope that the board of trustees might take up the issue.

He and his co-signers received a brief email response from a university spokesman, stating: "As I am sure you understand and appreciate, Columbia is committed to the principle of academic freedom and to upholding faculty members' freedom of expression for statements they make in public discussion."

Read the full letter below:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/group-of-doctors-call-for-dr-oz-to-be-ousted-from-columbia-university/

Lee Goldman, M.D.

Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine

Columbia University

Dear Dr. Goldman:

I am writing to you on behalf of myself and the undersigned colleagues below, all of whom are distinguished physicians.

We are surprised and dismayed that Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons would permit Dr. Mehmet Oz to occupy a faculty appointment, let alone a senior administrative position in the Department of Surgery.

As described here and here, as well as in other publications, 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.

Thus, Dr. Oz is guilty of either outrageous conflicts of interest or flawed judgments [sic] about what constitutes appropriate medical treatments, or both. Whatever the nature of his pathology, members of the public are being misled and endangered, which makes Dr. Oz's presence on the faculty of a prestigious medical institution unacceptable.

Sincerely yours,

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

Jack Fisher, M.D.

Professor of Surgery (emeritus)

University of California, San Diego

La Jolla, CA

Shelley Fleet, M.D.

Anesthesiologist

Longwood, FL

Gordon N. Gill, M.D.

Dean (emeritus) of Translational Medicine

University of California, San Diego

La Jolla, CA

Michael H. Mellon, M.D.

Pediatric Allergist

San Diego, CA

:{:{GIlbert Ross, M.D.}:

President (Acting) and Executive Director

American Council on Science and Health

New York, NY}:

Samuel Schneider, M.D.

Psychiatrist

Princeton, NJ

Glenn Swogger Jr. M.D.

Director of the Will Menninger Center for Applied Behavioral Sciences (retired)

The Menninger Foundation

Topeka, KS

Joel E. Tepper, M.D.

Hector MacLean Distinguished Professor of Cancer Research

Dept of Radiation Oncology

University of North Carolina School of Medicine

Chapel Hill, NC

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/17/400424025/physicians-urge-columbia-to-fire-dr-oz-for-promoting-quack-treatments

NPR's Robert Siegel speaks with Michael Specter, staff writer at The New Yorker about some physicians' calls for Columbia University to sever ties with TV's Dr. Oz over what they call his "disdain for science" and promotion of questionable treatments.

:{:{:{}:

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

America's doctor is being taken to task by a group of his peers. Dr. Mehmet Oz hosts the TV program "The Dr. Oz Show." He is also vice chairman of the Surgery Department at Columbia University. And now 10 well-regarded physicians from all over the country are calling on Columbia to drop Dr. Oz from its faculty. The group penned a letter to the school, and they write this (reading) Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine. They go on to say that he promotes quack treatments for financial gain. Columbia responded by saying that it is committed to upholding faculty members' freedom of expression. To discuss this letter and the dock at the center of the controversy now is Michael Specter. He profiled Mehmet Oz for The New Yorker magazine back in 2013. Welcome to the program.

MICHAEL SPECTER: Thanks for having me.

SIEGEL: What are some of the other claims that the letter from Dr. Henry Miller and his co-signees make about Dr. Oz?

SPECTER: Well, I think the principal claim is that he lets his many millions of viewers believe things to be true that he knows are not true. And it's very damaging. And that - I think that's the essential problem here.

SIEGEL: Things that are not true - for example?

SPECTER: He promotes a lot of what other people would call quack treatments - things that will lower your cholesterol and prevent you from having Alzheimer's and make sure you don't get colon cancer. And it would be great if any of that stuff was true, but none of it has ever been proven to be effective, and he knows this. The big problem with Dr. Oz is that he's intelligent and articulate and well-educated. There are lots of quacks out there. They're not worth dealing with because they're just quacks. The problem with Dr. Oz is that he gives a lot of good advice, in the middle of which he just says these things for which there is no support whatsoever. And it's very hard for normal people to know the difference.

SIEGEL: You quoted Dr. Oz in your New Yorker profile saying a few years ago, and I'm quoting, "the currency that I deal in is trust, and that is trust that has been given to me by Oprah and by Columbia University, and by an audience that has watched over 600 shows." Are - do you think those things are parallel or analogous, that is, being popular on television, being favored by Oprah Winfrey and being on the faculty at Columbia?

SPECTER: I would like to think they're not analogous. He has always acted as if they were the same thing. And I'm sorry to say that Columbia seems to act that way, too, because they responded to this letter by saying everyone basically has a right to say what they want. That's an academic belief that is sacrosanct, and it is. But another very important principle that every doctor in the world knows is, first, do no harm. And he does harm every time he goes on the air by recommending things for which there is no evidence and things often that he knows not to be true. And I believe that that is a much greater principle and a greater harm than any good that could come from protecting a very powerful and wealthy man's right to express himself.

SIEGEL: But enter the magical concept of tenure at a university. There are professors who, in addition to being brilliant engineers, espouse views that can be racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic - a variety of things. And yet, if they're tenured, there's a principle that that's almost like Parliamentary immunity against libel. You can go out and write what you want, and the university honors your tenured position on the faculty.

SPECTER: Well, there's a couple things here. First of all, I believe that's true and it ought to be true, but I think tenure in many ways was set up was to protect people who have minority views that could be persecuted for them. That is not the case with Dr. Oz, who is maybe the most powerful doctor in America. Secondly, he's an administrator at Columbia, and there isn't a tenured principle that protects his right to teach and rule the way other people work at Columbia University.

SIEGEL: Do you have any notion, by the way, that Dr. Oz in his life as a heart surgeon and in dealing with patients mixes that at all with recommendations for therapies that he would flog on television?

SPECTER: I think it's important to say that his history as a heart surgeon is one of excellence, and that there's no reason to believe that he sacrifices in the operating theater for his magical beliefs. But I do think there is history of him encouraging patients to embrace magical thinking, like Reiki and all this sort of mystical energy field therapy to make you feel better. And there is no data that exists on this planet that suggests that that's useful.

SIEGEL: If you were to place bets on this, would you be betting on Dr. Oz or on the signatories of that letter at this point.

SPECTER: Oz, sorry to say.

SIEGEL: I should say we tried to contact Dr. Oz and were unsuccessful in doing so today. Michael Specter, thanks for talking with us about him.

SPECTER: Oh, it's my pleasure.

SIEGEL: Michael Specter, staff writer at The New Yorker, profile Dr. Mehmet Oz in 2013. Michael Specter's most recent book is "Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Harms The Planet And Threatens Our Lives."

---

nov. 6, 2022

nyt

In just a few days, Pennsylvania could elect Dr. Mehmet Oz to the Senate, which would make him the nation’s first Muslim senator.

With an eye on that history, Muslims in the state have invited him to events at mosques. They have waited for him to talk about how his life has been influenced by his faith, which he once told an interviewer hewed to the mystical Sufi Islam of the whirling dervishes. They have wondered if he would note the significance of a Muslim’s being elected to such a high national office.

But he has not done any of those things.

As Dr. Oz clashes with Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate, in a close race that could decide control of the Senate, he is approaching his Muslim background with what appears to be great ambivalence — and some Muslim Americans have similarly conflicted feelings.

Dr. Oz’s personal and political identities make him an unlikely fit for the role of a history-making, barrier-breaking Muslim public figure.

He identifies himself as a secular Muslim, raised his four children in his wife’s Christian faith and rarely discusses his religious beliefs in public. Unlike most American Muslims, he is a Republican. And some of his rare comments about Islam — including a warning about Shariah law in the United States, which no group has ever proposed — have been viewed by fellow Muslims as Islamophobic signaling.

Above all, though, the alienation many Muslims feel from Dr. Oz stems from his vocal backing from former President Donald J. Trump, who once said he would “strongly consider” closing mosques in the United States, told an interviewer that “I think Islam hates us” and, as president, banned travel to the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries.

In other words, the first Muslim senator might be a man who owes his political rise to a figure who spread Islamophobia more widely than any other recent American leader.

“It’s going to be very difficult to wrap my head around that one,” said Abdul Maghees Chaudhri, the vice president of the Islamic Society of Chester County, a mosque in suburban Philadelphia.

Dr. Oz, who for years was best known as a television self-help personality, has in the past described a spiritual life shaped by the conflicting views of his pious father and his secular mother, who reflected divisions within their native Turkey. His campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.

“I have struggled a lot with my Muslim identity, in part because, within my family, there were two very different perspectives on it,” he said in a 2009 interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the PBS television show “Faces of America.”

In the end, he told Mr. Gates, he embraced his mother’s secularism and felt drawn to Sufism, a movement found in both Sunni and Shiite Islam that emphasizes each person’s individual search for the divine over dogma or rigidity.

When one is caught up in the “legal aspects of religion,” he said, “it frustrates me to no end.”

Muslims around the world interpret their faith in a wide variety of ways, and Dr. Oz’s approach is one shared by many others. For many American Muslims, their concern is not over theological differences with Dr. Oz or his religious observance, but over his unwillingness to publicly embrace them while at the same time aligning with politicians who have been hostile toward their community.

Dalia Mogahed, the director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, said it felt as if Dr. Oz had “disowned” his background.

“I think it’s something, for the most part, that he has de-emphasized and walked away from,” she said. “For the community to claim him or take any pride in his accomplishments, I don’t think makes sense.”

Nagi Latefa, an immigrant from the Gaza Strip and a volunteer at the Islamic Education Center in Allentown, said he had been open to Dr. Oz, whom he viewed as a “poster child” for the sort of success immigrants want their children to have.

Mr. Latefa voted for President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush and was a longtime supporter of Representative Charlie Dent, a Republican who represented the area until 2018. Mr. Latefa said he had been trying since July to organize a meet-the-candidate event for Dr. Oz at his mosque. But his efforts have gone nowhere, he said.

“I have called, I have emails I sent to them, and nothing,” Mr. Latefa said. The experience soured him. When other Muslims ask him about Dr. Oz, he does not know how to recommend voting for him.

“How can I justify this?” he said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, guys, we want to go vote for this guy, he’s good, but he doesn’t want to be seen with us.’”

Only 10 percent of American Muslims identify as Republicans, according to a study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding this year. Forty-six percent of Muslims identify as Democrats and 40 percent as independent, the highest percentage of independents of any faith group. Dr. Oz is believed to be the first Muslim nominee for Senate from a major party.

Ms. Mogahed said that American Muslims were likely to be independents because many did not feel they fit into either political party.

Many oppose Democratic positions on issues like same-sex marriage and taxation, she said. But a survey of American Muslims by the institute in 2022 also showed that a majority supported abortion rights and gun-control laws and said they agreed with the principles of critical race theory.

American Muslims have also been deeply alienated from the Republican Party since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which led to years of racial profiling and government surveillance, enabled by the Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush, a Republican. That estrangement became profound during the Trump administration.

There has been no excitement in the community over Dr. Oz the way there was when Keith Ellison, a Democrat, became the first Muslim elected to Congress in 2007, she said. He visited mosques across the country, was sworn into office on the Quran and served as an eloquent spokesman for American Muslims, Ms. Mogahed said.

Dr. Oz addressed his religious background at the start of the campaign, writing in The Washington Examiner in January that he had been “raised as a secular Muslim.” His four children are Christians, and he wrote that he had “beamed with joy watching them and our four grandchildren become baptized.”

He went further in, a right-wing online media company, when asked if Islam was incompatible with the Constitution.

“We don’t want Shariah law in America,” he said. “I’m a secular Muslim. I don’t want any of these religious fanatics playing a role in American society.”

Many American Muslims view statements like that as a signal to non-Muslim voters that Dr. Oz is different from whatever scary image of Islam they may have in their minds, said Ahmet Tekelioglu, the executive director of CAIR-Philadelphia, a Muslim civil rights group. The specter of Shariah in the United States has been a frequent topic in the conservative media since the mid-2000s.

Dr. Oz’s most substantive public remarks about his religious background appear to have come from his 2009 interview with Mr. Gates.

In the interview, Dr. Oz described growing up in a divided home, with “one parent on one side of the religious wall, one parent on the other.”

His mother’s family was aligned with the secular teachings of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. Dr. Oz said those in his mother’s family “are religious people, but in privacy.”

“They never flaunt it; they never talk about it,” he said. “It’s frankly none of your business, in their opinion, that they happen to be Muslim.”

But for his father’s side of the family, Islam was “their core essence — it is what defined who they were; it is what gave them their morality,” he said.

“They would never feel comfortable separating away their view towards the law from the view towards religion,” he said. “They just seemed so obviously and beautifully and elegantly integrated. Why would you try to carve them apart?”

As an adult, Dr. Oz said, he was drawn to Sufism, which emphasizes a personal connection with God.

“It’s much more mystical, much more interested in taking away the 99 percent of reality that we think is there and looking at the real, important 1 percent that’s beneath that veneer,” he said, “the true connection with God.”

He told Mr. Gates he had also found spiritual fulfillment in other traditions, including his wife’s religion, Swedenborgian Christianity, a Protestant denomination based on the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th-century Swedish mystic.

“He’s called the Buddha of the West,” Dr. Oz said of Swedenborg. “But the Sufis would revere him, because he was all about the connection.”

Dr. Oz’s background has not come up during the general election campaign, but it was a bitter part of the Republican primary in May.

Dr. Oz’s opponent, David McCormick, accused him of having “dual loyalties” because he holds Turkish citizenship, which Dr. Oz said he would renounce if elected to the Senate.

Image

David McCormick, who ran against Dr. Oz in the primary, tried to dissuade former President Donald J. Trump from endorsing Dr. Oz.Credit...Hannah Beier for The New York Times

Behind the scenes, Mr. McCormick tried to dissuade Mr. Trump from endorsing Dr. Oz at a meeting where his wife, the former Trump White House official Dina Powell McCormick, showed the former president pictures of Dr. Oz alongside others wearing Muslim head coverings. They argued that Dr. Oz was too Muslim to win an election in Pennsylvania.

The idea that Dr. Oz may be too Muslim is not one shared by many Muslim Pennsylvanians.

Chris Caras, the imam of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, was a fan of Dr. Oz’s television show and followed him on Facebook for years, turning to him for weight loss tips and advice about alternative medicine.

But Mr. Caras said Dr. Oz’s embrace of Mr. Trump had left him “profoundly” disappointed.

“All I saw were what seemed to my eyes to be him eating pork and drinking beer and wine in rural areas,” Mr. Caras said. “After months of these pictures without a single person of color, I finally unfollowed him after many years.”

Liam Stack is a religion correspondent on the Metro desk, covering New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. He was previously a political reporter based in New York and a Middle East correspondent based in Cairo.

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 6, 2022, Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Many Muslims Are Ambivalent About Oz’s Milestone Run for Senate. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is embarking on a comprehensive study of genetically engineered (GE) crops. It will examine the historic development of agricultural biotechnology, assess the “purported” benefits and negatives of GE crops, review food and environmental safety issues, and explore where the technology may be headed.

What is prompting such a deep dive into a thorny thicket? This:

Consumers in the United States and abroad get conflicting information about GE crops. Proponents tout the benefits while opponents emphasize the risks. There is a need for an independent, objective study that examines what has been learned about GE crops, assesses whether initial concerns and promises were realized since their introduction, and investigates new concerns and recent claims.

It so happens that the first public meeting for this study will be held today and tomorrow. More on this in a minute.

First, let’s review essential findings on crop biotechnology and related food safety concerns from the past decade.

In 2004, an NAS report declared:

To date, more than 98 million acres of genetically modified crops have been grown worldwide. No evidence of human health problems associated with these ingredients of these crops or resulting food products have been identified.

(As of last year, that cumulative total stood at 4 billion acres.)

In 2008, a paper published in the UK’s Royal Society of Medicine noted:

Foods derived from GM crops have been consumed by hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than 15 years, with no reported ill effects (or legal cases related to human health), despite many of the consumers comring from that most litigious of countries, the USA.

In 2010, the European Union declared:

The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research, and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that that biotechnology, and in particular, GMOs, are no more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies.

Finally, the World Health Organization (WHO) states:

GM foods currently available on the international market have passed safety assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.

I know, I know, all these scientific institutions, professional societies and health bodies are bought off by Monsanto.

Seriously, back to the NAS study now underway. Remember, the justification for it is that “the public gets conflicting information about GE crops.” Yet, as I showed above, there is nothing ambiguous about the safety of GMOs. This is not to say that agricultural biotechnology doesn’t warrant strict regulation, monitoring, and continued testing. But let’s be clear: Thus far, nothing in the global food supply derived from genetically modified crops has been found harmful to public health.

So where is “conflicting information” coming from? Unfortunately, much skewed information on GMOs comes from thought leaders, advocacy journalists, and public interest groups, as I discussed in this 2012 *Slate* piece. And it will be on display at this week’s NAS public meeting. For a virtual who’s who of cranks, pseudoscientists and ideologues–the worker bees and stars on the anti-GMO circuit–will be appearing before the committee (Reputable scientists and science communicators will also be represented.) I don’t have time to run through them all, but two notorious individuals (who should be familiar to anyone vaguely familiar with the GMO discourse) are giving their presentations back to back on Tuesday: Jeffrey Smith and Gilles-Éric Séralini.

Smith is the author of two self-published books on GMOs– Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette.He appears to have no scientific credentials. I’ve discussed Smith several times in this space, including here. He’s made two appearances on the Dr. Oz show. One of them was a segment called, “GMO Foods: Are They Dangerous to Your Health?” As Michael Specter recounts in The New Yorker:

Oz was not subtle. “You’re probably eating them right now and don’t even know,” he began, darkly invoking “the brave new world of food. Are they safe?” Oz then introduced Jeffrey Smith, the author of “Genetic Roulette,” who says that engineered foods may cause many serious diseases, including colitis, asthma, and cancer. Smith has also made a film version of the book; Oz, for the sake of full disclosure, noted that “my wife, Lisa, was a narrator in Jeffrey’s film.” He added that no scientists were willing to share the stage with Smith. “So today we are doing something we have never done before,” Oz said. “After Jeffrey makes his points, he has to leave the stage before we can speak with the scientists in favor of genetically modified foods.” Other than to say that Smith was controversial, Oz did not indicate why no scientists would appear with him.

But Smith is just a fear-mongering messenger indulged by the likes of Dr. Oz. Séralini is a French researcher who published adeeply flawed (and ultimately retracted) study on GMO corn-fed rats and manipulated the media’s initial coverage of it. (This is the zombie paper that will not die.) Having Séralini give expert testimony at a scientific panel on GMOs is like having Andrew Wakefield present evidence at a similar panel on vaccine safety.

But hey, if the goal of the NAS committee is to discern nonsense from actual facts on genetically modified crops, then I suppose it is helpful to hear straight from the sources who have most succeeded in distorting the science of biotechnology and confusing the public about GMOs.

CATEGORIZED UNDER: AGRICULTURE, BIOTECHNOLOGY, GMOS, SCIENCE

MORE ABOUT: AGRICULTURE, BIOTECHNOLOGY, FOOD SECURITY, GILLES-ÉRIC SÉRALINI, GMOS,JEFFREY SMITH, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/04/arctic_apple_safety_dr_oz_sows_seeds_of_mistrust_on_gmos.html

rgeon–turned–television doctor Mehmet Oz opened his show on March 10 with a “Dr. Oz Investigation” on the newly U.S. Department of Agriculture–approved “Arctic” apple, which doesn’t undergo the unappetizing browning that other apples do when it’s bitten, bumped, or cut. The episode, titled “The Non-Browning GMO Apple: Is It Safe?,” pushed the fallacy that there is some sort of “right to know” (via labeling) whether a food has been produced with the techniques of molecular genetic engineering (aka “genetic modification,” or GM).

The reason the Arctic apple doesn’t discolor involves ingenious but simple biology. Enzymatic browning in apples is caused by the fruit’s intrinsic chemical reaction to cell injury, which ruptures the cells and triggers chemical reactions between the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and the substances that cause the apple flesh to turn brown. A family of four genes controls the majority of PPO production, and by inserting low-PPO-producing genes from other apples, scientists were able to turn off more than 90 percent of PPO production.

Would you buy this apple if I told you it wouldn’t brown when you cut into it or took a bite? Would you buy this apple if I told you it was genetically modified to not turn brown? Well, a lot of people are banking on your answer. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently approved the first genetically modified apple. They’re calling them the Arctic apple.

Oz wasn’t satisfied, expressing concern that consumers might not know that Arcticmeans genetically engineered. The real debate, Oz claimed, is not whether products made with genetic engineering are dangerous, but whether consumers have a right to know so they can decide. But there is already plenty of voluntary GMO-free labeling around, while mandatory labeling fails every test—scientific, economic,legal, and common sense—and the federal courts have found that there is no such “right to know.”

Dr. Oz fails to understand that there is a centuries-old seamless continuum of genetic modification of crops, animals, and microorganisms, performed by a variety of pre-molecular techniques, some of which have drastically altered the foods that we consume routinely. Some have moved genetic material from one species or genus to another to yield outcomes that don’t exist in nature. Farmers and plant breeders have been creating new varieties of apples for millennia. The new molecular techniques for accomplishing this are far more precise, predictable, and conservative than older, unregulated techniques for genetic improvement. With the exception of wild berries, wild game, wild mushrooms, and most fish and shellfish, all of the foods in our diets come from organisms that have been genetically modified in some way; and about three-quarters of the processed foods in American markets contain ingredients from organisms genetically engineered with molecular techniques similar to those used to create Arctic apples....

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