The FastDay Forum

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/18/dr_ozs_bad_medicine/

quack quack

p.s. @peebles will love that Mercola gets outed as worse than Oz...

Every bit of snake oil Oz promotes on his show is on the shelves at Walmart the next week. I don't believe for a minute he doesn't get reimbursed. Probably through some dodgy passthrough involving the TV network.

Its hard to understand how someone with the impressive medical career he had could descend to do what he does. It isn't educating the great unwashed by any stretch. And the money the poor housewives who watch him waste on that overpriced worthless junk!

I was shocked to read that he is employed by Columbia University. They should be ashamed!

I have to admit I was very happy that Senator McCaskill took him to task. I've never liked him & often wonder when he became a quack science promoter regarding weight loss. I can't wait until the evidence on IF from the UK & Australia finally makes it to the States. When people find out how easy, inexpensive, effective & sustainable this WoE is, it will put us back on the road to health!

My bet is the weight loss industry in the States will do their best to subtly and not so subtly discredit this WOE for as long as they can.

I friend on another website said, "A kicked dog howls!" Very apt I think.

And wasn't it the US Government under the auspices of Richard Nixon who created the report that told us low fat was the way to go for health . Well that turned out well. I evaluate unconventional health messages and their messengers one by one, the fact that they are being bullied by politicians does not sway me one way or the other.

[Tracieknits]

Yes, a rare occasion when I'm actually proud of my legislature

The story in the U.S. is that the sleazy but very wealthy owner of one of the biggest supplement companies, a man who had been convicted of fraud in the past, put together a supplement industry advocacy group which poured huge amounts of money into the campaign of a conservative Utah senator back in the 1990s.

They also funded a campaign aimed at consumers both online and in magazines whose theme was "the medical establishment wants to make illegal our wonderful miracle natural supplements. You must stop them!" Congress was deluged with letters from people terrified that their condroitin, shark cartiledge etc, would be taken away. (All of which have been found to be completely useless save as placebos.)

That senator back in the late 1990s spearheaded the passage of a law that made it illegal for the FDA to regulate supplements. As it stands now, the only time the FDA can step in is when there are multiple reports--after a supplement is on the market--of death or serious injury.

Since most of these expensive fraudulent supplements do absolutely nothing--hence needing no regulation by the law passed by these supplement billionaires--the FDA does nothing. This law makes it legal to sell anything as long as the health claims for the product do not appear on the label. You can't say, "Cures cancer" but you can have people posting all over the web on cancer support sites that they took the supplement and their tumors dissappeared over night.

Subsequent to the passage of the law a whole group of fraudulent "pay to play" "medical journals came into existence along with a whole industry of companies that run small, biased clinical trials that feed these journals. These are the journals that publish the "studies" you see touting the efficacy of these supplements. They have names like "The Journal of Neutraceuticals" or "Journal of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Science" and all it takes to have your study appear in one is the payment of a hefty sum. They come up on journal searches and unless you are familiar with medical journals, you might think they were actual, peer reviewed journals.

The profits of this completely unregulated, utterly fraudulent industry in the U.S. are high enough that they can not only afford to buy senators and congress people, but also doctors and network execs.

The amount of money in promoting this crap is hard to imaging. A recent real study found that the more popular an herbal supplement is, the more likely it is to contain grass clippings (identified by DNA analysis) rather than the herb you are paying for. In the US there is no penalty for selling grass clippings as an herb, as long as they don't kill anyone. Apparently, grass clippings are GRAS.

Thanks for the eye opener @peebles, had no idea of this money making industry!

Well I take some supplements and herbal products and I am really fed up the way the EU is trying to restrict them. Does anyone remember The Food Program reporting some years back how the amount of vitamins and minerals in our fruit and veg had gone down over the years? Depleted soils mean you may not be getting the nutrients you think you are. I take a wide spectrum multivitamin just to be sure.

there are 2 independent labs, that I know of, that test and certify supplements. If you look for a USP seal or an NSF symbol, these (supposedly) indicate that the lab has tested the pills and found them to contain what the label says they do. The USP ones are mostly vitamins and minerals, the NSF ones mostly for sports recovery (ie. protein powders and such)

Well...it's open to debate, and personal experience, which supplements work and which don't. Regardless, I do NOT want the flunkies at the FDA telling me what I am allowed to buy and put in my body!!! I have absolutely ZERO (actually negative) confidence in the pharmaceutical and regulatory industry...the FDA is the lap dog of Big Pharma.

Well...it's open to debate, and personal experience, which supplements work and which don't. Regardless, I do NOT want the flunkies at the FDA telling me what I am allowed to buy and put in my body!!! I have absolutely ZERO (actually negative) confidence in the pharmaceutical and regulatory industry...the FDA is the lap dog of Big Pharma.

frankly, only a placebo-controlled, independent scientific study convinces me, not debate or personal experience. But I wouldn't begin to argue that all herbal remedies are useless. In fact, many drugs originally came from plant compounds. However, if Oz is promoting something for weight loss, it's almost guaranteed there are several gold-standard placebo controlled studies out there showing it's completely useless. He has an abysmal track record in this area.

I'd be the last to defend the drug industry, but they look like Mother Teresa next to the far more corrupted supplement sellers. The FDA checks factories to ensure what you pay for is in the pharma pill or capsule. When they find violations, they stop the sales.

Contrast that with study after study showing that the supplements and herb pills and capsules not only don't contain the label substance, but contain heavy metals, hidden cheap pharmaceuticals, adulterants and the like.

Even when the substance is in the bottle, the dose in the capsule can vary from from bottle to bottle. The money in that business is so great, it would corrupt far better people than the greedy charlatans who go into it.

I always tell people to save the money they plan to waste on the latest miracle diet pill and use it to buy high quality meat and organic fresh vegetables, which work like magic when consumed in portions that are less than TDEE.