Dr. Oz Spends Thanksgiving Shilling Supplements From Company He Invests In
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Donald Trump‘s pick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has yet to be confirmed to the Cabinet position by a Senate he failed to join after a costly 2022 campaign. But his activity on social media over the Thanksgiving holiday suggests that he may continue to serve as pitchman for dubious miracle cures even when he’s in government.
“Thanksgiving is a perfect excuse for practicing gratitude — which also happens to be a proven way to reduce stress,” Oz wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday. “You can also reduce stress with adaptogens like ashwagandha from a trusted source like @iHerb. Happy Thanksgiving!” The post linked to an Instagram video with the same caption, in which Oz contends that adaptogens — substances derived from plants and mushrooms that have long been used in herbal medicine — may help with anxiety and fatigue.
Oz’s own profile on X acknowledges that he is a “global advisor” to iHerb, which bills itself as the “leading online store dedicated to trusted health products.” The account also states that he’s a shareholder in the e-commerce company.
Trained as a heart surgeon, Oz was a fixture on The Oprah Winfrey Show before hosting his own daytime series, The Dr. Oz Show, from 2009 to 2022. He ended the show to run as a Republican for a Senate seat representing Pennsylvania despite living in neighboring New Jersey for decades, and lost to now Sen. John Fetterman.
Throughout his career, Oz has faced harsh criticism from medical experts for endorsing pseudoscience and his promotion of supplements including scam diet pills — which also saw him scolded by Republicans and Democrats alike in a 2014 Senate hearing. He’s earned tens of millions of dollars as a spokesman for another supplement manufacturer that has been sued by its own investors and accused of functioning as a pyramid scheme. And as the Covid-19 pandemic raged, with his TV appearances guiding Trump’s response to the crisis, he touted hydroxychloroquine as a potentially effective treatment despite a lack of evidence to support the claim. It so happened that he owned shares in a company that supplies the drug.
All of which means Oz fits right into the ensemble of Trump’s picks for top health positions, a veritable who’s who of medical misinformation super-spreaders. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his selection for head of Health and Human Services, is an anti-vax conspiracy theorist who has suggested that vaccines cause Autism Spectrum Disorders and pushed many other bizarre and baseless health claims. Dr. Dave Weldon, set to take the reins at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has in the past gone after its vaccine program and linked vaccines to autism. Trump has also tapped Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to be the director of the National Institutes of Health; the physician gained national stature as one author of a 2020 anti-lockdown manifesto that argued for allowing “those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to [Covid-19] through natural infection.” The proposal drew widespread condemnation from health organizations and medical experts. Dr. Marty Makary, nominated as Food and Drug Administration commissioner, questioned lockdowns and masking at the height of the pandemic and incorrectly predicted in February 2021 that the U.S. population would reach herd immunity by that April.
Adaptogens like those Oz advertised to his millions of social media followers on Wednesday are, like all supplements, not regulated by the FDA. The evidence for their efficacy is rather weak, and they have potentially adverse side effects including allergic reactions, nausea, diarrhea, and the onset or worsening of psychiatric disturbances.
It’s not clear if or how Oz will seek to disentangle his many and significant financial ties to pharmaceutical and health tech companies to avoid conflicts of interest as the administrator of CMS, which works closely with and regulates such companies. But for the moment, at least, it seems the TV doctor has no qualms about continuing to shill for the alternative medicine industry that made him a millionaire as he prepares to assume one of the most important jobs in public health.
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