TV Celebrity Dr. Oz Is Running For Senate In Pennsylvania

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From the land of OZ.
TV doctor Mehmet Oz formally announced his campaign for Senate in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, resetting the GOP field in a critical race with a focus on the coronavirus pandemic.

“We have not managed our crises as effectively as past generations,” Oz wrote in a Washington Examiner op-ed. “During the pandemic, I learned that when you mix politics and medicine, you get politics instead of solutions. That’s why I am running for the U.S. Senate: to help fix the problems and to help us heal.”

Oz didn’t specify in his column that he was running for the Republican nomination, but after the piece was published, he released a video that identified him as “Dr. Oz, Republican for U.S. Senate.”

His announcement was originally teased for Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program Tuesday evening. Hannity hinted that Oz would appear on the show with a “huge announcement” related to the midterms.

Oz, 61, will seek the GOP nomination in a key 2022 contest after the party’s early front-runner, former Army Ranger Sean Parnell, suspended his campaign last week amid domestic abuse allegations.

Known in entertainment as Dr. Oz, the Ohio-born cardiothoracic surgeon rose to national fame as a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show before landing his own program, “The Dr. Oz Show.”

He has been a frequent guest on Fox News to discuss the coronavirus pandemic, and has promoted controversial and unproven COVID-19 treatments such as the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. He has also been blasted by the medical community for using his platform to promote quack science, including weight loss drugs and astrology.

The celebrity surgeon framed his candidacy around the pandemic and what he characterized as failed government action.

“The government mandated policies that caused unnecessary suffering,” he wrote in the Examiner. “The public was patronized and misled instead of empowered. We were told to lock down quietly and let those in charge take care of the rest. When we tested positive for the virus, we were also told to wait at home until our lips turned blue and we got sick enough to warrant hospitalization.”

“To be clear, this is not a typical medical protocol,” he went on. “Elites with yards told those without yards to stay inside, where the virus was more likely to spread. And the arrogant, closed-minded people in charge closed our parks, shuttered our schools, shut down our businesses, and took away our freedom.”

Oz, a political newcomer, will enter the race with immediate name recognition and a vast personal fortune, but with ample negative fodder for his opponents. A New Jersey resident, he has scant ties to Pennsylvania and doesn’t appear to have lived in the state since attending the University of Pennsylvania, though he began voting there this year via absentee ballot using a relative’s address, according to The Associated Press.

His political beliefs are also murky. Federal Election Commission records show he has contributed to candidates from both parties, including Democrats John Kerry, a former presidential candidate who is now President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Oz also served as a health adviser to former President Donald Trump, potentially teeing him up for an endorsement now that Trump’s earlier pick, Parnell, is no longer running.

Parnell’s candidacy imploded during a child custody hearing in which his estranged wife accused him of physical and verbal abuse. His campaign’s suspension clears the way for a second Trump endorsement, but it’s unclear what weight that might carry at this stage of the race.

The contest to replace retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania ― a state that Trump and Biden each narrowly won in 2016 and 2020, respectively ― could determine control of the evenly split Senate in 2022.

The Republican side features real estate developer Jeff Bartos and former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands, while Democrats have Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Rep. Conor Lamb.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dr-oz-se ... 1e550d7eab

At one time he was a respected surgeon but that went away a long time ago. He should have lost his license years ago for promoting the quack treatments on TV.

He will fit in well with the current GOP Trumpers.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: TV Celebrity Dr. Oz Is Running For Senate In Pennsylvania

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FrontSight wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:23 pm So he finally figured out that lying to the voters is more profitable than lying on Fox. Well, bless his heart.
Well he's not on ABC anymore and rating are down so he has to do something to get money for his retirement fund.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: TV Celebrity Dr. Oz Is Running For Senate In Pennsylvania

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Please Don’t Elect Dr. Oz—He’s a Disgrace to Our Profession
writes Dr. Daniel Summers

Can we please not do this, Pennsylvania?

By “this,” I mean send Mehmet Oz to the Senate.

Dr. Oz, as he is known to American television audiences, is planning to throw his hat into the next Senate election as a Republican in Pennsylvania. While nothing is ever certain in politics, his substantial fame is likely to make him a front-runner right from the start.

I greet this prospect with the same enthusiasm I’d have for contracting dysentery.

It’s been obvious for years that Oz is more than happy to leverage his reputation as a cardiothoracic surgeon and medical scientist in service to his own celebrity and advancement, and isn’t one to let quaint little things like facts stand in his way. Stroll down a checkout aisle in your local grocery store, and chances are strong you’ll see his smiling face on the cover of a magazine touting some wildly unhealthy weight-loss claim. He’s been promoting pseudoscience on his show for years, from obesity “remedies” like green coffee and garcinia cambogia to hawking “homeopathy starter kits,” so this is nothing new.

What’s been even more troubling during the pandemic is his willingness to speak in favor of treatments like hydroxychloroquine that have no merit for the care of COVID patients, going as far as touting the drug on Fox & Friends. As I’ve previously written, he even appeared on Fox and “suggested that the mere 2-3 percent increase in COVID-19 mortality that would come from reopening schools nationwide might be a worthwhile trade-off.” Medical misinformation is literally killing people, and it is unconscionable that anyone who should know better would contribute to it. And Oz most certainly should and does know better.

It is telling that Oz would see a space for himself in the Republican primary field. The GOP is riddled with prominent figures who undermine the seriousness of the pandemic, refute the importance of getting vaccinated, and denigrate the public health officials tasked with keeping the American people as safe and healthy as possible. Voters for those people are the ones Oz sees himself capable of wooing. That is the base he will need to capture to make his candidacy a success.

That he apparently likes his chances is enormously troubling.

The United States Senate already has one medical doctor going out of his way to shred the concepts of ethics and scientific evidence as a way of ginning up support for himself in the person of Rand Paul. He is an embarrassment to physicians everywhere, and as a doctor myself I consider him an abject disgrace. The idea of him and Oz trying to outdo each other in the amount of horseshit they’re willing to fling is the stuff of nightmares for me.

Of course, it is possible that Oz has seen within the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis space for a responsible voice for medical science. To join the ranks of the most hardcore sources of pandemic misinformation would be to torch his reputation within the medical profession to a much greater degree than he has been willing to erode it thus far. I would love to be misguided in my concern about his plans to run, and heaven knows my opinion of him has nowhere to go but up.

However, at this point Oz has waived all claims to benefit of the doubt. Habitually allowing his image to sell magazines making dangerous and outlandish health claims does not inspire confidence when imagining the lengths he’s willing to go to to win at the polls, and a willingness to spout dangerous and outlandish claims about the pandemic is par for the course in Republican politics these days. Believing he’s going to start standing on principle now means overlooking all the times he waltzed right on by it over the past several years. As America makes its way through another holiday season mired in the pandemic, an Oz Senate candidacy is one more big lump in a stocking already overflowing with coal.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/please-do ... ref=scroll

The voters should listen to this doctor. One Quack in the Senate is already one too many.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: TV Celebrity Dr. Oz Is Running For Senate In Pennsylvania

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cooper wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:41 pm
...

A New Jersey resident, he has scant ties to Pennsylvania and doesn’t appear to have lived in the state since attending the University of Pennsylvania, though he began voting there this year via absentee ballot using a relative’s address, according to The Associated Press.

...
Whaaat??
Voter fraud by a Repug. Who could have thought that could happen.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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