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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at USFSP chapter.

Dr. Mehmet Oz is many things: a physician, an author, a television presenter, and President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. These centers provide healthcare insurance for over 160 million Americans. Obviously, the job of overseeing this is incredibly important. However, Dr. Oz’s credentials have been called into question because of his role in promoting pseudoscience to a huge audience, as well as some of his perspectives on medicine.  

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, or even a medical student. However, I feel very passionate about communicating correct medical information, and I hope that this article will allow me to correct some of the misinformation spread by Dr. Oz. 

One pseudoscience Dr. Oz promoted on his television show is “homeopathy,” which is a medical system that believes the best way to treat illness is to use extremely diluted substances. Studies have been done that show homeopathy is ineffective, but that did not stop Dr. Oz from bringing homeopaths onto his show, such as Russ Greenfield. During his time on the show, Greenfield explained homeopathy by saying that the “spirit of the medication” sends a message to the body to heal itself. Oz even seemed to give his own testimonial when he said that his wife uses homeopathic remedies on their children. Very reassuring. 

Mediums—people who can communicate with the dead—have been a subject of controversy ever since the 1920s. Of course, their scientific merit has been unable to be verified. Oz, however, really loved having mediums on his show. One was Laura Lynn Jackson, who instructed the audience to look and ask for signs from their deceased loved ones. Her segment was tame compared to medium Anna Raimondi’s time on the show, though. On one appearance, Raimondi claimed that she was communicating with spirits in a “murder house,” and in another, she met with women who had questions for their deceased parents. Though she seemed to help those who appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, it’s hard not to think of what she’s doing as exploitation of the grieving. And again, the mediums were allowed to talk about their extra-sensory perception with no opposing viewpoints presented.  

Oz also loved promoting all kinds of supplements on his show, even though the supplement industry is not required to prove the efficacy of products before they go out on the market.  Most notoriously, he promoted a slew of weight-loss products, from raspberry ketone to saffron extract, which led to him being called before a U.S. Senate panel and questioned as to why he promoted these supplements on his show. One of these supplements, green coffee bean, had a study that supposedly proved its benefits, but the study had to be retracted. Oz ran his own study that supposedly proved that green coffee bean helped women lose weight, but there were several glaring problems with his experiment.  

Though Oz has agreed to stop promoting wellness products if he becomes the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, there are other things he’s done that make his nomination for the position questionable. He has made statements about Medicare that lead to people wondering if he can lead the centers impartially, flip-flopped on his vaccine stances, and promoted COVID-19 “treatments” while having financial ties to the company making them.  

We don’t know when Oz will have his Senate confirmation hearing, and it’s very likely that all this will come back up during that. Mehmet Oz might be a doctor, but his history of misinformation might make him unqualified to lead millions of Americans’ healthcare. Only time will tell if United States senators believe this. 

Anna Burns

USFSP '26

Anna Burns is a freshman at the University of South Florida. She is an English major with a concentration in Literary Studies. When she is not procrastinating assignments, she loves reading, listening to music, and talking her friends' ears off about bands.