Mehmet Oz, the celebrity snake oil salesman from New Jersey who’s trying to carpetbag himself to the Senate via Pennsylvania, has another integrity issue to deal with. And a Donald Trump issue. With a week until the election, the Washington Post has a new story about some academic integrity problems Oz had in his medical research—apparently not the puppy-killing studies this time. But the story that’s going to haunt him is the Trump part. The part where Oz said that Mitch McConnell—Trump’s sworn enemy—is the real leader of the Republican party.
The gist of the story is that in 2003, Oz was banned for two years from presenting research to the leading academic group in his field, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS), after he was forced to withdraw what was supposed to be an important study. He was also banned from publishing any of his research in the AATS journal for two years. So, academic sloppiness that resulted in a pretty harsh penalty. That’s a big deal in the medical research community, but Republicans don’t care if he maybe had some academic ethics problems—they’re not looking for honesty. What they’re looking for is fealty to Trump. And that’s the problem.
When the Post went to Eric Rose, chief of cardiac surgery at Columbia University’s medical program and Oz’s superior at the time to get confirmation on the research story, they got a whole different story: “He said to me, Trump isn’t the leader of the party,” Rose said. “He told me that Mitch McConnell is the leader of the Republican Party.” Oz also told Rose that the governor candidate, Doug Mastriano, “won’t win.”
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Oz came to Rose about three weeks ago to help him deal with his other medical ethics issue, asking him to say that Oz was not responsible for puppy slaughter. Rose, a Democrat who made a modest $165 donation to the Fetterman campaign, refused to give what he saw as a political favor to Oz. When Rose told him he didn’t appreciate Oz’s fealty to Trump and the Republicans, Oz ditched Trump.
The orange one is not going to be happy about that, and the Oz campaign knows it. A spokesman for the campaign completely denied it. “Doctor Oz never said any of those things, and it’s irresponsible and frankly pathetic that The Washington Post falsely attributes them to him,” Barney Keller, the spokesman, said. Enter Charles Stolar, a pediatric surgeon at Columbia.
Stolar verified the story, telling the Post that he spoke with Rose right after Oz talked to him, and he corroborated all of the details, including what Oz said about McConnell, Trump, and Mastriano. “I can assure you as sure as the sun rises that Eric is not lying,” Stolar said.
So here’s the choice of who to believe: the chief of cardiac surgery at Columbia or the guy who made himself famous peddling junk like raspberry ketones, “the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat”; green coffee extract, “the magic weight-loss cure for every body type”; putting a bar of lavender soap under your sheet to prevent leg cramps; and basing personal health decisions on your astrological sign. Oh, and he oversaw puppy torture and slaughter in the name of research.
Yeah. That’s an easy choice. So is who should be representing Pennsylvania in the Senate.
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