Dr Oz - How to Know if Your Weed Killer Could Cause Cancer

[proverbialwisdom]

Youtube version substituted for DU; original video at top link.

http://www.doctoroz.com/episode/how-outsmart-identity-thieves-after-your-money-and-medical-data?video_id=4158724753001

[center]

[/center]

Clip 5-7 of 14 (link above): How to Know if Your Weed Killer Could Cause Cancer
Originally aired on 4/07/2015

Dr. Oz discusses the safety of the chemical glyphosate, which is found in a popular weed killer. Find out more about this product and if it is carcinogenic.

GUESTS: Jon Sileo , Nikki Burton , Scott Faber , Dr. Alan Greene , Robyn O’Brien , Carole Radziwill , Luann De Lesseps , Sonja Morgan , Kristen Taekman , Dorinda Medley , Vic Dibetto , Monica Reinagel

http://www.jeffereyjaxen.com/blog/dr-oz-blasts-glyphosate-monsanto-regulators

DR. OZ BLASTS GLYPHOSATE, MONSANTO, & REGULATORS
4/9/2015



To honor April 7th as World Health Day, Dr. Oz covered (video) the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recent classification of the herbicide glyphosate as a possible carcinogen. As his record shows in the past, Dr. Oz is known to flip-flop and ride the fence of hot button health tops. Often times he ends up on the wrong side of right, yet for this episode, Dr. Oz gave the public a fair and accurate portrayal of Monsanto’s flagship carcinogenic product, glyphosate.

Appearing live with Dr. Oz was pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene, Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), and food advocate Robyn O’Brien. Early in the episode, Dr. Oz stated for the record, “My goal is to always have an open and honest conversation, you all know that, but I couldn’t get anyone to appear on the show that supports glyphosate. I reached out to the Grocery Manufacturers of America, Crop Life America, and Monsanto and they all declined to be on the show.” This once again shows that GMO food and their pesticides are, according to their manufacturers, the best and safest products no one knows where to buy, how to find, or who to talk to about their safety.

During the course of the conversation, all three guests, along with Dr. Oz, sided with the WHO’s carcinogenic classification of glyphosate, discouraged its use, and warned of its numerous health effects. Refuting Monsanto’s official talking point that “Glyphosate does not pose a risk to humans, wildlife, or the environment”, Dr. Green stated “That’s just not true.” He then backed up his statement with verifiable studies that directly and completely contradicted Monsanto’s talking point.

In light of the new WHO classification, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been forced to “reassess glyphosate.” Giving an environmental perspective, EWG’s vice president Scott Faber stated “The EPA should take another look at it (glyphosate), but let’s not forget, the EPA got this wrong. For 20 years we’ve been told that his herbicide is a better alternative…and it turns out the world’s leading experts (WHO) now have found this is probably a human carcinogen.”

Representing mothers, families, and communities, food industry analyst turned food activist Robyn O’Brien said “If you step back and think about this big chemical company (Monsanto), this is one of their most profitable products, so of course they’re going to try to dismiss any concern around it and refute the science.”

Finally, Dr. Oz sounded off on the side of his guests and arguably most of the educated world by saying for the record, “This is a big debate everyone. Folks who make these products say “We need more data before you can make that statement (glyphosate is a possible carcinogen).” I think it’s the opposite. Not enough research doesn’t mean it's safe, it means we actually don’t know! And it’s upon us; it’s our obligation to figure it out before we start releasing it and exposing kids and others.”

<>

See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016120617

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016120437
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141070770

[zebonaut]

1. Monsanto responds:

Last edited Mon Apr 20, 2015, 11:54 AM - Edit history (1)

why it's a health drink:

I can hold 2 ideas in my head at the same time. Dr Oz is indeed a quack; but glyphosate is not healthy.

[rjsquirrel]

2. Too bad

dr. oz is a discredited quack.

Here's what happens when you rely on celebrities to make your case. They go down, your case loses credibility with him.

Basically to me, if Oz is against it then it probably isn't that bad.

[Sancho]

3. Roundup is proving to cause cancer...and is banned in parts of Europe

Your response to the OP is off target. If you think Roundup is safe, then say so. Otherwise, generic attacks are more a statement about your bias than useful conversation.

How do we know if a response like "Dr. Oz is a discredited quack." is not coming from a paid shill for Monsanto?

Lots of people don't like Dr. Oz's guests or homeopathic cures, but the reason we have alternative medicine and lifestyles is that it works well for many people.

[Thor_MN]

4. Dr. Oz is a quack.

Homeopathy is utter bullshit, incapable of curing anything. One could give anything to the people that it "works well" for and achieve the same results.

That being said, he is a terrible choice as spokesperson on anything. He is occasionally right, but being who he is, anything he says is suspect.

[Sancho]

5. Same response as before....

even in my lifetime, what is quackery sometimes becomes medicine and vice versa. Good science demonstrates this every day.

Dr. Oz is a TV show that gets people thinking about their own health. If someone doesn't like the guest's advice, that's expected. If something gives you a way to make life better, then great. It's not my favorite show, but I've watched it enough to see the goofy visual models and off-the-wall guests. Sometimes Dr. Oz clearly states that the evidence is not clear, or that you can try it, but there's no evidence to support that topic. Other times the show, audience, and guests seem to go off on a crazy tangent.

It seems as good to me as The Doctors. They have a plastic surgeon, sometimes a nutritionist, and sometimes introduce new, experimental treatments. They also have guest doctors, dentists, and psychologists with alternative treatments that are are discussed as trial therapies. At any rate, they have some boarder line advice too. One of the Doctors promotes an anti-aging creme on the side.

Dr. Oz's personality and style may not please you, but that doesn't make him a quack. Introducing alternatives along with some really good advice doesn't make him a quack. The OP was about Roundup, and Dr. Oz was appropriately warning people that you're taking a chance with cancer by using it. Nothing wrong with that advice in my book.

I'm old enough to have seen Linus Pauling, and Dr. Spock on TV when they were not called quacks. Meanwhile, Dr's in the early days of AIDS were called all kinds of names when describing HIV (accurately).

Rather than shooting the messenger, why not take each issue and examine the evidence for that topic carefully?

[Thor_MN]

7. Same response, he is a quack.

Homeopathy is, and always will be utter bullshit. Dr. Oz is not a quack because he is on TV, it's because he lends support to bullshit.

You totally missed my point. His ability to deliver sound advice is harmed by the cases where he promotes bullshit. People who are not medical doctors or scientists have difficulty knowing when he is delivering bullshit or sound advice.

[Sancho]

10. According to medical fact-checking...

Dr. Oz or his guests are supported by medical literature about half the time, is wrong about 20% of the time, and there is not information to decide about a third of the time.

Frankly, that likely as good as many doctors and hospitals if they were observed for every decision and prescription and bit of advice.

If you took ONLY DR. OZ's advice without his guests, he has support for the majority of his advice.

[Thor_MN]

11. I prefer someone who isn't proven to be wrong 20% of the time.

Hell, I wouldn't let someone with a fail rate of 20% wash my car.

"Frankly, that likely as good as many doctors and hospitals" Please provide a link for this assertion.

I don't take Dr. Oz's advice precisely because he is so often wrong. People are much better off consulting a doctor that is examining them, rather than rolling the dice to take the advice of a quack who doesn't know anything about them.

[Sancho]

12. That was the study of Dr. Oz from Lancet...

You can see the study mentioned in the CNN video that I linked already.

Dr. Oz may give advice, but more often he gives explanations or calls out problems (like the Round Up one). His guests more often give advice that is questionable.

Dr. Oz also states openly people should see their own doctor. Much of the TV audience never sees a doctor or doesn't have their own doctor. That is exactly what he says in the Congressional testimony. He is trying to get people to take control of their health, but not in lieu of having their own medical advice.

Again, the idea is simply one of the use of Round UP which Dr. Oz brought out on his show. Even if Dr. Oz is not correct all the time, he seems on good footing for this one.

You don't have to watch the show (I rarely watch it), but Dr. Oz has a niche that makes sense to me.

[Thor_MN]

13. Convenient misunderstanding. Cite your claim that it is similar to Drs. and Hospitals.

You claimed that Drs. and Hospitals likely screw up as often as Oz. Prove it.

He gives support to his guests by having them on the show and not refuting ridiculous claims like Homeopathy. He fails in getting people to take control of their health by promoting medical advice and tossing off a quick disclaimer.

I haven't said anything about Roundup other than all his opinions are tainted by failing 20% (your numbers) of the time.

[Sancho]

14. I'll leave it to you to study hospital effectiveness since that's off target here...

It's not hard to find. Just one example; look at how a US hospital handled the ebola case lately.
At any rate, you can look at the Consumer Reports articles on hospitals for an easy to read version. They report lots of mistakes and issues and even rate some major hospitals.

Meanwhile, having different views on a show isn't giving them support. I'd refer you to John Steward's show, or Rachael Maddow for shows that often have opposing guests. How about Bill Maher? Too many to count.

If you don't like Dr. Oz's presentation then don't watch it. He is well-trained. Probably his biggest fault is trying too hard to explain difficult biology in simple terms. I don't know the demographics of the show's audience, but I bet the producers do! We all know he has a propensity to alternative medicine (not necessarily homeopathy), and he likely does some of that because his sponsors, audience, and producers want it that way. He's following the Oprah model and it seems to work for him.

I saw Sanjay Gupta make a major mistake on a morning show when explaining a medical finding one time. Even though he is a well-trained doctor, he made a common statistical mistake and reported something incorrectly. Dr. Gupta also simplifies things and talks about medical issues out of his specialty. On a few occasions, he also talks to guests. If he had his own show I wonder if he would do much better than Dr. Oz?

The Lancet audit of some of Dr. Oz's shows may not be perfect, but it included things that guests said, not simply what Dr. Oz said. Again, I wonder if any medical show on broadcast TV with guests would do much better. If you address issues, you will always have guests who may be giving unfounded advice. I mentioned in a previous post that "accepted advice" like Linus Pauling (vitamin C) and Dr. Spock (baby advice) is considered awful a few years later, but is mainstream at the time.

[Thor_MN]

15. Your claim, your responsibility to support.

"Dr. Oz or his guests are supported by medical literature about half the time, is wrong about 20% of the time, and there is not information to decide about a third of the time.

Frankly, that likely as good as many doctors and hospitals if they were observed for every decision and prescription and bit of advice. "

Since you can't back that up, we have to dismiss it as a fail.

There's a huge difference that you don't acknowledge. The daily show is COMEDY. No one is going to die because they listened to John Stewart. Maher is likewise comedy. Maddow is politics. Oz is promoting ideas that could directly result in the death of people.

Does Lancet also rate Gupta as a 20% failure?

I guess we are at an impasse, I don't believe in Oz, and you have faith in Oz's quackery. I do support your right to believe in bad science, so have a good night.

[Sancho]

16. Ok..here's the first links...I expect your first apology....if I look it up I expect you to go public!

http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7346

"Results We could find at least a case study or better evidence to support 54% (95% confidence interval 47% to 62%) of the 160 recommendations (80 from each show). For recommendations in The Dr Oz Show, evidence supported 46%, contradicted 15%, and was not found for 39%. For recommendations in The Doctors, evidence supported 63%, contradicted 14%, and was not found for 24%. Believable or somewhat believable evidence supported 33% of the recommendations on The Dr Oz Show and 53% on The Doctors. On average, The Dr Oz Show had 12 recommendations per episode and The Doctors 11. The most common recommendation category on The Dr Oz Show was dietary advice (39%) and on The Doctors was to consult a healthcare provider (18%). A specific benefit was described for 43% and 41% of the recommendations made on the shows respectively. The magnitude of benefit was described for 17% of the recommendations on The Dr Oz Show and 11% on The Doctors. Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest accompanied 0.4% of recommendations."

Of course, it's not too surprising that researchers could not find evidence in some of the shows, because they were talking about looking traditional journals. There might be evidence, but they only had one hour to look! A flawed study at best.

Here's Dr. Oz's response:

The Dr. Oz Show chalks up the results of the study to its willingness to highlight methods that might not fit in with popular opinion.

“The Dr. Oz Show has always endeavored to challenge the so-called conventional wisdom, reveal multiple points of view and question the status quo. The observation that some of the topics discussed on the show may differ from popular opinion or various academic analyses affirms that we are furthering a constructive dialogue about health and wellness,” a spokesman for the show wrote to Newsweek.

In a profile of Dr. Mehmet Oz in The New Yorker last year, Oz put it this way:

http://www.newsweek.com/researchers-cant-find-proof-two-thirds-medical-advice-dr-oz-293551

“Ultimately, if we want to fix American medicine we will need skeptical and smart patients to dominate,” he said. “They will need to ask the hard questions, because much of medicine is just plain old logic. So I am out there trying to persuade people to be those patients. And that often means telling them what the establishment doesn’t want them to hear: that their answers are not the only answers, and their medicine is not the only medicine.”

Your best bet is probably to listen to your own doctors, Allan said. “Our bottom line conclusion is to be skeptical of what you hear on these shows.”

After your first "I was wrong" I'll find other evidence to show you are simply not looking at this show accurately. The show is exactly what it says that it wants to be. Dr. Oz is carefully planning his material.

[Thor_MN]

17. FAIL.

You have done nothing to support your claim that Oz's 20% failure rate is "likely as good as many doctors and hospitals"

Please prove that many doctors and hospitals have a 20% failure rate. That was your claim, posting about other TV shows does nothing to support it. If you can document a 20% failure rate for many doctors and hospitals, THEN you will get an apology.

[Sancho]

18. Nope..you won't admit you are wrong about the first link

So I won't waste my time any more. You have been told the source, and no matter what, you still haven't fessed up that instead of being a quack, Dr. Oz is just a planned show where they know who they put on and why. It's comparable to the Doctors (actually has better advice in the end). Admit you are wrong on the first case! Why waste time with links you could find yourself? Even if you don't have access to medical journals, you can read Consumer's Reports.

You aren't interested in the facts, but only in defending an incorrect position. Dr. Oz is less of a quack and more of a person with a goal in mind. You don't have to like it or watch the show, but he's not ignorant of modern medicine. He chooses to challenge conventional healthcare! He says so, and gives out comparable advice to other doctor shows.

Still waiting for your acknowledgement of error.

[Thor_MN]

19. I made no error. I've been asking you to back your claim for hours.

Oz is a quack not because he is on TV, but because he backs bad science. I told you that a long time ago.

I do not care about any other TV shows, which you keep bringing up as evidence of... something.

Your deliberate dodging of your initial claim shows that you are not being honest. I expect you to either retract your claim or provide evidence of many doctors and hospitals having a 20% failure rate.

[alp227]

8. Would you say the same about Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc.?

"Rather than shooting the messenger, why not take each issue and examine the evidence for that topic carefully?"

[Sancho]

9. Yes I would...

Of course, Dr. Oz is not a political pundit, but if they have a good idea it's fine with me.

If Rush had guest with differing viewpoints, and the guests had some way out ideas it would not be a problem for me.

If Rush was trying to get people to be interested in elections or voting as a goal for the show, then even if I disagreed with some of his positions I would appreciate the effort.

[Sancho]

6. FYI, to the Dr. Oz critics and fans...

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/19/media/dr-oz-response/

CNN has a report, a brief comment by Dr. Oz at a Congressional hearing, and plans for a rebuttal show. It's interesting that his critics appear to be fronted by industries that he attacks on the show.