Latest news with #JohnQ.
Miami Herald
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Is this a 'John Q' moment?
One of my favorite movies stars Denzel Washington as John Q. Archibald, and his beautiful wife Denise, is played by Kimberly Elise. They have a nine-year-old son who was in need of a serious lifesaving heart surgical procedure. John Q. struggles all his life to make ends meet, like most Americans today, so when his son suddenly went into heart failure, it was clear he was miles away from the money needed to green light the surgery. Every day for the past year, his wife had been telling John Q. that he must do more. While his son lay in the hospital close to death, his wife, with tears in her eyes, loudly proclaims, 'Do Something!' It was then that John Q. realizes that he needed to do something radical. He decides that he would storm the hospital, kidnap the doctors and make them perform the procedure. This is the story of our failing Republic today. America is at a crossroads and its leadership is betraying its citizenry in a major way. They are laying off thousands of people that are lifelong employees of the government. They have had no due process. They are not being advised of a reduction in staff. They are not being let go because they under performed, have days and weeks of unfinished work, or a threat to their fellow employees or our democracy. A sharp bladed knife is being swung at them from on high. It has taken many of them years to obtain America's iconic middle class status only to be within days of losing it due to no fault of their own. The average American is only 60 days away from financial ruin. So while we are early in the process of layoffs by mid May, if not before, you are going to see thousands of protesters take to the streets and demand of their governments to come to their aid and give their jobs back. Then the republic will begin to feel the weight of its citizens that have been tossed aside. If you think those that stormed the capital on January 6th were something, wait until you witness the calculated attacks of a 15-20 year government veteran employee who knows how to wield a computer and a protest banner. I am here to tell you that each one of them will find each other and when they do, the devil will have to pay the tax for the horrible way that each of these employees have been treated. Dare I say that this attack will look different than any that we have seen since the inner struggles of the new republic of the late 1700's. These folks will be armed with families that are being impacted by their recent downgrade from middle class to new recipients of unemployment checks and welfare benefits such as food stamps. They will be mostly white and middle aged men and women. Their protests will be treated differently as most black folks will stay home because, quite frankly, how we endure hardship and coalesce around troubled times is different. Sadly, we have been let down by America so much that it has lost its sting. From segregation, Jim Crow, the erosion of Affirmative Action, to being the main participants in the school to prison pipeline that plagues our children, we are used to being let down by America. All we have ever wanted is for America to love us as we love it. We need to stop this snow storm now before the avalanche comes.
New York Times
14-03-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Dr. Oz's Dizzying Journey From Heart Doctor to Celebrity to Iconoclast
Before medical contrarianism became intrinsic to his identity, Dr. Mehmet Oz appeared motivated by curiosity rather than opportunism. Arriving at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in 1986 to follow in his father's footsteps and become a cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Oz became well respected in the field. But much to the chagrin of administrators and peers, he also showed a penchant for questionable medicine. In the mid-1990s, he invited a healer into the hospital's cardiac operating room 'to run a kind of energy, which science cannot prove exists,' through patients' bodies. Proponents claim that kind of practice and its adjacents (think Reiki or 'therapeutic touch') improve people's health and result in faster recovery times, less pain and better physical function for patients — despite a lack of scientific explanation for how they might do so. 'Not everything adds up,' Dr. Oz told The New Yorker in 2013. 'It's about making people more comfortable.' This nonconformist approach endeared Dr. Oz to patients and to a public eager for a warmer approach to medicine. At the same time, it became a way to accrue decades of fame and fortune. Those efforts have culminated in Dr. Oz's nomination by President Trump to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Senate hearings are to begin Friday. If confirmed, his appointment would be yet another signal to a new wave of charismatic health personalities that science and evidence are negotiable in the service of ambition. In 1996, Dr. Oz helped transplant a heart for the brother of Joe Torre, then manager of the New York Yankees. It was 'his first big splash of publicity,' a former colleague, Dr. Eric Rose, who led the Torre operation, said, 'and he loved it.' Dr. Oz chased the high. He guest hosted Charlie Rose's talk show, published books and consulted on the Denzel Washington film 'John Q.' Starting in 2003, Dr. Oz began hosting his own show, 'Second Opinion With Dr. Oz,' on the Discovery Channel. One of his first guests was Oprah Winfrey. Soon, he was making multiple appearances on her show as a medical expert. By 2004, Ms. Winfrey was calling him 'America's doctor.' Dr. Oz said in a 2003 interview that his approach to medicine, and by extension his show, was about making available to patients the best treatments they could afford. Noting that he had an M.B.A. in addition to a medical degree, Dr. Oz said, 'I think as physicians, we are abdicating our responsibility to the society, to our community if we don't take an active role in figuring out how to spend money.' Dr. Oz's answer to the money question was alternative treatments. In some cases, holistic medicine may appeal to patients as an affordable option when expensive conventional therapies failed them. But Dr. Oz's openness to alternative medicine would gradually give way to the promotion of quackery. 'Second Opinion' lasted only one season, but in 2009, Dr. Oz returned with 'The Dr. Oz Show.' By the early 2010s it was in the upper echelon of daytime TV programs. On his own show and elsewhere, he gave credence to any health fad, no matter how flimsy the science behind it. Dr. Oz touted the healing properties of hyperbaric oxygen and colloidal silver (tiny silver particles suspended in liquid), and hosted the antivaccine conspiracy theorist Joe Mercola to promote a dietary supplement. Still, viewers ate it up — and it's not hard to see why. In my new book, I show how media figures leverage their positions as established, trusted experts to become iconoclasts. Touting consensus wisdom makes you one of a million. But if you're a contrarian, you immediately shrink the pool of voices competing for attention. Dr. Oz is not a public health edge case. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent decades shifting further into vaccine skepticism as his stance garnered more attention; he's parlayed that attention into a position of power as the new secretary of health of human services. The physician and health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya found fame through his rejection of Covid-19 mitigation policies in 2020, drawing scorn from the medical community; he's now on track to lead the National Institutes of Health. This reactionary strain is right at home in our electoral politics, but it marks a change from how the government's public health policy has traditionally been decided and carried out. In April 2012, Dr. Oz told his audience that sleeping with a sock full of heated, uncooked rice could help with insomnia; a lawsuit followed after a man taking his advice claimed he was injured. Researchers in 2014 found that only 21 percent of 'Dr. Oz Show' recommendations had 'believable' evidence behind them. That same year, Dr. Oz appeared before a Senate subcommittee hearing to defend his advocacy in favor of weight-loss substances and faced pointed criticism from lawmakers. 'I don't get why you need to say this stuff, because you know it's not true,' Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, said. In 2015, a group of doctors called on Columbia to cut ties with Dr. Oz, describing him as someone who 'has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.' On his show, Dr. Oz fired back, vowing not to be silenced. Two years later, a cohort of academics, writing in the American Medical Association's Journal of Ethics, questioned if there should be some sort of sanction for his 'inaccurate and potentially harmful' advice. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he repeatedly appeared on Fox News to promote unverified treatments like hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, leading to intense criticism. Eventually, his show began bleeding viewers and never recovered, after which he ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. But the reputational damage hasn't stopped him. He already made the leap from the operating room to the TV screen; now he seems poised to enter the federal government. His fame has endeared him to Mr. Trump, and his nonconformist reputation is perfectly suited for the new health administration. We don't know for sure what Dr. Oz will do if confirmed as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He may be an effective leader. But his past is likely to prove concerning for people on Medicare and Medicaid who are counting on stable, reliable access to health care. Dr. Oz's confirmation could also encourage a cadre of actors to follow his path and sow more discord in what's left of the nation's public health structures. It's one thing to advocate alternative methods for the benefit of your patients. It's quite another to build a career on rejecting traditional medicine — an abdication of his responsibility as a health professional.
