Internet quack Joe Mercola is worried. Dr. Oz to the rescue!

Dr. Oz interviews Joe Mercola on his show.
After a series of studies showing that vitamins and supplements are usually a waste of money, including my recent article on the top 6 vitamins you shouldn’t take, internet supplement salesman Joe Mercola is worried.  He should be: his Internet-driven empire is largely based on sales of vitamins and supplements, for which his claims range from merely implausible to dangerously untrue, including:



I could provide many more examples, but this should be enough to demonstrate that I'm not making this stuff up.

Mercola is also one of the loudest voices and worst offenders in the anti-vaccine movement. Among other misinformation, he claims that the hepatitis vaccine causes autism, and his website urges people to use his supplements instead of getting vaccinated.

So how do I know Mercola is worried? He's appearing on the Dr. Oz Show on Monday, February 10 (the day after I'm writing this) to talk about multivitamins. Apparently his 10 minute segment wasn't enough, so he posted an article on his website with the "Information I couldn't share" on Dr. Oz's show.

Does the article explain why multivitamins are actually good for you?  Well, no. Most of the article is a big red herring, in which he argues that supplements should not be regulated as drugs, because "we have all the regulations we need." Then he contradicts himself and says that the FDA already regulates supplements. (It doesn't - or to be more precise, the FDA does not require supplement makers to prove their products work. It can only step in if the products start to kill people. This is what Mercola calls regulation.) Besides, he says, supplements are harmless. As evidence, he cites a press release from a pseudoscientific organization that claims "no deaths from supplements in 27 years."

Not surprisingly, Mercola doesn't cite any actual science to support his claims. In contrast, several very large studies in major medical journals, cited in my own columns last month and last October, show that routine supplementation with multivitamins, especially with the megadoses that many people take, can indeed cause genuine harm. Those same studies showed that if you don't have a deficiency, there's simply no benefit to taking most vitamins.  Mercola's response is to cite opinion pieces from his own website that simply assert, without any evidence, that the studies are wrong.

In other words, Mercola's response is "Oh yeah?" He then goes off on a tangent and launches an irrelevant ad hominem attack on noted vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit.

Why has Dr. Oz repeatedly had Joe Mercola on his show? This is a tough one. Does Oz believe that autism is caused by vaccines, something Mercola has claimed repeatedly over the years?  Does he understand that Mercola's anti-vaccination campaign leads to genuine harm? Does he know that the FDA has repeatedly issued warnings to Mercola to demand that he stop making false claims about his vitamins and supplements, as Chicago Magazine reported?

Or does Dr. Oz keep inviting Mercola back because he knows Mercola has a big audience that will increase his own viewership?

Despite my past criticism of Dr. Oz, I still think he has a better grasp of science than Joe Mercola. He also reassures viewers constantly that he doesn't sell the products that appear on his show. And yet Oz is giving a platform to someone who makes huge profits selling products based on unproven claims. By having Mercola on his show, Oz is giving him free publicity and helping him sell those same products. And whether or not Oz agrees with Mercola, he is helping to give credibility to Mercola's wildly inaccurate and dangerous anti-vaccine claims.

9 comments:

  1. I'm subscribing to your feed as well ... keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Nice hit piece on vitamins considering that millions have improved their health avoiding all the big pharma drugs and corresponding side effects.

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  2. Anonymous eh? You're the Wizard of Oz for sure.

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  3. Blah blah blah. I don't think Dr.Mercola is worried at all. The comments in this article are wildly inaccurate and without basis or proof of any sort. Read some of Mercola's articles. He provides proof and evidence throughout. You don't have to agree with everything he writes to find the information incredibly useful. Sure he sells stuff. So what. Why shouldn't he. You don't have to buy anything (I don't) to benefit from the information. Also, Mercola is not anti-vaccine. He definitely is skeptical. Good thing. Are we just supposed to believe? This article is just a rant anyway. Rant away but find some real quacks. There are lots of them out there.

    By the way, just wondering how much money Paul Offit makes from the vaccines he loves so much. Not that he's a quack or anything though - just a firm believer it what he sells I guess.

    Pass the Himilayan salt please.

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    1. Read some of Mercola's articles. He provides proof and evidence throughout. Hahaha like with iodine? One time he says that iodine is dangerous a few mounth later when he starts selling he wrote how iodine is good and advice taking high dose. Quack

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  4. Ever watch the commercials from Big Pharma with the side effects list of their magic pills? Hmm....let's see...encephalopathy, liver cancer, and sometimes death to name just a few. Haven't heard of this list for vitamins yet. Or law firms commercials offering their help in suing the pharmaceutical companies for damages. Haven't heard of them offering their help to sue Mercola yet? Wonder why? You figure it out.

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  5. i dont know much about homeopathy.

    one thing is true, swine flu vaccine killed my mon 4 years ago, and near killed my dad at the same time.

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  6. DO YOU BELIEVE IN MERCOLA´S TRUSTWORTHY? I HOPE THAT ONE DAY YOU WILL WAKE UP. HERE IS ONE EXAMPLE OF HIS ASTONISHINGLY STUPID, QUACK AND CRIMINAL CLAIMS
    “The current treatments for hepatitis C are seriously lacking. Interferon and antivirals have less than a 30% response rate, .......
    Dr. Burton M. Berkson was among the first to discover a natural treatment regimen. He is an internist and during his training was given several patients who were expected to die from hepatitis C. These three patients, who were not expected to live more than a few weeks, completely recovered. What were the antioxidants?
    • Alpha-lipoic acid
    • Silymarin (milk thistle)
    • Selenium”
    Excerpted from: The Most Epic Drug Failure. Ever. By dr. Mercola September 13; 2012 .
    Read more in my comment published in August 4, 2013: https://www.facebook.com/MichalPijakMDPersonalizedPaleoNutrition/posts/491715230912005
    It´s important to note that since that time, a greater understanding of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) genome and proteins has enabled efforts to improve efficacy and tolerability of HCV treatment. Notably, this has led to the development of multiple direct acting antivirals (DAAs). Recent advaces in hepatitis C treatment you can see at http://hepatitiscnewdrugresearch.com/2015--advances-in-hepatitis-c-therapies.html,


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  7. You truly don't know what the heck you're talking about. You watch these pharmaceutical companies sell this crap to our children every day. We are a nation of addicted people. Addicted to pharmaceuticals. Why don't you track the quacks there who make billions of dollars and so rarely actually help people. Put your focus somewhere where it actually does some good. Wake up!

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  8. Most of the food freak-outs about additives, seasonings, every artificial sweetener can ultimately be traced back to Dr. Mercola or some of his interests and cohorts. Not to worry. Dr. Mercola has a product to sell, a video, something that can fix it all.http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/mercola.html

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