The man is an embarrassment of failures. His latest? A right-leaning newspaper suggested it would be a good idea to have the candidates publicize their medical status, and Oz leapt into action!
News: Dr. Mehmet Oz has released medical records in response to a recent editorial from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
A letter (dated yesterday) from a physician released by the Oz campaign deems Oz to be in "overall excellent health."
Here's the first page of the letter: pic.twitter.com/aVM27TWHXy
— Justin Sweitzer (@justin_sweitzer) September 23, 2022
I would not expect that he had medical concerns, and he certainly seems fit, and I don’t think anyone is questioning his health as a reason to disqualify him. Rather, Oz has tried to suggest that Fetterman is in poor health, so he clearly saw this as a way to get in another dig.
Unfortunately, there is one little glitch: that letterhead.
Cool. The primary care physician for this guy who claims to live in Pennsylvania has a Manhattan office overlooking Central Park, a two hour drive from his purported home. How nice for him.
Of course, Fetterman has a response.
Today Dr. Oz confirmed that he does not actually live in Pennsylvania, because no one who does would have a primary care doctor on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.
We didn’t need to know Dr. Oz’s bone density. We need to know whether he would vote to ban all abortions after 15 weeks. We need to know whether he would vote to raise the minimum wage. We need to know whether he even plans to stay in Pennsylvania after the election.
In June, I released a letter from my doctor where he clearly stated that I am fit to serve. Dr. Oz built his entire career by lying to people about health. I trust my actual doctors over the opinion of a charlatan who played on on TV.
This is the most entertaining political race in ages.
Oz’s campain thus far has consistently been a flat out sprint through a rake factory warehouse after an earthquake.
He’s successfully damaged an entire month’s production and continues unabated.
Maybe he’ll pay for his next campaign by selling rakes with Oz faceprints built in.
Wasn’t Dr. Bornstein available*?
*No, he died last year.
Apart from being competent and pugnacious, Fetterman looks pretty cool. I imagine him hanging out with Vin Diesel and Wesley Snipes.
BMI is garbage in any event, but WTF?
Holy shit, Bornstein was born the same year as Trump. If he looked after Drumpf as good as he looked after himself, the election 2024 may be blissfully Donald-free.
Also, re. Fetterman; from now on the Thunderdome shall be an option if one candidate slanders the other.
(Crowd: “TWO MEN ENTERS, ONE MAN LEAVES!”)
There’s another problem. Oz’s home address is redacted. Perhaps it wasn’t sent to the PA address of record?
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larpar@2 Yeah, it was hard to read that without thinking the instructions were “Write something like Trump’s medical letter except make it sound more like what a doctor would actually write.”
I’m from Pennsylvania and was really hoping Fetterman will win, but after hearing about Oz’s normal THYROID function, I have to admit I’m starting to reconsider (good thing I can’t vote in PA anyway).
Oz and Mastriano are approaching campaign incompetence from two different directions. Oz has plenty of money to brag about, er, his celebrity. Mastriano has so little money he depends on, er, lots of campaign signs in yards?
Crossposted from the Infinititinite thread:
I see ads from the land of Oz (that’d be New Jersey), but very few from Mastriano, on the telly. Not sure which one is more desperate at this point.
Though, to Oz’s credit, he most likely will accept the results of the election.
It is a strange medical letter. Especially those random capitalisations and the “signs of infection” on urinalysis. There’s nothing exactly wrong with it, but it looks like it was written by a junior medical student.
I think PaulBC@7 is on the money.
This was written not as an MD to MD letter, but as a political stunt. Oz wouldn’t know that PSA is a marker for prostate cancer? And HDL and LDL? Do all medical doctors have such poor writing skills? Pathetic.
We must respect Oz right to make himself look ridicilous. I look forward to many new announcements.
My approach to life has been when you find something you are good at, find someone willing to pay you for doing it. Oz is good at making himself look ridiculous. He did it on TV for years. Now he’s doing it in politics. Not sure who’s paying him.
And I also have this vision of Fetterman waiving his wand and incanting “Riddikulus.” Which, I guess, makes Oz a Boggart?
‘Chronicles of Riddikulus’ ?
Has Oz officially renounced his Turkish citizenship yet?
Last I hear, he promised to do so “if he won”, but being a GOPer, should be considered a liar on every topic until definitively proven otherwise.
Matt G @ #11
It was certainly a political stunt to publish it, but it seems written in a standard format of a health status letter from a doctor to patient, much like what I get from my PCP. A lot of people know those TLAs, but doctors will still spell them out. And yes, I believe medical doctors typically have poor writing skills, even noted for it. They don’t usually take writing classes in college as it’s not considered a skill they need. Of course, the odds that an office worker actually produced the letter for her are very high. It’s boilerplate info, so almost doable with an AI.
robro–
I can’t speak to US standards, but as someone who reads medical letters almost every day, I can say that one is very badly written. I don’t just mean the weird capitalisations which seem designed to emulate Trump’s tweeting style rather than emphasise actually important information. It’s also the poorly structured clinical reasoning. Again, it’s not wrong per se, just odd.
Well, actually, there is one outright error. BMI is not the ratio of weight to height (it’s weight to height squared), and the usual accepted normal range is 19-25 not 19-24 which I put down to a typo as the letter correctly reports 25 as the upper range of normal. It’s not exactly a devastating error, though.
robro@16 The letter format might be common, but it’s pretty silly. If I want to know how my kidney is functioning, I can look at the metabolic panel myself online. I’m not an MD so I might have some questions about tests I don’t know as well. Usually these are answered in a far less stilted fashion. Whether the reply is from a doctor or RN, it sounds human: “Everything looked fine. Schedule a followup in six months.”
The kinds of “letters” I’m familiar with tend to meet formal requirements, such as exempting my kids from PE class for a set period of recovery time. Or one explaining that you’re healthy enough to donate a kidney (I didn’t as it turned out, but I have a letter like that.) A letter that simply tells the world everything is hunky dory still seems like a PR stunt to me.
But I also think other than the bizarre capitalization, I would let it pass. THYROID, CHOLESTEROL, EXCELLENT! That settles it. I’m moving back to PENNSYLVANIA and voting for you right now.