I am actually floored. It has taken me a couple of days to get this post made as there are 3 extremely important stories that should have come out of Senate’s consumer protection panel that dragged Dr. Oz over the coals for his role as a snake oil pitchman (I don’t say salesman as he claims he does not make any money off of his recommendations). This story is probably the most important because it is points out the bizarre, and almost unbelievable laziness of the main stream press.
After the Senate’s panel there are thousands of stories posted to the internet, each with their own rewording of the same story. Each one parrots back the official story, with the same quotes and the same main points. I doubt any one of the journalists watched the entire video of the panel. But now, after a congresswoman chastised Dr. Oz, in much gentler words than I have ever used, it seems that for millions of people, Dr. Oz is clearly feeling the heat for his over the top claims of products.
That is the official story. It is missing the depth of incompetence that Dr. Oz has sunk to in including psychic healers and anti-vaccine nuts as legitimate health care providers. It is missing just how bad Dr. Oz’s claims have been, only glancing at the problems with his green coffee bean claims, but missing the entire part of the segment that includes Dr. Oz interviewing a fake doctor to support false claims of weight-loss on green coffee beans. Yes, the entire story was fabricated, most likely by Dr. Oz and sold to the public with a person who claimed falsely to be a doctor. Lindsey Duncan, who goes by the name, Dr. Lindsey was portrayed as a doctor while presenting to the Dr. Oz show the benefits of green coffee bean extract. In what appeared to be an infomercial for a company selling green coffee beans, Dr. Oz and Dr. Lindsey went on to give fallacious answers as to what to look for in dosage and timing of pills in what clearly appeared to be an attempt to market a specific brand of green coffee bean extract.
This is very important for several reasons. First, all of the official stories that are all over the internet refer to this current FTC action:
Within weeks of Oz’s comments about green coffee — which refers to the unroasted seeds or beans of coffee — a Florida-based operation began marketing a dietary supplement called Pure Green Coffee, with claims that the chlorogenic acid found in the beans could help people lose 17 pounds and cut body fat by 16 percent in 22 weeks.
The company, according to federal regulators, featured footage from “The Dr. Oz Show” to sell its supplement. Oz has no association with the company and received no money from sales.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission sued the sellers behind Pure Green Coffee and accused them of making bogus claims and deceiving consumers. – ABC news
The FTC has brought a legal action against a company that is selling green coffee beans, about $15 million dollars worth from some estimates. This company came into being just weeks after the show came on. Their website and their ads show clips from Dr. Oz’s show. They don’t say that he endorses their products, but they do use the information that was presented on the show. This information is incorrect and would not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Dr. Oz and Dr. Lindsey Duncan still felt it was okay to share this information with the public, but it is apparently a crime to sell a product using these claims. If you go to the FTC and read the complaint against this company, there is no claim that their product is substandard. In many of the articles, journalists complain that the price for them is exorbitant, but it is actually the going rate for magic beans. The crime that they are guilty of is using Dr. Oz and Dr. Lindsey Duncan’s claims to sell their product. Additionally, they have several fake news sites that they use to help sell their magic beans, and this may be the magic bullet that will put them out of business but it is ironic because the more sophisticated con had a real news site (Dr. Oz) help it sell its product.
I am sickened by these companies that come into being and take advantage of the dimwitted Dr. Oz. Still, this is nothing compared to what the real crime should have been. Dr. Lindsey Duncan, who has shilled his products before on the Dr. Oz show, already owned one company that was already selling Green Coffee Beans on the internet before the show aired. He actually started another company in his wife’s name and launched it just weeks BEFORE the broadcast of the show. He has sold much more than the $15,000,000 of Green Coffee Bean Extract, and he actually misled the public about the dosage so as to give an advantage to his product in the marketplace. Further, he endorsed the sale of his product without informing the public at the time that he was selling the product and had no shortage of conflicts of interest.
All of this is very apparent to anyone who does any research. It would only take a few minutes of watching the actual green coffee bean show and then doing a few minutes of research to find out that Dr. Lindsey Duncan has an illegal PhD from a school that does not exist any more, a school which has a startling number of criminals who also claim the honorific of doctor from the same school (feel free to research the Clayton College of Natural Health). It also takes seconds to find out that he sells green coffee beans. It takes more time to find that he created at least one additional company in a different state to increase the volume of product he could move, but that wasn’t the hardest thing in the world.
Still, not one report covers this. It only covers the public announcement that included the green coffee bean company that started a few weeks after the show aired. Dr. Oz goes on to suggest at the panel, that his biggest failure isn’t his use of the world miracle, or his misreporting of shaky scientific findings of products, but instead that he should be recommending sellers that he trusts. He apparently trusted as an expert, a fake doctor and presented this man to the world as a doctor. He doesn’t even see the irony of this when he is talking to congress about including his experts in his shows as if this gives validity to his false claims when he seems incapable of even vetting his experts.
Of course, if journalists were paying attention, something very interesting is happening over at the companies that Dr. Lindsey Duncan works for. Genesis Today has removed any and all mention of Dr. Lindsey Duncan from their website. At the same time, Dr. Lindsey Duncan has removed any and all use of the honorific Dr. from his websites. All of the mentions have been scrubbed of the words Dr. This has just happened in the wake of the lawsuit against the Florida green coffee bean sellers. I wonder what is up?
