Killing Us Softly Read Online Free Page B

Oprah launched the career of a man who would soon become America’s most recognized promoter of alternative medicine: Mehmet Oz, star of
The Dr. Oz Show
.
    Like Winfrey’s, Oz’s show is also popular—more than 4 million people watch it every day. It’s not hard to figure out why. It’s the same reason that John and Mary Hofbauer were attracted to Michael Schachter, or Steve McQueen to William Kelley. Oz believes that modern medicine isn’t always to betrusted—that we should retreat to an age when healing was more natural, less cluttered with man-made technologies.
    O n the surface, Mehmet Oz would seem to be the last person to argue against modern medicine.
    After graduating from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and the Wharton School, Oz climbed the ranks at Columbia University Medical Center to become a full professor in cardiovascular surgery. He performs as many as 250 operations a year and has authored 400 medical papers and book chapters. Six of his books have been on the
New York Times
best-seller list. Oz was voted one of
Time
magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, the World Economic Forum’s Global Leader of Tomorrow, Harvard University’s 100 Most Influential Alumni,
Esquire
’s Best and Brightest, and
Healthy Living
’s Healer of the Millennium. He’s not just famous; he’s a brand (“America’s Doctor”).
    Certainly, no one appreciates the advances of modern medicine more than Mehmet Oz. He’s a heart surgeon. He holds people’s hearts in his hands and fixes them. Oz couldn’t do this without anesthesia, antibiotics, sterile technique, and heart-lung machines. But there was one moment when it became clear that Mehmet Oz wasn’t a typical heart surgeon. During an operation, “Oz jumped up on a standing stool, peered into the patient’s chest, and said, ‘I knew we should have used subliminal tapes.’” Oz believed that surgery wasn’t enough—success also depended on tapping into his patient’s subconscious. Watching this scene was Jery Whitworth, a nurse who operated the heart-lung machine. Whitworth shared Oz’s love of alternativetherapies. “After a few minutes we stopped,” recalled Whitworth, “because the operating room was totally quiet,” stunned into silence. Oz, Whitworth, and a group of believers later met secretly to discuss what would eventually become Columbia’s Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program. “If the higher-ups had known about these meetings,” recalled Whitworth, “they would have disbanded us.”
    Oz has used his show to promote alternative therapies ranging from naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture, therapeutic touch, faith healing, and chiropractic manipulations to communicating with the dead. To understand where Mehmet Oz is coming from, we need to understand where medicine has been.
    P eople have been living on earth for about 250,000 years. For the past 5,000, healers have been trying to heal the sick. For all but the past 200, they haven’t been very good at it.
    First, people believed disease was a divine act. In Exodus, written around 1400 B.C., God, angry at the Egyptians for their mistreatment of the Hebrews, punishes them with ten plagues, including boils and lice. In Homer’s
Iliad
, written around 900 B.C., the god Apollo destroys the Achaean army with a disease ignited by a flaming arrow. In 2 Samuel, written around 500 B.C., God gives David a choice of three punishments for his pridefulness: seven years of famine, three months fleeing his enemies, or three days of plague. David chooses plague, and God obliges, killing 77,000 people. Because God or the gods caused disease, healers were shamans, witches, and priests, and treatments were prayer, amulets, and sacrifices.
    Then, starting with the Greek healer Hippocrates in 400 B.C., the focus changed.