It Is Amazing We Would Sponsor A Nit-Wit Like This To Come Here If This is True!

I spotted this today.

Is Oprah bad for your health?

December 9, 2010 - 1:30PM

Oprah Winfrey is here and no doubt she will greeted with the kind of adulation that would make a Beatle blush wherever she goes.

Oprah has certainly earned the goodwill she enjoys around the world. She has used her unparallelled fame and fortune to do an enormous amount of good, both at home and abroad. And such is the power of the ‘‘Oprah effect’’ that her most casual reference can send a book to the top of the bestseller lists or an album to the top of the charts.

But, as Spider-man’s uncle once said, with great power comes great responsibility. And Oprah doesn’t always use her power responsibly. In fact, watching her show could be bad for your health.

Sadly, Oprah seem to feature almost every bit of pseudoscience going on her show. Whether it’s her favourite doctor, Mehmet Oz, talking about reiki, actress Suzanne Somers extolling injecting estrogen directly into her vagina, the not-necessarily-harmless silliness of The Secret, or even a Brazilian faith healer. And tens of millions of viewers are left with the impression that this stuff will make them feel better. (Oprah’s penchant for promoting pseudoscience even prompted a Newsweek cover story last year).

In 2007, Oprah repeatedly had actress Jenny McCarthy on the show talking about her belief that vaccinations had made her young son autistic and Oprah’s website also contains incoherent anti-vaccination information. Over the past 20 years, dozens of studies around the world have found no link between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders. Vaccination rates continued to fall in the US and in 2008, the country had its biggest number of measles cases in a decade. This year, whooping cough has so far killed at least 10 children in California alone as that state experiences its worst epidemic of the disease in more than 60 years.

Oprah has also introduced millions to Dr Christiane Northrup, who tried to scare Oprah’s viewers away from the cervical cancer vaccine, wrongly stating that it had killed people. (Northrup, by the way, believes that thyroid problems are caused by an ‘‘energy blockage’’ in the throat — the result of choking back words you’re too timid to say.)

More here:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/blogs/sceptic-science/is-oprah-bad-for-your-health/20101207-18ny6.html

Sorry to stray from Health IT - but this woman seems like she is a total ratbag! Your decision to assess what she says - but my view is that she is a very rich nit-wit!

People should stick to ranting on about things they are actually fully informed on - especially when they are famous and can cause a lot of harm!

Back to e-Health.

David.