John Oliver is a cool comedian. He was about 15 and living in Britain when the U.S. natural food industry fought for the right to say things like: capsicum and Equisetum are good for circulation and heart health. I remember wise women with vast stores of time-tested herbal knowledge being arrested and charged with “practicing medicine without a license” for sharing information on basic topics like: how to relieve constipation with herbs. (Maybe Oliver would like that recipe.) In those days (1980-1995) saying that a vegetable broth or chicken soup could cure a flu was considered “unscientific” and anecdotal. (There were no “double-blind studies to confirm the value of chicken soup or vegetable broth.) Seriously, at that time these gentle and very intelligent folks were considered a threat to the enormously powerful and influential AMA.

Listening to Oliver’s recent take down of the senators who freed up the natural health industry to share information made me think Oliver could actually be a big Pharma plant. It also ticked me off. Oliver’s “journalism” is twisted.

This funny man uses the word “supplements” to describe everything within the natural health world. “Supplements” according to Oliver are always suspicious if they have not been “studied and approved” by an agency that I might add is most likely staffed with people struggling for their own health. Never mind that the FDA is currently headed by the man who delivered the Human Growth Hormone into our food supply and into our children’s bodies without knowing the long-term consequences. I wonder, journalist John, if all herbs(plants) are just “suspicious supplements”? Is wholesome nutrition a “suspicious supplement”? Is a walk in a forest a “suspicious supplement” that cannot be said to have value or efficacy towards greater health without 50 years of double blind “scientific” studies by an agency?

Dr. Oz is a master marketer like the wizards of Pharma. The difference is that the Doc is an easy mark who has not met his quota for political donations to the level that is necessary to escape humiliation.

Don’t worry John Stewart….Oliver twists…