The meme campaign between Senate rivals Dr Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman has continued on Twitter, this time with the Democrat comparing his celebrity doctor rival to a quack doctor on The Simpsons.
Mr Fetterman shared a video comparing the Donald Trump-endorsed Dr Oz to "Nick Riviera," a Simpsons character who is portrayed as a shifty physician pushing snake oil remedies and dubious credentials for quick profits.
The video comes on the heels of a Washington Post report outlining the numerous times Dr Oz gave questionable medical advice over the 12-year run of his network TV show.
“Before there was Dr. Oz, there was Dr. Nick,” Mr Fetterman’s Monday tweet reads. “They say the Simpsons always predict the future – and once again, they nailed it.”
The attached video features clips ofThe Simpsons character pushing questionable fat-loss remedies and recommending unorthodox ingredients as medicines; those cartoon clips are interspersed with clips of Dr Oz making similar claims of "miracle" diet solutions and herbal remedies.
Back in 2014, Dr Oz was called before Congress and scolded for pushing ineffective health treatments on his TV show.
“I don’t get why you have to say this stuff because you know it’s not true,” Senator Claire McCaskill told him during the hearing. “So why, when you have this amazing megaphone and this amazing ability to communicate, why would you cheapen your show by saying things like that?”
At the time, Dr Oz promised lawmakers he learned from his mistakes and hired a scientific fact checker to analyse his claims.
Per the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, a group of 10 doctors previously wrote to the medical school dean at Columbia University, where Dr Oz held senior positions, saying he had "demonstrated contempt for medical and scientific evidence" and argued he was "ineligible to sit on the faculty of a prestigious medical institution."
The Washington Post spoke to Dr Oz's spokeswoman, Brittany Yanick, who said the candidate "welcomed open honest conversations and opinions from all kinds of folks," and added the "it's idiotic and preposterous to imply that he shared the same beliefs and opinions as every guest on his show, or that having someone on his show constitutes a blanket endorsement of their beliefs."
Mr Fetterman’s latest tweet is just another in the many he’s launched in an effort to attack Dr Oz on the merits of his medical advice. In another video posted last month, Mr Fetterman showcased a number of instances in which Dr Oz promoted a medical product that was later proven to be ineffective.
“Too bad there’s no miracle cure for being a total fraud,” he wrote in a tweet alongside the video.
The attacks come at a time when Dr Oz is facing resurfaced allegations that he oversaw experiments at Columbia University that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 dogs and a $2,000 US Department of Agriculture fine for violating the Animal Welfare Act.
Dr Oz has not made any official comment on the allegations.
Mr Fetterman also jumped on those claims, starting the hashtag "PuppyKiller" on Twitter and posting photos of himself with his dogs.
