In another concerning development for queer and trans people in the U.S., president-elect Donald Trump tapped television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz this week to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Trump noted in a statement on Tuesday that Oz would work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), if both are confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate next year. Trump claimed Oz “has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades” in his statement, as The 19th reported. But in fact, Oz built his TV career on false or misleading health claims, has made numerous graphic and degrading comments about women, and holds positions on abortion and trans rights that could seriously jeopardize the health of LGBTQ+ communities under his watch.

Oz obtained his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, and went on to work as a doctor at Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. He co-founded the Cardiac Complementary Care Center in 1995 with his business partner Jerry Whitworth, where the two employed pseudoscientific methods like “therapeutic touch” to shift patients’ “bioenergy,” allegedly in service of faster recovery. But Oz quickly outgrew his own practice after performing a heart transplant on Frank Torre, the brother of then-New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, in 1996 — a procedure that catapulted him into the media spotlight.

In 2003, Oz briefly hosted his own show on the Discovery network, Second Opinion with Dr. Oz. Among his first guests was daytime TV icon Oprah Winfrey, who went on to hire Oz as a recurring health expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show for several seasons. Winfrey greenlit another Oz-hosted medical advice show in 2009, The Dr. Oz Show, which ran until 2022. Oz developed a reputation as a trusted voice in medicine through his shows, but in reality, he used his platform to spread numerous false or misleading medical claims: he has baselessly called the mineral selenium “the holy grail of cancer prevention,” promoted “miracle” weight loss supplements that could cause liver damage, and falsely pushed the drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19, among other statements.

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Oz has also often made bizarre and inappropriate comments about and to women on his show, including one 2010 segment promoting a mattress cooler in which he got in bed with a guest, “caressed” her, and commented that her husband would be “enjoying himself” in Oz’s position. In a 2009 Esquire column, Oz recommended that men should give chocolate to women to manipulate them into having sex, writing that “chocolate contains phenylethylamine, tryptophan, and anandamide, which have been shown to elicit horniness.”

Regarding legal rights and protections for queer and trans people in the U.S., Oz has changed his tune significantly over the years. In 2010, when The Dr. Oz Show was still in its infancy, Oz hosted a segment about trans youth titled “Trans Children: Too Young to Decide?” The episode featured Oz in conversation with an eight-year-old trans girl, a 15-year-old trans boy, and their families, discussing their parents’ decision to support their identities. The episode was heralded by GLAAD at the time as “groundbreaking” and “one of the best 15-minute segments on transgender children to ever appear on national television.” Five years later, Oz featured trans activist and YouTuber Jazz Jennings, then 14 years old, in a discussion about trans identity and her medical transition. But Oz also gave equal time to anti-LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, or “reparative therapy” as its referred to on the show, in one 2012 episode (while stopping short of endorsing the practice himself). Another 2010 episode, “Battle of the Sexes,” featured a segment in which Oz claimed to “reveal the science behind men versus women,” with alarmingly bioessentialist statements like “language centers in the female brain are bigger, which helps explain a woman’s ‘Gift of Gab.’”

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Oz has only doubled down on proclamations like those since pivoting into electoral politics. In a 2022 Delaware Valley Journal interview, after receiving Trump’s endorsement for his (ultimately unsuccessful) Senate campaign, Oz falsely claimed that “80 to 85 percent” of gender-dysphoric youth “will naturally, if they’re not influenced, go back to their biological gender.” (Those numbers appear to be based on long-debunked data, with recent research indicating trans youth are highly unlikely to reidentify with their assigned sex.) Oz went on to accuse trans-affirming adults of “mess[ing] with their mind[s],” adding, “Once in a while, Johnny walks in mom’s shoes. It doesn’t mean anything.” During a debate with Sen. John Fetterman, Oz also said that he believed abortion decisions should come down to “women, doctors, [and] local political leaders, letting the democracy that’s always allowed our nation to thrive, to put the best ideas forward so states” — not the people in need of abortions themselves — “can decide for themselves.”

Given his checkered history of headline-chasing, questionable medical endorsements and anti-LGBTQ+ positions, it’s alarming that Oz could soon control the U.S. Medicare, Medicaid, and Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) infrastructure — if he’s confirmed by the Senate next year.

“Instead of nominating someone with experience, Trump chose a dishonest, celebrity medical professional who is most known for promoting scams,” wrote representatives of the healthcare advocacy group Protect Our Care in a statement on Wednesday. “Between the nominations of Dr. Oz and RFK Jr., it is clear Donald Trump is building a cabinet that mirrors himself: incompetent, inexperienced, and unqualified.”

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