Why People Believe Oprah

First I have to issue a disclaimer:

I have only watched Oprah once in my entire life (in April of 2007.)

Autism was the subject of that show and has been the subject of subsequent shows that I haven't watched because we don't have cable and the TV is in storage. (Thanks to Oprah's website, I am able to see puh-lenty, thank you.)

But back to that April 2007 show. There had been more than a bit of media build-up about it and, like many parents of children on the autism spectrum (and I'd been one for ten years in 2007), I was cringing in advance about how autism would be portrayed.

As we were living with my in-laws in April of 2007, we did have access to a TV, the small one in the far corner of their kitchen, by the heavy sliding glass door. That TV, with photos of five grandchildren at ages younger than Charlie is now and some pots with a few plants on it, was on for much of the day, starting with the morning talk shows to midday programming to the evening news and Jeopardy (and in her day, my mother-in-law "coulda been a contestant"). The TV was certainly on for the afternoon talk shows and so around 4pm on April 5, 2007, I found myself standing in the doorway to my in-laws' kitchen and waiting for Oprah to come on. I noted I was feeling pretty dubious about the whole thing when my mother-in-law gave me a glance and said,

"You should watch. Maybe you'll learn something."

My father-in-law always sat (sits) facing the far wall of the room; my mother-in-law was sitting on the side of the table. She asked me if I'd like to sit down with them and I assured them I was fine at the door, so I could hear Charlie if need be (we lived on the lower floor of my in-laws' 1960s split-level).

I can't say that I learned anything new information-wise from the show. And, now that Jenny McCarthy is going to have her own talk show on Oprah's network, I guess we'll all be hearing much much more about autism, vaccines, toxins, and remedies biomedical, bioidentical, and suffused with more than the faint odor of quackery, for all manner of ailments. What is it about Oprah, about her appeal, her mystique, her "Secret," that has millions watching her, following her suggestions and those of the "experts" on her show, though much of the medical "advice" offered flies quite in the face of science?

A big article in the recent Newsweek ponders these questions and suggests this is why.

Oprah's audience admires her as much for her failings as her successes. In real life, she has almost nothing in common with most of her viewers. She is an unapproachable billionaire with a private jet and homes around the country who hangs out with movie stars. She is not married and has no children. But television Oprah is a different person. She somehow manages to make herself believable as a down-to-earth everywoman. She is your girlfriend who struggles to control her weight and balance her work and personal life, just like you. When she recently related the story of how humiliated she felt when she arrived for a photo shoot to find that she couldn't fit into the clothes she was supposed to wear, she knew she had every member of the audience in her hand. Oprah's show is all about second and third and fourth chances to fix your life, and the promise that the next new thing to come along will be the one that finally works.

Oprah, as Newsweek notes, has an "exquisite ear for the cravings and anxieties of her audience"---"cravings and anxieties" that she masterfully portrays herself as sharing. It's not just that she feels your pain: She knows our pain.

As the scientific community has pointed out, the kind of "advice" being dispensed on Oprah about vaccines, thyroid conditions, and much more, is potentially and simply detrimental to public health. Again and again scientists and the medical community ask, why is the general public so readily swayed by pseudoscience and advice about medical treatments by actresses, actors, and other celebrities, and so disinclined to get educated about science? In regard to autism, why do so many parents feel misunderstood and condescended to by pediatricians and other non-alternative medical professionals?

I'm not a biomed-doing mom (once was). I'm a literature and languages professor, but my science and math background is pretty decent, and "traditional" or "standard" or whatever you want to call it medicine (such as it is) is pretty much what has helped Charlie. (Though I should note that I always keep a couple of packs of Chinese herbs around for when I get really really sick.)

I've written that my mother-in-law has been in the hospital. It's now been over two weeks. While it's said that she has "this wrong with this internal organ" and now "this respiratory issue," it's the effects of her untreated mental illness----psychotic depression----for many many years that are more than apparent. The hospital she is in is a "regular" hospital, not at all equipped to address her needs which are, as they have long been, serious. Sunday Jim and I each visited her: She'd been moved to yet another room. The blue fleece blanket we'd brought her from Charlie's room was spread over her and, while she stared quizzically at me, she seemed to know who I was. She was hallucinating---kept saying her address was a house she'd lived in when Jim was in high school---pointed out blue and brown suitcases and coats that were not there----looked at me a bit slyly and asked how she could get out of "here." (She walks with a great deal of difficulty after knee replacement surgery and for other reasons, so I'm not sure she could get out of her bed if she tried.)

Jim is not in charge of his mother's medical care. He made a huge effort a couple of years ago---right before we moved in with his parents in 2006---to get her the intensive psychiatric care she needed, over the objections of everyone else in his family. After his mother came home in the fall of 2006 (she had not been home since January of that year), a psychiatrist was found to continue treatment for her. Jim was on sabbatical and drove his parents to the appointments. I did write "parents": While Jim's mother was the patient, her husband was present at every session, and Jim sometimes found himself asked to participate too in what turned out to be sort-of-but-not-really-family-therapy-sessions minus his sisters. When I told Jim I thought this was all kind of odd---I mean, weren't the psychiatrist visits for his mother, Jim told me that the psychiatrist was actually a child psychiatrist.

"There's dolls and toys in the room," he told me; the same sorts of stuff we'd seen constantly in psychologists' offices on visits with Charlie.

My mother-in-law has been under the care of this psychiatrist since 2007. And as of the past few months, she seems to be back to where she was before she went, by ambulance, to a psychiatric facility in the early summer of 2007.

We trust Charlie's doctors, whom we drive long miles to see. The one pediatric neurologist who has known Charlie since he was seven has been a staunch advocate for our boy, and offered us warm support and encouragement, and understanding. He is unusual and I know that's why we've stuck with him over the years; while we've been taking Charlie to a new neurologist, we've had reason to suspect we should stick with the doctor who knows Charlie well, who takes the time to observe Charlie and listen to Jim and me; who talks about his own struggles with his own rather "different" children.

Who shows that he's not always sure what to do, but seeks to be as best a guide as he can be.

I think Oprah not only knows that she has a winning formula, that "Secret," but why it's a winner; why so many people---certainly so many parents of children with autism----are looking for someone who "understands," who "gets it," who won't just string them along with medications and "maybe it'll get better" 's.

The TV was on in my mother-in-law's hospital room when I visited yesterday. I think it was one of her old standbys, Fox News, with dire economic news, bombs, a car accident; all the stuff she used to follow so avidly. Yesterday, she was totally unaware.