After years of criticism, Columbia University Medical Center has finally — quietly — cut public ties with famed doctor turned Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz.
The acclaimed teaching hospital, where Oz held senior positions for many years as vice president of surgery and director of integrated medicine, removed his personal pages from their website in mid-January.
The move came a day after HuffPost reported on Jan. 12 that Columbia had established a new distance from Oz and changed its title to “Professor Emeritus.” The truth, however, was that Columbia made that change years ago, as HuffPost later clarified in an updated version of its article.
But what HuffPost appeared to be doing wrong actually triggered a series of events, ironically, that made the post right — albeit a day early.
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The following day, January 13, as evidenced by a Columbia page documenting website changes, the university removed Oz’s profile from the site and removed the hyperlinks to that bio on a number of pages mentioning Oz. (One page was amended on Friday, shortly after The Daily Beast emailed a communications officer for comment.)
His name no longer appears in searches of physician websites at the school’s Irving Medical Center. A Columbia faculty list still says Oz has an office, along with the role of special teacher, though not “professor emeritus.” But like a handful of other names on the list, Oz’s mention no longer links to his faculty page, as it did a week before he launched his campaign. (Almost every other unlinked faculty member is no longer affiliated with the medical center; one of them died last year.)
The outgoing message on Oz’s voicemail for the number listed is quite dated, directing callers to medical services when Oz stopped taking patients four years ago. The post also advertises audience tickets to its now-extinct daytime TV show.
Columbia’s affiliation with Oz was under fire long before he launched a surprise Senate round-up in late November. In 2015, when Oz testified before the Senate about his endorsement of dark “miracle” cures, a group of the top medical professionals in the country of Columbia sent a blistering letter demanding the famed medical school fire the Oprah-blessed day star.
“Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and evidence-based medicine, as well as unfounded and ruthless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops,” the doctors wrote. “Worst of all, he has displayed a blatant lack of integrity in promoting quack treatments and cures for the sake of personal financial gain.”
dr. Daniel Summers, a pediatrician and writer in the Boston area, called Columbia’s stealth purge a “chickenshit” move.
“Their handling of his status is a huge stain on their reputation. What a bullshit thing to do,” Summers told The Daily Beast.
As feeble as it may seem, Columbia’s move has destroyed his public connection to Oz. And that, Summers noted, is more than can be said for an arguably more influential cultural institution: talk show legend Oprah Winfrey.
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“Had it not been for Oprah, Oz would have played out his career as an eminent and widely respected cardiothoracic surgeon, and everyone would have been better off,” he said. “His fame, and thus his candidacy, stems directly from her own fame and her promotion of him.”
While Oz “continues to lower herself” in pursuit of the GOP nomination in Pennsylvania, Summers said, it has been “a long time since she acknowledged her role in making him what he is, and made an effort to repair the damage he causes.” to stop.” by rejecting him.”
Once upon a time, Oz, a prominent chest surgeon, had long since turned into a controversial public figure—largely under Oprah’s oversight.
He incorporated Oprah’s endorsement and his guest appearances on her show into his own daytime program, building a multimillion-dollar brand as a famous physician. And this year, he translated that success into another endorsement — from ex-President Donald Trump, who backed the Senate bid from Oz in Pennsylvania earlier this month.
Along the way, however, Oz faced criticism from the medical community, including “quackery” charges for making false claims about genetically modified foods and pushing “sham” weight loss supplements to fatten his own wallet.
“You may think magic is make-believe, but scientists say they’ve found the magic weight-loss cure for every body type,” Oz said in a 2012 episode of his show. The secret: “It’s green coffee extract.”
Three years later, that exact quote was thrown in his face when he replied to the Senate that he sold that product, among a number of false “miracles.”
However, Oz didn’t do many actual answers in that hearing. His evasion confused Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance.
“I’ve tried to do a lot of research in preparation for this trial, and the scientific community is almost monolithic against you,” McCaskill said.
The “quackery” continued unabated.
As the COVID pandemic descended into the spring of 2020, Oz took to cable news to search for hydroxychloroquine, an unproven and sometimes dangerous treatment that became one of then-President Trump’s favorite fixes.
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The Daily Beast reported that the doctor made 21 appearances on Fox News between March 24 and April 5, including at a virtual forum where he pumped up hydroxychloroquine and spoke with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. He also advised White House officials, reportedly at Trump’s personal request.
In late March of that year, he revealed on Fox & Friends his involvement in a hydroxychloroquine investigation.
“My biggest challenge was getting pills, and luckily we finally have enough to do a trial and a few hundred people, but America will want pills,” he said.
Earlier this month, The New York Post reported that Oz had purchased 2,070 doses of the antimalarial drug out of pocket to contribute to that undisclosed investigation. A campaign spokesperson told the outlet that Oz initially offered $250,000 to fund Columbia University’s clinical trial, but after his own employer turned down the offer, Oz said he gave the pills to a hospital he wouldn’t name.
Oz cited the pandemic as his motivation for running, writing in his op-ed that a large number of COVID deaths in the United States — more than 750,000 at the time — could have been “preventable.”
“Dissents from leading scholars were ridiculed and canceled so that their ideas could not be disseminated,” Oz wrote, blaming the government for introducing policies that “caused unnecessary suffering.”
Two and a half years earlier, Oz suggested on Fox News, in the midst of the first wave of the pandemic, that a 2-3 percent increase in the national COVID death rate could be an acceptable trade-off for reopening all U.S. schools.
The Daily Beast contacted the Oz campaign, Columbia University and Oprah, but received no response.
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