Columbia University Finally Scrubs Relationship With Dr. Oz

Columbia University in New York City may have recently cut ties with Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, MD, but the move comes too late, according to one physician who spearheaded an effort years ago to get the controversial cardiothoracic surgeon ousted.

“It took Columbia far too long to remove Oz from its otherwise distinguished medical faculty,” Henry Miller, MD, of the Pacific Research Institute in California, told MedPage Today via email.

Miller stressed that “the ‘Oz controversy’ was never about free speech. It was about an unethical grifter whose claims and pronouncements were not supported by science, and were injurious to consumers — in the interest of financial benefit to Oz himself. That constitutes professional misconduct.”

The university’s Irving Medical Center quietly ended its relationship with Oz at the end of April, according to The Daily Beast. He had been removed from several pages of the medical center’s website in mid-January. In 2018, Oz’s title had been changed to professor emeritus and special lecturer, according to reports.

A spokesperson for Columbia University confirmed the 2018 change in an email to MedPage Today.

In 2015, Miller and colleagues sent a letter to Lee Goldman, MD, MPH, dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at the university, calling for Oz’s expulsion. Oz had “repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine” and “manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain,” according to Miller’s group.

At the time, Miller was with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. Notably, his Stanford colleague Scott Atlas, MD, also signed the letter. Atlas, a radiologist, generated his own controversy during the pandemic when he became an advisor to the Trump administration. Atlas often provided hot takes on COVID-19 that frequently went against recommendations from the public health community.

In 2014, Oz was called to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance during a hearing on false advertising in the diet and weight-loss industry. Senators grilled Oz regarding statements he made on “The Dr. Oz Show” that promoted green coffee bean extract as a “miracle pill” for weight loss.

But long before that hearing, tensions had built between Oz and the medical community because of his penchant for spouting dubious medical claims on his TV show and in the media. For example, in a 2011 segment, ABC News‘ chief health and medical editor Richard Besser, MD, called out a purported “study” of arsenic in apple juice that Oz conducted for an episode of his show.

Besser charged that Oz’s science was shoddy because he reported total arsenic rather than the breakdown between organic and inorganic arsenic — only the latter of which is known to be toxic. Even the FDA sent the show a letter before the segment aired saying it would be “irresponsible and misleading” to report the results.

Oz again broke with medical science during the pandemic when he touted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19, even as evidence mounted that it had no effect on disease course.

Oz is currently running for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania as a Republican candidate. Former President Trump endorsed Oz, touting Oz’s medical and academic credentials in a statement, according to NPR: “He even said that I was in extraordinary health, which made me like him even more (although he also said I should lose a couple of pounds!).”