--- title: Dr Oz: Group of Doctors Tells Columbia University to Fire TV Doctor description: Ten doctors wrote a letter urging Columbia University to fire Dr. Mehmet Oz saying he "endangers" the public canonical: https://time.com/3826280/dr-oz-columbia/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-17T11:39:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:15.581Z article:section: Health og:title: Group of Doctors Tells Columbia University to Fire Dr. Oz og:description: Ten doctors wrote a letter urging Columbia University to fire Dr. Mehmet Oz saying he "endangers" the public og:url: https://time.com/3826280/dr-oz-columbia/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf2f0ed4016d1c6db/6987eb9acd6848b85f09d926/dr-oz.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1706 og:image:height: 960 og:image:alt: Dr. Mehmet Oz attends the Z100's Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 12, 2014 in New York City. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Group of Doctors Tells Columbia University to Fire Dr. Oz twitter:description: Ten doctors wrote a letter urging Columbia University to fire Dr. Mehmet Oz saying he "endangers" the public twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf2f0ed4016d1c6db/6987eb9acd6848b85f09d926/dr-oz.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Group of Doctors Tells Columbia University to Fire Dr. Oz > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=e0349723-348f-4763-898e-12c0c5e389d3&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: 10 Questions for Dr. Mehmet Oz [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Dr. Mehmet Oz](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0GWBPc78.m3u8) (6:38)  _Published 2009-07-31. The Oprah heart surgeon kicks off his own daily TV show this fall. Dr. Mehmet Oz will now take your questions_  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Apr 17, 2015 11:39 AM UTC  Dr. Mehmet Oz attends the Z100's Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 12, 2014 in New York City. Dr. Mehmet Oz attends the Z100's Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 12, 2014 in New York City. Taylor Hill—FilmMagic/Getty Images  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Apr 17, 2015 11:39 AM UTC A group of doctors has written a letter urging Columbia University to fire Dr. Mehmet Oz from its faculty. “Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops,” said the letter addressed to Columbia’s Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine, [reports CBS](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/group-of-doctors-call-for-dr-oz-to-be-ousted-from-columbia-university/). “Worst of all, he has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.” Oz is a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon and vice-chair of the department of surgery at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, but he’s also a television personality with _The Dr. Oz Show_. And according to medical experts, [only 46% of the recommendations on his show were supported by evidence](http://time.com/3642533/dr-oz-advice/). The letter, authored by a doctor at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and co-signed by nine other doctors, ends, “Whatever the nature of his pathology, members of the public are being misled and endangered, which makes Dr. Oz’s presence on the faculty of a prestigious medical institution unacceptable.” A university spokesman emailed the doctors in response, stating: “As I am sure you understand and appreciate, Columbia is committed to the principle of academic freedom and to upholding faculty members’ freedom of expression for statements they make in public discussion.” _Read next:_ [_Lawmakers Caution Dr. Oz on Weight-Loss Tips_](http://time.com/2891194/dr-oz-claire-mccaskill/?iid=time%5Freadnext) [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/autoplay/?xid=spl-fullbrief-article) ## Transcript >> Now, what we're gonna do now is something we called 10 Questions at TIME. 10 Questions is a page in the magazine and it is a kind of ThreeSixty Journalism because the questions are submitted online by readers and we decided to do that because, I don't know if you can believe this, but sometimes, journalists' questions are not actually that good and they're designed not to elicit information but to impress other people. So, we have regular people asking the questions. We film it, we run a page in the magazine, and it appears on TIME. com. So, we're gonna do that with Dr. Oz and I think we got a huge number of questions for you. So, have a seat and we will get started. This is a question from Christine Baker from Brownsburg, Indiana. " Many doctors today lack a good bedside manner. They always seem rushed and uninterested. How did you acquire such an empathetic demeanor with your patients? >> It's from my mother. I mean, it is. I mean, you learn how to take care of people and listen to people and talk to people from the women in your life. So, I had, you know, 26 cousins, one male. I got a lot of training there. But my mother was all about unconditional love, and I don't think we give that to our patients a lot. Because at the end of the day, when they're waiting on the operating room gurney to go on to have open heart surgery, what they really need you to do is look at them in the eyes with no one else talking to you and distracting you, and say, " I'm here for you. I'm gonna make sure this works out and everyone on the team feels the same way ." And when people hear that from you, they trust you. Now, what I just said took me, what, 15 seconds? It's not like it took me a lot of time to get across that message. And unfortunately, we don't sense it, we don't feel it, we don't hear it. As a physician, all you wanna do is fix things and what people really want you to do first is to hear them 'cause, once you hear a feeling, you can begin to address it, but you can't fix a feeling, otherwise. >> This question is from Butch Boyett Jr. of Seattle, Washington. What emerging medical technology do you see as being most successful in the future? >> The technology that I'm most optimistic about is our ability to look at each and everyone of your genomes and begin to customize the cure you need. What we do right now is such a terrible shotgun approach. I'll take aspirin as an example and I've, many times, said, " You've gotta take two aspirin because, over the age of 40, we have pretty good data that it actually has value ." Let's not argue about whether I'm right or not, but let's just assume that that's a correct statement. Now, the reality is that, for at least a quarter of Americans, one aspirin a day doesn't have the desired impact because genetically you're resistant to it. So, I have to recommend two aspirin, knowing that, even though three- quarters of you don't need two aspirin. We make decisions like that all the time. We estimate that at least 20 percent of the medications we give are probably not the right medications for you or the right doses. If you could just understand your genome better, we'd be able to get ahead of this and we're pretty close to that. >> Now, this is my question. So, you said you can't-- you're so restless, you can't sit down and have dinner, is this something about your metabolism and all of our metabolism that makes us burn calories faster or slower? >> Metabolism does vary from person to person, but only about 5 percent of us have such a profound alteration in our metabolism that we're destined to be obese. The vast majority of us who are overweight, it's not because your metabolism has messed up. Sometimes, you have hormonal problems, your thyroid can kick up that can cause a metabolism issue, but most of the time, genetically, you're not hardwired to gain weight. You might be hardwired to be thicker than the next person, but not obese. I think there is a genetic element to my bounciness. My youngest daughter, when she was in, you know, elementary school, got a report card back from the teacher and she came home and she was sort of a little restless like this and I said, " What's wrong ?" She said, " My teacher told me that I had bugs in my pants ." And I got-- And her report card, the same thing and every report card I ever got, Mehmet has ants in his pants. So, I do think some of it is genetic. But you know ,-- >> Is that a disease by the way? >> Yeah, it's me. I don't know. It's incurable if it is. >> This is a question from Alicia Perry from Flower Mound, Texas. " What was the best advice someone gave you while you were in medical school ?" >> I was told this, and this is probably the best advice in my first year medical school, by a man who was very influential and developing Pneumovax -- this is one of the vaccines we use to protect against some bad kind of bacterial infection-- and he said, " Half of what we will teach you in medical school will, by the time you're done practicing, be proven wrong ." So, of course, I thought, you know, " Which half ?" What he said was so true, so profoundly important because it reminded us that it's a continuing education process and much of the education will come from the people you're taking care of. They will wake you up to the realities of their problem, and when you take care of people and not their illness, it's a lot more fulfilling. >> This is from Donald Gartman from Charleston, South Carolina. " In your opinion, which country has the most efficient and equitable healthcare delivery system for its citizens ?" >> Healthcare system I like the most is Switzerland, which may seem [ unk ] feel to you, but let me describe why because it has actually been, so I think we could mimic in this country. For one, in Switzerland, everybody has to have coverage, but-- and you have to get it personally, but it's never allowed any more than 20 percent of what you earned. If you ask the average American, if I put a little survey out there and didn't tell you how much you spent a day, and it said, " How much of what you make would you spend for your health ?," the average American will say 20 percent. So, that happens to be the number they picked in Switzerland. If you make less than-- less money, so it's more than 20 percent, they actually subsidize it, and if you make more money, you pay the whole thing. All insurance companies are forced to be able to offer you insurance. They do it willingly, by the way, because they wanna get you into their system and make you part of their team. And then, finally, the system works well because, when you have a system like that, then you don't have any of these captainless ships coming in to dock, which is what an uninsured patient is, and so of course, when an uninsured patient crashes in to the docks, spews its oil all over the bay and we've gotta clean it up which is what happens, it costs a system a lot more money. So, I have great confidence that we can avoid that and what I think we often miss, and there's very good data on this, is that people who don't have insurance, who come to the hospital, cost a lot more and they do far worse in terms of outcomes. And that means you're not getting any value for your money. And I think what this whole discussion has been about and it's why I wanted to present those first few comments is we should be focused not on what it costs us, we should be focused on the value we get for the money we spent 'cause all of us will probably be willing to spend even more than we spend today on healthcare if we got our money's worth. >> Well, the story of your life is a wonderful one. You are a great public healer. This was fantastic. 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