Celebrity doctor fights back after 'quack' accusations
Mehmet Oz says he's been attacked because of his views on GM foods
Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz says last week's attack by 10 doctors who accused him of promoting "quack treatments" on his TV show in the US was spurred by his vocal support for labelling genetically-modified foods - a stance he says some if not all of those accusers oppose.
Oz devoted the first half of his syndicated show on Thursday to his response to what he called "a brazen letter from 10 mysterious doctors" sent to Columbia University, where Oz serves as vice-chairman of the surgery department and performs heart surgery at Columbia's affiliated hospital. The letter accused him of an "egregious lack of integrity" and urged the university to remove him from its faculty.
A Columbia spokesman defended Oz by saying the school is "committed to the principle of academic freedom."
But the letter set off a new round of criticism of Oz, who in the past has been slammed for promoting questionable cure-alls and last June appeared before the Senate's consumer protection panel, where he was scolded for claims he had made on his show about weight-loss aids - claims he says he has since stopped making.
New Yorker writer Michael Specter, who profiled Oz for that magazine two years ago, said on National Public Radio this week that, whereas every doctor's first obligation is to do no harm, Oz "does harm every time he goes on the air by recommending things for which there is no evidence, and things often that he knows not to be true."
Meanwhile, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni described Oz as "a carnival barker" and "a one-man morality play about the temptations of mammon and the seduction of applause."