title: The Case of Dr. Oz: Ethics, Evidence, and Does Professional Self-Regulation Work?
abstract: Dr. Mehmet Oz is widely known not just as a successful media personality donning the title "America's Doctor®," but, we suggest, also as a physician visibly out of step with his profession. A recent, unsuccessful attempt to censure Dr. Oz raises the issue of whether the medical profession can effectively self-regulate at all. It also raises concern that the medical profession's self-regulation might be selectively activated, perhaps only when the subject of professional censure has achieved a level of public visibility. We argue here that the medical profession must look at itself with a healthy dose of self-doubt about whether it has sufficient knowledge of or handle on the less visible Dr. "Ozes" quietly operating under the profession's presumptive endorsement.
authors.affiliation: Professor of biomedical ethics and medicine at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, and a consultant in the Division of Internal Medicine and a faculty member in the Biomedical Ethics Program and in the Division of Health Care Policy and Research at the Mayo Clinic.
authors.forename: Jon C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Tilburt
authors.affiliation: Sociologist and bioethicist who serves on the faculty of the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, in the Division of Health Care Policy and Research, and an active member of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, the International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis, and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
authors.forename: Megan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Allyse
authors.affiliation: Professor of medical education, the associate director of the Program in Professionalism & Values, and the associate dean for professionalism at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, and sits on the American Board of Medical Specialties Standing Committee on Ethics and Professionalism and the editorial board of Academic Medicine.
authors.forename: Frederic W
authors.initials: FW
authors.lastname: Hafferty
mesh_terms: D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media; D010820:Physicians / Q000941:ethics*; D012926:Social Control, Formal