Dr. Oz Plasters Critics' Faces on Talk Show: "10 Doctors, All With One Agenda"

On Thursday's episode of his eponymous talk show, the famous surgeon dug into the backgrounds and interests of the physicians who called for him to leave Columbia University's faculty.

Dr. Mehmet Oz took on the physicians who called for his departure from Columbia University's faculty during Thursday's episode of his eponymous talk show, plastering their faces all over national TV.

"I have never believed that doctors should fight their battles or each other in public, but now I believe I must," he said at the top of the show.

Oz had an investigative reporter dig into the backgrounds of the doctors who penned a letter asking for Oz to be removed.

In a video segment about the investigation, reporter Elisabeth Leamy calls his critics, "10 doctors, all with one agenda." She goes on to explain that at least four of the doctors who signed the letter have ties to the American Council on Science and Health, which has supported GMO foods and taken money from firms behind GMO foods, including Dr. Henry Miller whose support for GMO foods is so strong that he served as the face and voice of a California campaign lobbying consumers to vote against labeling GMOs. Another doctor who signed the letter is connected to the Hoover Institution, Oz's investigator found, which supports GMOs.

The reporter also found that Miller was a key supporter of the tobacco industry and ACSH president Gilbert Ross is a convicted felon.

After Oz identified the doctors' primary issue as his support for GMO labeling, he chastised the physicians for their approach.

"Public shaming and bullying me is not how it should be done," he said. "No matter our disagreements, freedom of speech is most fundamental right we have as Americans and these 10 doctors are trying to silence this right."

The famous physician also responded to the doctors' specific criticisms. He said he never promotes treatments and cures for personal financial gain. And in response to his critics' charge that he's a "quack," Oz said even his harshest critics at a British medical journal have found that the data doesn't support this charge.

Although his critics took issue with his support for weight-loss supplements, Oz said that he hasn't mentioned his support for such products in a year, but he did recently take on the issue of genetically-modified foods in a show devoted to the genetically modified fruit, the Arctic Apple, in which he also reiterated his support for GMO labels.

It's this position that Oz believes his critics really oppose. In their letter, the doctors refer to his “baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops."

He devoted another segment to a bill introduced in Congress that claims GMO labeling is not needed.

Earlier Thursday, Oz penned an op-ed for Time magazine's website in which he defended his support for alternative medicine and lashed out at his critics, repeating much of what he said on his show.

Watch Dr. Oz take on his critics in the video below.