The Sean Hannity Show 4/2

Dr. Oz on Hannity

From the April 2, 2020, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): By the way, I'm getting the crap beat out of me because I'm looking for a treatment answer. I'm talking to the best medical professionals in the country, including yourself. I'm looking at every anecdotal bit of evidence. So why do I care about this? So people don't die, Dr. Oz, that's why.

MEHMET OZ: Well I'll tell you, I was having an interesting discussion with somebody, and we're fighting over this. And there's no question that there was a lot of resistance to this being possible, It just seems too good to be true, right? You've got this inexpensive drug with a 60-year history of safety, that's used widely for malaria and lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. And then the Chinese figure out that it might save lives and it's just, you know come on, really? And so people have a natural reluctance.

But I was having a conversation with someone, and he said, "Is what's bothering you --" because there's a big debate over where you go public, right, because people are going to embarrass you, people are going to come after you, as you've experienced it yourself. But in medicine it's even worse. And you know Kissinger was famous for many things, but he was being reviewed to be secretary of state under Nixon, and one of the senators looked at him and said, you know, “Mr. Kissinger, you don't have any experience in politics. What makes you think you can do this job?" And he put his glasses down and he said, “I'm on the faculty at Harvard. That's politics.” If you want to see politics, you just go look at top-notch medical institutions, and there's politics, people -- they'll eat each other alive because they're smart. They know how to hurt you because they don't want bad things to happen. They're all motivated -- I do, maybe naively, but I do believe -- for the right reasons. But they'll start saying, “Hey listen, it's too early to go public, don't mislead people. Folks will, you know, not understand the nuances of what you're saying." That's why every time we've spoken about this, I've clarified we do not have peer reviewed data, it doesn't exist.