A doctor who reportedly tweeted that she would give Jewish people “all the wrong meds” was fired from the Cleveland Clinic academic medical center in Ohio.
Lara Kollab, a former supervised first-year resident at the Cleveland Clinic, made headlines this week after a series of anti-Semitic tweets emerged on the website Canary Mission, which claims to document “individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the U.S., Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.”
In dozens of tweets collected by Canary Mission and dating between 2011 and 2013, Kollab joked about the Holocaust, called Jewish people “dogs” and compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
In one tweet from January 2012, according to Canary Mission, Kollab suggested that she would prescribe Jewish people incorrect medications.
“I’ll purposely give all the yahood the wrong meds,” Kollab wrote. ‘Yahood’ is a variation of ‘yahud’ which is the Arabic word for Jews.
Kollab’s Twitter account has since been deleted.
On Wednesday, the Cleveland Clinic acknowledged in a statement that it had disciplined a resident, but did not refer to Kollab by name.
The statement said that “this individual” was a resident at the hospital between July and September of 2018. After discovering the posts, the hospital said it had conducted an internal review and placed her under administrative leave. The statement added that “her departure was related to those posts and she has not worked at Cleveland Clinic since September.”
The hospital said no patients have reported being harmed by her work.
“For first-year residents, multiple safeguards and direct supervision are required for patient care and prescribing medicine,” the hospital stated. The statement concluded by saying that the hospital “in no way” shares Kollab’s values.
The purported Twitter account of Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine also acknowledged that Kollab is one of its alums and denounced her tweets.
“We are shocked that one of our graduates would voice statements that are antithetical to Touro and to the physicians’ Hippocratic Oath,” the school tweeted.
