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The doctor who worked with MrBeast on a controversial video said he 'almost hung up' on the YouTube star when he first got the call

A picture of MrBeast and of Levenson.
MrBeast is the biggest individual YouTuber in the world. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images and TEDx Talks via YouTube

  • On Saturday, the YouTuber MrBeast posted a video about providing cataract surgery to 1,000 people.
  • He worked with the ophthalmologist Jeffrey Levenson on the project, which has proved controversial.
  • Levenson said he didn't know who MrBeast was when the star reached out to him and almost hung up.
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An eye doctor who worked with MrBeast for a recent video said he "almost hung up" when the YouTuber reached out to him because he didn't know who he was.

Jeffrey Levenson, an ophthalmologist and the chief medical officer of the nonprofit eye-care organization SEE International, was featured in a video posted on MrBeast's YouTube channel on Saturday, in which the YouTuber said he was "curing 1,000 people's blindness" by arranging for them to have sight-restoring cataract surgery. 

In the video, the YouTuber, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, interviewed Levenson, who said: "Half of all the blindness in the world is people who need a 10-minute surgery."

The video followed patients from various countries who were all given surgery over a three-week period, an Instagram post about the SEE International partnership said.

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On Tuesday, SEE International shared a link on its Facebook page to a TED Talk given by Levenson in 2017 called "Ending Preventable Blindness: reinventing cataract surgery." In the talk, Levenson discussed the work he had been doing to bring low-cost cataract surgeries to the world's poorest populations in order to make treatment more accessible. 

The caption above the video said that Levenson's TED Talk had led to the collaboration between him and MrBeast. 

"I got a call from a stranger. Told me his name was MrBeast, and that he's kind of a big thing on YouTube," Levenson said, according to the caption on SEE International's post. "He had seen my TED talk, and he told me that he wanted me to help him restore the sight to thousands of blind people all around the world."

The caption went on to quote Levenson as saying that he didn't know who MrBeast was before this phone call: "I had never heard of MrBeast so, I almost hung up. But I gratefully did not hang up." 

The resulting video blew up, receiving 69 million views and generating a huge amount of online discussion, which led to a mixed response.

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Some viewers praised the YouTuber for his generosity, while others accused him of performing a stunt for "clout" and views. Others said MrBeast's video pointed to flaws in healthcare systems for people who couldn't afford or access surgery because of a lack of medical insurance, adding that left it up to wealthy people like celebrities and influencers to help get care for these people. 

MrBeast became the most subscribed individual YouTuber in November, overtaking the gaming and vlogging creator PewDiePie, who had held the title for nine years.

He has developed a reputation for giving away large sums of money, rising to fame in 2018 for viral videos in which he donated thousands of dollars to small streamers. Last year, he gave away at least $3.2 million — plus a $2.5 million jet and a private island — in challenge prizes, according to all the YouTube videos he posted that year.

The YouTuber previously said in an interview with "The Iced Coffee Hour" podcast that he reinvested all the income generated from ad revenue on his videos into making content and giving away prizes, adding that he's not concerned about his own financial future.

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Across all his YouTube channels, including marketing for a line of chocolate products and a burger-restaurant chain he owns, MrBeast said on the podcast he spent between $7 million and $8 million a month.

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