Sanjay Gupta is Controversial Pick For Surgeon General

by polylogue | January 8, 2009 at 08:09 pm

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It turns out that Sanjay Gupta, President-elect Barack Obama's probable pick for the post of Surgeon General, is controversial. First, Gupta was criticized on New York Times' columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman's blog. Then, John Conyers (R-MI), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has begun trying to persuade his colleagues that Gupta is not the right pick.

Krugman went after Gupta for accusing filmmaker Michael Moore of "fudging" the facts in his film "Sicko". Krugman stated that the fudged facts that Gupta went after turned out to have been true. "I don't have a problem with Gupta's qualifications," Krugman wrote. "But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over 'Sicko'. You don't have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore 'fudged his facts", when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong."

So essentially, Krugman didn't like Gupta's attempt to smear Moore because he didn't like the information that Moore was presenting.

Conyers, meanwhile, in a letter to his colleagues, brought up Krugman's critique and added that he believed that Gupta does not have the necessary experience to run the Office of the Surgeon General. A Detroit Free Press article stated that Conyers has been pushing his own preferred candidate.

The Surgeon General is the top public health spokesman in the country. Gupta, 39, is a neurosurgeon, based in Atlanta, GA and CNN's medical correspondent. Probably the last Surgeon General to garner this much attention was C. Everett Koop, the Surgeon General under President Ronald Reagan.

Lately, there have been some rumblings suggesting he might not be the right person. One such critique, from New York Times economic columnist and recent Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, took Gupta to task for accusing filmmaker (and Flint native) Michael Moore of “fudging his facts” in the movie “Sicko,” about the problems with America’s health care system.

In his letter, Conyers cited Krugman’s opposition and said there are “highly experienced medical professionals who question whether Dr. Gupta has the necessary experience or even the medical background to be in charge of some 6,000 physicians or more who work in the United States Public Health Service.”

Conyers has been active in pushing his own candidate. Both he and Gov. Jennifer Granholm had suggested that Obama consider Dr. Herb Smitherman Jr., a Detroit public health advocate and assistant dean for community and urban health at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, for the position.