The Doctor is In!

--> I must admit, President-elect Obama's (unannounced) choice of Dr. Sanjay Gupta as the next United States Surgeon-General has me atwitter. Gupta has a powerful public presence, having invited himself into Americans' living rooms for years as chief medical correspondent on CNN, and he brings to the job a wide range of expertise.


Gupta will apparently be tasked with helping HHS Secretary Daschle craft the administration's healthcare policy as Obama and his party prepare a major push towards universal healthcare. He also provides Obama with a very adept spokesperson who could appear on the news networks to promote White House policy.

However, Gupta's past might indicate that he will not instantaneously be a darling of the left. In 2006 he publicly opposed referenda in Colorado and Nevada that would have decriminalized small amounts of marijuana. He wrote, "I suspect that most of the people eager to vote yes on the new ballot measures aren't suffering from glaucoma, Alzheimer's or chemo-induced nausea. Many of them just want to get stoned legally. That's why I, like many other doctors, am unimpressed with the proposed legislation, which would legalize marijuana irrespective of any medical condition." Interestingly, he also mentions that smoking pot should be banned because of its health risks. Does that suggest a ban on smoking might be next? What about alcohol? Video games? Michael Bay movies?

Speaking of movies, Gupta's most notable public controversy to date was his heated battle with filmmaker Michael Moore, as Gupta accused (erroneously, I might add) Moore of fudging facts in his healthcare documentary, Sicko.



Gupta later apologized for having gotten his facts wrong, but his hostility towards Moore's pro-universal healthcare agenda might be grounds for some concern by Democrats.

Paul Krugman raised the issue as cause for worry about Gupta in an editorial for the New York Times on Tuesday.

Personally, I don't think it matters. If Gupta was being appointed film critic-general, then maybe I would take issue with his treatment of Sicko. But criticism of Michael Moore is hardly a good enough reason to disqualify someone from government service - attacking him is sadly almost a national pasttime. I'll simply have to hope that Gupta was merely outside of his element, reporting on movie ethics and not actually criticizing Moore's position on healthcare reform.