As Surgeon General, Sanjay Gupta will give the Obama Administration a slew of firsts--member of India-born parents, cable TV correspondent, surgeon to save a life in Iraq and doctor to tangle with Michael Moore over "Sicko."
As the nation's highest-ranking medical officer, the 39-year-old Dr. Gupta would be making a financial sacrifice by giving up his work for CNN and CBS as well as his career as a neurosurgeon but could become the most influential Surgeon General in recent history as the new White House undertakes the upgrading of American health care.
Talk about hands on: In April 2003, while reporting from Iraq in a surgical tent, Dr. Gupta removed a bullet from the brain of a 23-year-old Marine, Jesus Vidana, who had been struck by a sniper and twice pronounced dead in the field.
An outspoken Surgeon General would be a big change from recent years, symbolized by Congressional testimony of Richard H. Carmona that he was “muzzled” on public health issues, ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches and discouraged from attending the Special Olympics for disabled people because of its ties to the Kennedy family.
If Dr. Gupta takes the job, Wolf Blitzer will be losing a colleague, but the rest of us will finally have a doctor in the White House again.
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Gupta's cheesy and inaccurate attacks on Micheal Moore have pretty much ended any credibility he once had.
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