Late last week, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers joined Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in opposing the nomination of CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General. As reported by HuffPo:
[T]here 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. Gerard M. Farrel, Executive Director of the Commissioned Officers Association, stated in the January 7, 2008 Washington Post that Dr. Gupta will certainly face a "credibility gap" because he never served in the National Health Service Corp, and furthermore, does not have the "experience or qualifications to be the leader of the nation's public health service." Clearly, it is not in the best interests of the nation to have someone like this who lacks the requisite experience needed to oversee the federal agency that provides crucial health care assistance to some of the poorest and most underserved communities in America.
A substantive and thorough summary of those critiques by (some of those) medical professionals of the imminent nomination of Gupta, from an email by Physicians for a National Health Program:
The report this week that President-elect Obama is considering Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, for the position of U.S. surgeon general is deeply troubling.
Among our concerns are these:
He has very little background in public health, preventive medicine or administration.
He has openly opposed progressive health reform, going so far as to cite false information to denigrate single payer (e.g. in his error-laden attack on Michael Moore's film "Sicko") and parroting the health insurance lobby's distortions of single payer.
As a media figure, he has been disturbingly cozy with Big Pharma. He co-hosts Turner Private Networks' monthly show "Accent Health," which airs in doctors' offices around the country and which serves as a major conduit for targeted ads from the drug companies. Another example: In 2003, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, he publicly downplayed concerns about the dangers of Vioxx. It was removed from the market a year later by its manufacturer, Merck.
In the 2008 election campaign, his reporting on John McCain's health proposals was misleading and implicitly positive, giving undeserved credence to McCain's claims that buying private health insurance on the open market is a financially viable option for most Americans.
We urge you to write to President-elect Obama and express your opposition to Gupta's possible nomination, and to urge Obama to nominate a more acceptable candidate for this critically important post. You can do so by clicking here: http://change.gov/page/s/healthcare.
Sincerely yours,
Quentin D. Young, M.D.
National Coordinator
Physicians for a National Health Program
www.pnhp.org | info[-at-]pnhp[-dot-]org
As HuffPo notes in the linked article above, however, it's doubtful whether there will be much if any push back from the Senate, which actually gets to do confirmations.
Paging Senator Franken?
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