Sanjay Gupta

For the Bollywood director of the same name, see Sanjay Gupta (director).

Sanjay Gupta
Surgeon General of the United States-designate
Assuming office January 2009
President	Barack Obama
Succeeding	Steven K. Galson (acting)
Personal details
Born	(1969-10-23) October 23, 1969 Novi, Michigan
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Rebecca Olson Gupta
Children	Sage Ayla Gupta, Skye Gupta
Parent(s)	Subhash Gupta (father), Damyanti Gupta (mother)
Alma mater	University of Michigan Medical School (M.D.) University of Michigan (B.A.)
Occupation	CNN Medical Correspondent, neurosurgeon

Sanjay Gupta (born October 23, 1969) is an American physician and a contributing CNN chief health correspondent based in Atlanta, Georgia. As of January 2009, he has been offered the position of Surgeon General of the United States in the incoming administration of President Barack Obama; the final vetting is currently under way. An assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, he is also a frequent guest on the news show Anderson Cooper 360°. "Charity Hospital" won a 2006 Emmy Award for Outstanding Feature Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast. From 1997 to 1998, he served as one of fifteen White House Fellows, primarily as an advisor to Hillary Clinton. Gupta currently publishes a column in TIME magazine. He is also host of House Call with Dr Sanjay Gupta. His book Chasing Life was a New York Times and National bestseller.

Biography

Youth

Gupta grew up in Template:City-state, in suburban Detroit and received his undergraduate degree in biomedical sciences at the University of Michigan in Template:City-state and his M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical Center. He was part of the integrated pre-medical medical school program (Inteflex) which accepted students directly from high school. He completed his residency in neurological surgery within the University of Michigan Health System. His parents, Damyanti and Subhash Gupta, moved from India to Michigan to work as engineers for the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn in the 1960s. He also completed a portion of his residency at St. Lawrence Hospital in Lansing, Michigan.

Broadcast journalism

In 2003, Gupta traveled to Iraq to cover the medical aspects of 2003 invasion of Iraq. While in Iraq, Gupta performed emergency surgery on both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Gupta was embedded with a Navy medical unit at the time. A Marine named Jesus Vidana suffered a severe head injury and the Marines asked for Gupta's assistance because of his background in neurosurgery. Vidana survived and was sent back to the United States for rehabilitation.

Gupta was named one of the Sexiest Men of 2003 by People magazine.

In December 2006, CBS News President Sean McManus negotiated a deal with CNN that will have Gupta file up to 10 reports a year for "The Evening News With Katie Couric" and "60 minutes" while remaining CNN’s chief medical correspondent and associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital.

On October 14, 2007, Gupta guest-hosted a health episode of CBS News Sunday Morning as its regular host, Charles Osgood, was on vacation.

Surgeon General candidate

On January 6, 2009, CNN announced that Gupta had been offered the position of Surgeon General by President-Elect Barack Obama. He has accepted the offer and is now undergoing the final vetting process.

Some doctors said that his communication skills and high profile would allow him to highlight medical issues and prioritize medical reform. However, others raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest with drug companies who have sponsored his broadcasts, and his lack of skepticism in weighing the costs and benefits of medical treatments.

Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), wrote a letter opposing Gupta. Conyers supports a single-payer health care system, which Michael Moore advocated in Sicko, which Gupta criticized.

According to the Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, "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." Krugman states that he does not have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications, he instead has a problem with Gupta's behavior and claims. Krugman states "Many commenters don’t seem to get the point. Gupta didn’t say “Michael Moore is an annoying blowhard”; he didn’t say “We question his interpretation of the evidence”; he said he “fudged the facts”. In other words, he accused Moore of lying. That’s a very strong accusation, which had better be backed by solid evidence. Instead, we had CNN misreading a number from Moore; CNN objecting to Moore using a projected health care spending number for 2007 instead of an actual number for 2005 (and the projection was right, by the way); CNN accusing Moore of not showing a number that was in fact right there in the movie. And Gupta did not apologize, except for the misread number."

Others such as liberal commentator Jane Hamsher, has defended the appointment, addressing Krugman's criticisms and noting that Gupta's responsibilities as a surgeon general would be pretty much the same as those of his CNN position, and that Gupta's media presence would make him ideal for the position.. From the medical community, Donna Wright of Creative Health Care Management, a regular commentator on medicine and politics, has also defended the appointment on the grounds of his media presence, combined with his medical qualifications, which she views as an ideal combination for the post of surgeon general. Likewise, Fred Sanfilippo, executive vice president for health affairs at Emory University, supported Gupta’s nomination by issuing a press release saying:

He has the character, training, intelligence and communications skills needed to help the United States improve its health and health care delivery systems in the next Administration.

Medical practice

Gupta is a general neurosurgeon, and has worked on complicated spine, trauma and 3-D image guided operations. He has published medical journal articles on percutaneous pedicle screw placement, brain tumors, and spinal cord abnormalities. Gupta performed a long-distance assessment on United States senator Edward M. Kennedy when he collapsed at a Congressional luncheon following the Barack Obama 2009 presidential inauguration.Later,he appeared on camera from Atlanta to discuss the health scare.

Controversy

Criticism of reporting

Some journalists and journalism professors specializing in health care have criticized Gupta's coverage. Trudy Lieberman, a regular Nation contributor on healthcare and director of the health and medicine reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism reviewed Gupta's "ineptitude" in reporting on the McCain health plan. Lieberman criticized Gupta for relying on insurance industry statistics, and a health expert quoted by Lieberman said that Gupta's reporting “gives a gross oversimplification."

Peter Aldhous criticized Gupta's "enthusiasm for many forms of medical screening - even when the scientific evidence indicates that it may not benefit patients." He and other medical journalists accuse him of a "pro-screening bias" in promoting widespread electrocardiogram and prostate cancer screening, even though medical authorities like the US Preventive Services Task Force recommends against it.

Others have criticized Gupta's promotion of Merck's cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, without disclosing the financial arrangements between CNN and Merck.

Gary Schwitzer, professor of health journalism at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism, has regularly critiqued Gupta's reporting.

Michael Moore dispute

A July 9, 2007, broadcast of CNN's The Situation Room aired a fact check segment by Gupta on Michael Moore's 2007 film Sicko in which Gupta stated that Moore had "fudged facts".

Immediately following the segment, Moore was interviewed live on CNN by Wolf Blitzer. Moore said that Gupta's report was inaccurate and biased, and Moore later posted a detailed response on his website. Moore accused CNN and Gupta of being biased in favor of the drug industry because most of the sponsors for their medical coverage, including Gupta's reports, were drug companies.

On July 10, 2007, Gupta debated Moore on Larry King Live.

On July 15, CNN released a statement in response to Michael Moore's rebuttal. In it, they apologized for an error in their on-air report, having stated that in the film Moore reported Cuba spends $25 per person for health care when the film actually gave that number as $251. CNN attributed this to a transcription error.

CNN defended the rest of Gupta's report and issued a point-by-point response to Moore's response in which CNN contended that Moore's comparison of data from different sources in different years was in effect "cherry picking" results, at the cost of statistical accuracy. Gupta also stated his view of society as being based on the degree to which "we take care of those that can't take care of themselves."

CNN also admitted that, in his debate with Moore, Gupta had afterwards committed a second error, mistakenly contesting Moore's observation that Gupta's one on-air expert was now associated with a Republican-linked think tank rather than a university (a fact which the chyron on Gupta's original report had stated correctly). Gupta's exact language, according to the official CNN transcript, was "he is with a think tank and his only affiliation is with Vanderbilt University."

See also

• Health care in the United States
• Health care reform in the United States
• Healthcare-NOW!
• Single-payer health care
• United States National Health Insurance Act
• Universal health care

External links

• Sanjay Gupta CNN biography
• Interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta
• Paging Dr. Gupta: - Blogs from CNN.com
• Web page at Emory Neurosurgery department

Template:Persondata