Gupta Is Out --- And That's Good

Back in early January, Barack Obama announced that Dr. Sanjay Gupta would be his nominee to be Surgeon General. In addition to being a doctor, Gupta is an on-air personality for CNN -- covering medical news for the network. At the time it didn't seem like a bad pick, because like most Americans, all I knew of Gupta was his periodic appearances on CNN.

But it didn't take much research for me to change my mind. First, I found he is a supporter of the junk science concept of "facilitated communication". That's the discredited belief that non-communicative autistic patients can communicate with a computer when a "facilitator" holds their hands and moves them over the keyboard.

Of course, "facilitated communication" has miserably failed every truly scientific test that tried to verify it. It is nothing more than a scam taking advantage of the parents and friends of these autistic patients, and it's very troubling that Gupta ignores the scientific evidence and supports the failed concept. How many other unscientifically proven things would he try to foist on the American public?

Then he attacked Michael Moore's movie "Sicko", claiming that Moore had "fudged his facts" in the movie. Naturally, Gupta was wrong and Moore's facts were correct. Gupta was just trying to justify his faith in our broken health care system. He likes having the insurance companies in charge of our healthcare, and proved that during the campaign by supporting McCain's pathetically inadequate health reforms (which would have been little more than a huge payday for the insurance companies).

Thankfully, it was announced that Gupta will not be our next Surgeon General. On Thursday, Gupta withdrew his nomination for the Surgeon General's position. He said he wants to focus on his medical career and spend more time with his family.

I raelly don't care if that's his real reason, or whether he finally realized he was out-of-step with the health care goals of the Obama administration. I'm just glad he won't be taking the job.