Gupta Is Not A Good Choice

When I first heard that Barack Obama wanted Sanjay Gupta to be his Surgeon General, I didn't care one way or another. Like most Americans, all I knew about Gupta came from seeing him sporadically on CNN and he seemed likable enough. But the more I learn about him, the less I like his appointment.

One of the major problems with his appointment is his view of national healthcare. It has become clear to anyone that will look that our healthcare system is a disaster. Not only are we the only industrialized nation in the world that does not cover all of its citizens with health insurance, but we have somehow wound up taking medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and left these life and death decisions up to insurance executives.

Anyone who has dealt with an insurance company in the last few years, knows how difficult it is to deal with them. They always will put their ever-growing profit margin ahead of a consumers healthcare. It has become obvious that America needs a government-run singler-payer system that gives citizens the choice of doctor and hospital, and puts medical decisions back in the hands of doctors.

But Gupta likes the status quo. During the election campaign, he came out in favor of the sadly inadequate McCain plan, which would leave our healthcare decisions in the hands of private insurance companies. He also made this clear when he attacked Michael Moore's excellent movie about healthcare called Sicko. He accused Moore of "fudging his facts" in the movie. Of course, it turned out that Gupta was wrong and Moore's facts were correct.

Now there has come to light another very disturbing belief of Gupta's. It turns out that he is a believer in and supporter of "facilitated communication" (FC). FCis the belief that non-communicative autistic patients can communicate througn a keybord and computer. A "helper" holds the patients hand over a keyboard, and supposedly a patient is able to type out a message. It is nothing more than a scam.

Every time FC has been scientifically tested, it fails miserably. It is junk science that's being passed off as real science, and the last thing we need is a Surgeon General supporting this pseudo-science.

I'm beginning to think Sanjay Gupta would do more harm than good if allowed to become Surgeon General.