Obama Taps CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be Next Surgeon General

Yeah I'd like to tap Dr. Gupta... wait, what?

Many have some issues with the lack of gravitas or experience specifically in public health that Gupta would bring. It's curious that a celebrity was chosen over other qualified candidates.

And last year Gupta presented a "reality check" on the facts behind Michael Moore's movie "Sicko". Much of what Gupta presented was plain wrong, bringing up a host of issues about conflicts of interests and commercial interests (see this post at CureThis for more, including the videos). The conflict of interest piece (and some of his other health journalism where he hypes up and twists public health stories) is what worries me most about this appointment.

Lastly, I'd have to agree completely with Paul Krugman on what he wrote today in the NYTimes about Gupta and Moore:

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.