by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: January 12, 2009   Last Updated: August 04, 2010

The most famous medical advances of the 20th century may well be less medical jargon and more clear and uncluttered writing. Who will lead the Way? This is yet to be seen, but I place my bet on Sanjay Gupta. For reasons why, read the following I wrote when the first hint of Obama's choice for Surgeon General was Sanjay Gupta:

The possible appointment of Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General by President-elect Obama is the latest news just in. Gupta as Surgeon General, what a great idea! He is a neurosurgeon, a CNN correspondent, an excellent intelligent, insightful, and humorous medical writer, and is likewise relatively young. I repeat, what a great idea.

Now, with that announcement there's two things I want to know, what are the duties of Surgeon Generals and who is this Indian born doctor that writers, especially medical writers, so love? The duties of Surgeon Generals:

From OSG I learned that Surgeon General heads a staff of 6,000 "commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service". The Office of the Surgeon General, under the direction of the Surgeon General, is in the "Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services." The primary purpose is to educate the public about health. Certainly Gupta will have no trouble doing this since he has been doing so with his easy to under stand writings about this or that illness for a long time.

Once having read his articles we never forget and the next time we see his name under a title we immediately drop everything and read word for word his thoughts. And it is his thoughts and not a contrived neatly arranged column of dull medical jargon we get. That is what endears him to the American public. At least thats my take.

To get an example of the duties of a Surgeon General the might most recent headlines by the present Surgeon General concerns youth and health and health histories. The present Surgeon General is Rear Admiral Steven K. Galson, M.D., M.P.H.

Sanjay Gupta:

My information is from CNN since his primary work now is as their "senior medical correspondent for the health and medical unit." Naturally they concentrate their thoughts on who he is as related to what he does for them. Apparently he does his job so well he is now being asked to move on up and include his expertise to all of US.

Working from Atlanta, he not only contributes daily and weekend coverage for CNN, he co-hosts "Accent Health" for Turner Private Networks, works for TNT and writes a column for Time Magazine. He began with CNN in 2001. He has been in Iraq and Kuwait and has been instrumental in getting news about the war and how the medics were dealing with medicine in the desert.

In 2004 he traveled to Bangkok addressing the problem of Aids. If all of the above mentioned work is not enough to qualify him as Surgeon General, there's more. He performs surgery weekly at Emory University Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital where he is chief of neurosurgery. The list of what he has done and where he has been goes on and on. Washington is not new to him, in 1997; he was one of fifteen White House Fellows chosen. For what purpose? He was "special advisor to the first lady."

Sanjay Gupta as a writer:

Yet, although I too have first hand knowledge of medicine - as an RN - it was not medicine but his excellent way of stringing words along and his warm, human kindness and smile provoking, no jargon kind of writing that first alerted me to his easy to read medical writing.

He sees not only diseases and tissue with one eye while keeping the other on the highly approved medical journals he might make inroads into, but he sees a whole person behind the story. Is it any wonder then that the whole world is beating paths to his door?

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