The Good Doc

Michael Moore did an interview on CNN's 'The Situation Room' with Wolf Blitzer and pretty much had a meltdown. Or if you're a Moore fan, he totally pwned Wolf. While I'm no fan of either Moore nor CNN, I did take issue with his snarky comments in regard to Sanjay Gupta, a senior medical correspondent for CNN and a practicing neurosurgeon at Emory. The transcript of Moore's interview isn't on CNN's pages yet and I'm not so inclined to link to the video of it. People might be trying to eat or something when they read this.

Anyway, Gupta reported on the current war in Iraq, and became part of the story when his surgical skills were critically needed. What set Moore off was Gupta had the nerve to cite facts that refuted SiCKO!, so naturally he attacked the media as a whole and the war and everything but the falsehoods in his movie.

Sanjay Gupta has a bit more medical standing than Moore, and war for that matter.

“The major change between 1991 and today,” he said, “was to move the medical units forward so we can get people treated in time.”

But moving health care professionals into the forward zone raised questions. “The conflict was this: do you take health professionals and expose them to the risk? The answer has been yes,” Gupta said.

He recounted the moment when he first saw a physician carrying a stethoscope in one hand and a gun in the other—a sight that became familiar on the front lines. “It was striking to me as a physician and a civilian,” he recounted. “But that is the awkward dance that surgeon-soldiers have to deal with. It has made them more a part of the battle experience. They have come under attack and have had to defend themselves.”

I asked about whether he noticed ambivalence among these physician-soldiers, who literally with one hand were saving lives and with the other were prepared to take them in their own defense. Gupta said they did not. “The fact that they did not was the most interesting to me. They talked about how they did both.”

Read a little about his experience as a journalist and neurosurgeon in Iraq.
Gee, who do I believe more. A guy who's been on the front lines helping save lives of soldiers and reporting their stories, or a guy who gets footage from other people and twists what they say to suit his purposes. Hm...

h/t: JimK, Lee, MOOREWATCH