This UCI orthopedic surgeon is on the shortlist for the U.S. Surgeon General job. He has been an outspoken critic of medical device companies and is fighting to limit the influence of money on medicine.
Here is a recap of our conversation:
Q: You were in Washington last year testifying before Congress about doctors who are paid by companies to put in certain medical devices. Did they understand why you were so concerned about this?
When the Peanut Corporation of America recalled thousands of peanut butter products in January for fear they were tainted with salmonella, news organizations all over the country rushed to local stores to find out what where PCA products were being sold. Justina Wang, 25, a recent Northwestern University grad who works at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, went a step further.
The transaction was quick.
In the parking lot of a pastry shop, a patient handed Dr. Kachun ClementYeung $400. Yeung handed the patient a prescription for 800 milligrams of OxyContin. It took less than five minutes.
The exchange was part of 23,000 milligrams worth of the addictive painkiller that Yeung prescribed to patients who were never properly diagnosed with chronic pain during a 168 day period in 2002.
Justina Wang at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle tackled a topic that seems to scare most local publications: food safety.
With each food poisoning scare, local reporters cover what's happening at their corner stores. Few examine the root causes. With school board meetings, octuplet moms and a weekender due tomorrow, how could one possibly get to the bottom of our fractured food safety system?
We seem to be gripped by a national state of shock at the news that Nadya Suleman, a single mother with no job and six children, was able to have eight embryos implanted in her uterus, all of which resulted in children.
By Alice Chen
Imagine if your doctor asked your 12-year-old son to explain to you that you had just been diagnosed with cancer. Get tips and story ideas for covering medical translation, a critical service for millions of patients who don't speak English well.
Americans' penchant for rating everything from tech gadgets to restaurants to professional services online - sometimes in novella-length missives - is extending to health care professionals, and entrepreneurs nationwide are cashing in on the trend.
Health care reporters know how rarely hospitals suspend a doctor's privileges. Those rights are granted and revoked by other doctors, and doctors are loathe to set a precedent by saying a botched surgery or missed diagnosis should bar a doctor for life.
That's why it was a big deal when the Reston Hospital Center in Virginia took away Dr. Bahram Tafreshi Moshiri's right to practice there in November 2001.
One would think that everything that could possibly be said about lead poisoning has been printed, broadcast and e-mailed around the globe countless times.
Sometimes, all a doctor with a checkered past wants is some peace and quiet.
Dr. Paul William Anderson had a little trouble with a medical malpractice lawsuit in Nebraska. The Medical Board of Nebraska wanted the radiologist to explain why he had failed to diagnose a tumor that ended up blinding one of his patients.
Update: Dr. Gupta removed himself from the list of candidates on March 5, telling CNN's Larry King, "I think for me it really came down to a sense of timing more than anything else. This job...takes us away from our children for so many years at once, and I sort of came to grips that I'd probably be away for several years of their lives."
Dr. Sanjay Gupta appears to be the first surgeon general picked not for his public service but for his public image.
