Since the Obama administration

announced that CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, one of People magazine’s

" sexiest

men alive " in 2003, might be the next surgeon general, reactions have ranged from

indifferent to outraged. Although Gupta is a neurosurgeon and has been

in the public eye for years – he started his "House Call" show on

CNN in 2004 – many have been scrambling to figure out what this man stands for.

Two separate controversies

have already arisen since Gupta’s name has publicly been floated as

the next surgeon general. First, New York Times columnist

Paul Krugman lambasted Gupta’s critique of Michael Moore’s

2007 film Sicko, saying that Gupta’s accusation that Moore "fudged

the facts" was, well, just plain wrong. Then Rep.

John Conyers (D-MI) wrote a letter to his fellow Democrats urging them

to oppose Gupta as surgeon general. Conyers claimed that

Gupta would face a "credibility problem," given his lack of experience

in the National Health Service Corp and that "it is not in the best interests

of the nation to have someone … who lacks the requisite experience

needed to oversee the federal agency that provides crucial health care

assistance to some of the poorest and most underserved communities in

America."

Many bloggers have already

written about Gupta’s lack

of administrative experience ,

his opposition

to marijuana reforms ,

and some of his biggest

medical reporting mistakes .

But little is known about where Gupta stands on reproductive health.

(Rewire attempted to contact Gupta for an interview, but was

told he isn’t available for interviews at this time.)

The biggest source on Gupta’s public

record, the transcript archives from "House Call," reveals little;

Gupta’s show has largely avoided the issue. In a 2004 special on the worldwide HIV/AIDS epidemic, Gupta discussed "prevention" abstractly without ever mentioning condoms

or even sex. In another

episode on the

spread of HIV a few months later, he quotes an HIV-positive man, Peter

Staley, saying, "You can’t stop the spread of HIV unless you talk

about sex." But Gupta’s show doesn’t talk about sex. Instead, it

cuts to an interview with former basketball star Magic Johnson. But the show’s ability to deal with HIV/AIDS improves over the years, and in 2007 "House Call" addressed the problems of transactional sex

in African countries that presents challenges to stopping the spread

of HIV.

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Still, reproductive issues

specifically rarely grace the screen. An entire episode devoted

to "women’s health issues"

covered only the topics of breast cancer, smoking, and heart disease. In

a 2004

special on multiple births ,

he headed up the top of the news program with the news that pregnancies

among girls ages 10-14 were on the decline, which he attributed to "abstinence

programs and birth control," a fairly ambiguous and tentative statement.

Some have suggested that his ties to pharmaceutical companies are too

tight, and that he supported Gardasil while the jury was out on

its safety.

But when Gupta

was consulted about emergency contraception’s then potential over-the-counter

sale, he confirmed that Plan B was a "high dose birth control pill"

and said that there wasn’t much controversy from the mainstream anti-choice

community because "they think it actually acts before – actually prevents

the insemination part of this and the creation of life," thus quashing

any claims that emergency contraception causes abortion.

What a Bold Surgeon General Can Do

The public most commonly

knows the surgeon general as the person responsible for putting warnings

on cigarette packages. Yet the surgeon general really serves as

a public health advocate in a broad sense; his or her job is to relate

accurate scientific and medical information to the public to improve

public health. Sticking to that job description, however, might land

a surgeon general in trouble. President Ronald Reagan’s surgeon general,

C. Everett Koop, learned that lesson the hard way.

Koop discovered that much of the information put forth

by anti-choice groups claiming abortion had negative psychological implications for women wasn’t backed up by science. He then released a statement

that "the available scientific evidence about the psychological

sequelae of abortion simply cannot support either the preconceived notions

of those pro-life or those pro-choice." His position, viewed by

many as an open rebuke to the religious right, cost him the position

of Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George H.W.

Bush.

Dr. Jocelyn Elders, the surgeon

general under President Bill Clinton and only the second women to ever

hold the position, only served for 18 months. She resigned after a statement

she made before the United Nations about masturbation; she said it is

"part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught." Today

Elders realizes that many of the challenges she faced have remained

the same. (The full transcript is available here.)

Part of the job of surgeon

general for her, as it would be for Gupta, was to sell health care

reform to the public. "You have to remember that we were trying to

get through the Clinton health plan at the same time," she said. And in this respect, she thinks Gupta would excel: "I

think Dr. Gupta has been out there working very hard trying to communicate

with the American people. I think he would be an excellent communicator."

Elders had a very different

public perception when she was appointed than Gupta does. "Everybody

knew when I came to Washington that I was interested in reducing teenage

pregnancy, that I was very into reproductive health," she said. She

doesn’t know where Gupta stands on reproductive health, but "he

has 6,000 public health people who will be working for him who are the

best in the world."

Still, Elders expects that

many of the reproductive battles ahead will be on the list of battles

she faced: combating thfe spread of HIV/AIDS, advocating for fully funding

Title X to ensure comprehensive family planning, and calling for public funding of abortion for women on Medicaid. "I think we need to get over our ideas

about how condoms will break. We know condoms will break, but the vows

of abstinence break far more frequently than latex condoms," Elders

said. Gupta, if confirmed, might do well to remember that.