Sanjay Gupta, Superstar

You remember Sanjay Gupta?  He was CNN’s medical correspondent for a long time.  When he had the temerity to disagree with Michael Moore, he was pilloried by the Moore-ons and Moore apologists like PZ Myers. They could not believe that a member of the MSM would dispute the vileness of America’s healthcare system.  We blogged on the Moore-Gupta dust-up here, here, here and here.  For disputing Moore, Gupta was called a tool of the system.  This quote, from revere, is typical:

Gupta was badly roughed up and had he any testicles prior to the interview would have found them gone after it. Given his track record, he actually had nothing to lose. I’m not a violent or blood thirsty kind of person, but even I have to admit it can be entertaining to watch someone beat up in public.

One can disagree with Gupta, although the links above document, very throughly, that Gupta was right and Moore was wrong.  But the personal attacks and slagging of Gupta was typical of the Cult of Personality that has built up around our favorite documentary film-maker.  And no doubt they played some role in his decision to withdraw his name as a nominee for Surgeon General (to be fair, many liberals loudly supported his nomination).

Ignored in the fracas and character assassination was that Gupta is a skilled neurosurgeon who has saved and improved lives. While covering the Iraq War, he rolled up his sleeves and operated on both military and civilian casualties.

He’s done it again:

After doctors and nurses from a Belgian medical team left a field hospital Friday night because of security concerns, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, was the only doctor to help 25 earthquake victims, CNN said Saturday.

The network said Belgian Chief Coordinator Geert Gijs, a doctor who was at the hospital with 60 Belgian medical personnel, told CNN that he decided to pull the team out for the night.

Gupta stayed all night at the hospital with other CNN staffers, security personnel and at least one Haitian nurse who had refused to leave, CNN said.
“I’ve never been in a situation like this. This is quite ridiculous,” Gupta said. He monitored patients’ vital signs, gave them pain-killers, continued intravenous drips and stabilized three new patients in critical condition, CNN reported.

This, my friends, is making a difference.

Cold Water on the Cuban Myth

It’s a rare month that doesn’t go by without yet another demonstration of why Michael Moore was so totally wrong on Cuba’s healthcare system.  Here‘s the latest:

Twenty-six patients at Cuba’s largest hospital for the mentally ill died this week during a cold snap, the government said Friday.
Human rights leaders cited negligence and a lack of resources as factors in the deaths, and the Health Ministry launched an investigation that it said could lead to criminal proceedings.

A Health Ministry communique read on state television blamed “prolonged low temperatures that fell to 38 degrees Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) in Boyeros,” the neighborhood where Havana’s Psychiatric Hospital is located.

It said most of the deaths were from natural causes such as old age, respiratory infections and complications from chronic diseases including cancer and cardiovascular problems.

The statement came in response to reports from the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights that at least 24 mental patients died of hypothermia this week, and that the hospital did not do enough to protect them from the cold because of problems such as faulty windows.

Commission head Elizardo Sanchez said that so many patients dying of hypothermia was “absurd in a tropical country” and claimed the deaths could have been prevented if the government had granted long-standing requests from international aid groups to tour Cuba’s medical facilities, including the capital’s 2,500-bed mental hospital.

But it’s universal healthcare!  And it’s free!

When P.J. O’Rourke visited East Germany, he marveled that communism could make a poor country out of Germans.  I have to stand back in awe of a system that has people freeze to death in Cuba of all places.  The Cubans are, as usual, blaming the US-led embargo.  But you don’t need fancy imports and trade to keep people warm at night. Is the embargo so onerous that their wonderful healthcare system can not procure a few blankets or seal a few windows?  How does this happen?

The Declining Influence of Moore

The Telegraph is putting together a rundown of the 100 most influential liberals and conservatives in the US.  And who is that at #91?

A reviewer of Moore’s 2007 movie Sicko, about the American health system, summed up his career as being “a multimedia attempt to undo Reagan’s great achievement: persuading blue-collar factory workers and other members of the working class to embrace his heady brew of jingoism, anticommunism, contempt for government and admiration for the virtues of unfettered capitalism”.

By that standard, the university dropout from Flint, Michigan has failed miserably. But his Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) on the war on terror (the highest-grossing documentary of all time) and Bowling for Columbine (2002) about the gun lobby became the far Left’s contribution to key debates. But with liberalism now mainstream and in the White House (where Moore is unlikely to be a guest) the filmmaker’s influence seems to be on the wane.

They ranked him #7 two years ago.  I have to agree with them that his influence is declining.  Capitalism did not produce nearly the buzz and hysteria that his past movies did.  And, with a box-office take just above $14 million, it was his least successful film in the last decade.

So does that mean the end of Moorewatch?  Not when he still has so many followers.  And not when his twitter feed contains such pearls of wisdom as this:

Thank God the first troops in the surge to Afghanistan got there in time to stop a Nigerian man on a flight to Detroit.

Apparently, the idea of layered defense doesn’t make much sense to Mikey.