Sanjay Gupta
Sanjay Gupta is a prominent American neurosurgeon and journalist, best known for his role as the chief medical correspondent for CNN. Born in Novi, Michigan, to Indian immigrants, he pursued an accelerated medical program at the University of Michigan, culminating in an MD and a specialization in neurosurgery. Gupta has not only made significant contributions in the operating room but also in the field of medical journalism, particularly during critical events like the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War, where he embedded with military medical units, performing surgeries on-site.
His reporting often focuses on explaining complex medical issues in an accessible manner, akin to what Neil deGrasse Tyson has achieved for astronomy. Throughout his career, Gupta has received various awards for his work, including the Humanitarian Award from the National Press Photographers Association and induction into prestigious professional academies. However, his dual role as a practicing physician and journalist has drawn criticism regarding ethical boundaries in reporting. Despite this, he remains a trusted figure in medical communication, leveraging his expertise to educate the public on health matters through television and publications. Gupta has authored multiple books, including ones on well-being and the COVID-19 pandemic, and has hosted various media programs that explore the nuances of health and quality of life.
Sanjay Gupta
- Born: October 23, 1969
- Place of Birth: Novi, Michigan
PHYSICIAN, JOURNALIST
Neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta is the Emmy Award–winning chief medical correspondent for CNN. In addition to saving lives on the operating table, his medical reporting educates American audiences about advances in medical technology and the medical challenges that people face during catastrophes.
Early Life
Sanjay Gupta was born in Novi, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, to Subhash and Damyanti Gupta. His parents and his older brother, Yogesh, immigrated from India to Michigan in the 1960s to work as engineers for the Ford Motor Company. His mother was one of the first female engineers to work for Ford.
Gupta graduated from Novi High School and, at the age of seventeen, enrolled in the accelerated Interflex medical program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Interflex combined premedical studies and medical school into a six-year program. Gupta attended medical school at the University of Michigan and received his MD in 1993. He selected neurological surgery as his specialty and completed his neurosurgery residency at the University of Michigan Medical Center. Following his residency, Gupta received a fellowship in neurosurgery at the University of Tennessee’s Semmes-Murphey clinic.
From 1997 to 1998, Gupta served as a White House Fellow and worked as a special adviser to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. He wrote speeches on health care and helped Clinton research medical policy. He was offered the chance to work for CNN in 1998, but Gupta decided to return to Michigan instead.
Life’s Work
In 2000, Gupta became a partner at the Great Lakes Brain and Spine Institute in Jackson, Michigan. In 2001, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to work at Grady Memorial Hospital. He eventually became associate chief of the neurosurgery service, as well as an assistant, and eventually associate, professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
In the summer of 2001, Gupta joined CNN as a medical journalist. He led CNN’s reporting on the anthrax scares following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Even though Gupta thought he would primarily work as an off-the-air consultant, his natural smile and easygoing manner quickly made him one of CNN’s most popular reporters.
At the start of the Iraq War in 2003, Gupta traveled to Kuwait and then to Baghdad, Iraq, as an embedded journalist with the Navy’s Devil Docs medical unit. He provided live coverage of the desert operating rooms during the American-led invasion of Iraq. Since the Devil Docs did not have a neurosurgeon, they asked Gupta to perform operations on Iraqis and American soldiers who had suffered head traumas. Gupta participated in five life-saving surgeries while embedded in Iraq. Fellow journalists criticized Gupta for practicing medicine while reporting on it. He had, according to his critics, violated a tenet of journalistic ethics by crossing the line between reporting the story and being the story. That year, Gupta won the Humanitarian Award from the National Press Photographers Association.
In 2004, the Atlanta Press Club named Gupta the Journalist of the Year. On May 15 of the same year, Gupta married Rebecca Olson, a family law attorney. Gupta and his wife have three daughters, Sage Ayla, Sky Anjali, and Soleil Asha.
In 2006, the president of CBS, Sean McManus, came to a formal agreement with CNN that allowed Gupta to file up to ten reports a year for the CBS television news programs Evening News with Katie Couric and 60 Minutes. This agreement allowed Gupta to remain at CNN as the network’s chief medical correspondent and keep his post as associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital while also occasionally reporting for CBS.
On the July 9, 2007, episode of CNN’s Situation Room, Gupta aired a fact-check segment of Michael Moore’s controversial 2007 documentary Sicko. Moore’s film heavily criticized the American healthcare system, unfavorably comparing it to the socialized healthcare systems of Canada, England, France, and Cuba. In his segment, Gupta stated that Moore, an advocate of socialized medicine, had “fudged facts.” Moore was interviewed live on CNN immediately following Gupta’s segment, and he accused Gupta of bias in favor of pharmaceutical companies. The next day, Gupta debated Moore on the program Larry King Live.
CNN announced on January 9, 2009, that Gupta had been offered the position of surgeon general by President Barack Obama. Some healthcare professionals and journalists reacted favorably to this news since Gupta’s exemplary communication skills and previous experience with the government would make him a natural candidate for this post. Others felt that Gupta had often displayed poor medical judgment and was too closely connected to drug companies to be an objective surgeon general. Michigan congressman John Conyers Jr., a friend of Michael Moore, wrote a letter opposing Gupta’s nomination. In March of that same year, Gupta withdrew his name from consideration, citing the strain the job would have on his family.
In 2009, the American Medical Association’s Medical Communications Conference awarded Gupta the Health Communications Achievement Award. That same year, the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications presented Gupta with its Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award. Between 2019 and 2021, he was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, respectively.
In addition to his regular work on television-news programs, Gupta has also appeared as a guest on programs such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Real Time with Bill Maher, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. He has also published a regular column in Time magazine, and by 2023 he had published five books that included 2007's Chasing Life and 2021's Keep Sharp. Inspired by his 2007 book, in 2019, he hosted the CNN docuseries Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in which he visits countries such as Japan and Norway to learn more about global meanings of quality of life. The year 2020 saw the debut of his new CNN podcast Chasing Life. In 2021, Gupta published his fifth book, World War C: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One. That same year, Gupta also served a two-week stint as a guest host on the TV game show Jeopardy!
Significance
Gupta is an accomplished neurosurgeon known for taking the complexities of his field and presenting them in an easily understandable form to a mass audience. He has done for medicine what astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has done for astronomy and cosmology, which is to communicate a highly technical field of science to the educated public in an engaging and comprehensible manner.
Nevertheless, Gupta has also received criticism for his medical reporting. Several critics have alleged that Gupta shows a “pro-screening bias” and has a tendency to champion medical tests before satisfactory evidence has accumulated to warrant their routine use. Others have questioned the adequacy of Gupta’s medical judgments, as well as the degree of entanglement between his reporting and the drug companies that sponsor his news programs. One of the greatest criticisms of Gupta is his tendency to practice medicine while reporting on-site. He did this in Iraq and Haiti, and journalists have said that he needs either to be an on-site physician or an on-site reporting journalist, not both.
Despite these criticisms, Gupta’s mastery of medical journalism was on display in 2011 when Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords survived after being shot in the head in Tucson, Arizona. People were flummoxed by how someone could have survived such an injury. By using models of the human brain and skull on television, Gupta explained the complicated injury in the clear and tactful manner for which he was known. His strong communication skills and upbeat personality have made him a trusted source of medical information and a favorite reporter for many American television news-watchers.
Bibliography
Cruz, Gilbert. “Surgeon General: Sanjay Gupta.” Time. Time, Inc., 8 Jan. 2009. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
"Dr. Sanjay Gupta." CNN, www.cnn.com/profiles/sanjay-gupta-profile. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.
"Dr. Sanjay Gupta." Everyday Health, 2024, www.everydayhealth.com/authors/sanjay-gupta/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.
“Dr. Sanjay Gupta's New Book Tells Us What We Can Learn From the COVID-19 Pandemic.” NPR, 4 Oct. 2021, www.npr.org/2021/10/04/1042969574/dr-sanjay-guptas-new-book-tells-us-what-we-can-learn-from-the-covid-19-pandemic. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.
Folkenflik, David. "Factual Error Opens CNN Star Sanjay Gupta to Scrutiny over Dual Roles." NPR, 8 July 2015, www.npr.org/2015/07/08/421082806/a-factual-error-opens-cnn-star-dr-sanjay-gupta-to-scrutiny-over-dual-roles. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.
Gupta, Sanjay. Chasing Life: New Discoveries in the Search for Immortality to Help You Age Less Today. New York: Wellness Central, 2008. Print.
Gupta, Sanjay. Cheating Death: The Doctors and Medical Miracles That Are Saving Lives against All Odds. New York: Wellness Central, 2010. Print.
"Jeopardy! Announces Additional Guest Hosts." Jeopardy.com, 22 Feb. 2021, www.jeopardy.com/jbuzz/news-events/additional-guest-hosts-join-jeopardy. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.
Kane, Andrea. "Dr. Sanjay Gupta and His Wife Get Personal about the Pandemic in 'Chasing Life.'" CNN, 11 May 2021, www.cnn.com/2021/05/11/health/chasing-life-podcast-debut-gupta/index.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.
Kugel, Allison. "CNN's Sanjay Gupta: An Intimate Interview with The World's Doctor." PR.com, 12 Mar. 2012. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018.