Gupta Out as Surgeon General? Give that Job to Dr. Howard Dean, please!

Here are three of my prior articles on Howard Dean for HHS:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Vermont-Senator-Bernie-San-by-Silla-Brush-090209-701.html

and

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-United-States-Needs-Dr-by-Stephen-Fox-090203-382.html

and

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Howard-Dean-MD-would-by-Stephen-Fox-081109-258.html

Please take the time to email both President Obama and VP Biden in support of Dr. Dean as Surgeon General; I truly believe the very future of American Health and Illness Prevention is at stake, given the corporate onslaught into the regulatory processes we are supposed to trust and depend on in our naive and deluded faith that the FDA "is there to protect us."

Dean is a graduate of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, former Governor of Vermont, a true progressive, and one of the brightest minds in public service at this time. He has practiced Family Medicine in Burlington, Vermont, and his wife, Judith Sternberg M.D., has her own practice of medicine in the Burlington area.

Anyone with half a brain, from either or both political parties, realizes that Health Care Reform without launching a fierce illness prevention program is as doomed to failure as would be putting a nice new box of bandaids on an open wound infected with gangrene, which described well the wreckage of American health at the hands of Big Pharma and Big Junk Food, and Big Television dumbing down the survival instinct for the past 60 years.

Big changes are coming, I believe, especially with the excellent Supreme Court decision in the past few days denying Big Pharma their favorite hiding place from liability suits, the fact that they obtained FDA approval, and this clearly will put a far greater onus on the FDA to get things right to begin with, instead of continuing to rubber stamp what industry wants from the FDA, from scientists who are then offered a way out the revolving door into a cushy corporate spot working for the firms they once regulated.

I could easily see a new consortium of some high powered legislators who are both interested in and cognizant of the problems in the FDA, the Health and Human Services Department, and in the office of the Surgeon General, if Dr. Dean were given that job by Obama in a long overdue gesture of appreciation, not just for his political services, but for his capacity to solve extremely serious and growing problems in American Health Care and prevention.

These legislators include Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan, Congresswomen Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, and Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa.

Think about it. Who else would you trust for designing a complete overhaul of the FDA, the Department of Health, and the Surgeon General's functions more than Dr. Howard Dean?

Stephen Fox, Editor, New Mexico Sun News
stephen@santafefineart.com