OPINION:
President Obama’s confused and timid response to the Ebola crisis has done nothing to calm the fear that stalks America, and choosing a well-connected Democratic lawyer, lobbyist and what the White House calls “an implementation expert” isn’t likely to make anyone feel better. Ronald A. Klain has no medical, scientific, public health or administrative experience to become the nation’s Ebola czar.
“Implementation” is White House spin for “managing Ebola politics,” and a White House insider, instead of someone with wide experience in public health, is just what this president could be expected to prescribe. He obviously regards Ebola as merely a political problem, an irritant until after the November elections, and not a medical problem. This might have been an assignment for a surgeon general, as manager of the U.S. Public Health Service, but that office was transformed from a medical post into a political office years ago. Voting rights for germs might be the next priority.
As head of the public health service, the surgeon general once filled the important function of oversight of medical care for the armed services. The office dates from 1798, when a predecessor was charged with caring for sick and wounded merchant seamen. Now the surgeon general is more a nanny than a general, more public-relations flack for the administration than a surgeon.
The surgeon general oversees 6,000 doctors, dentists and veterinarians, and the general’s elegant uniform denotes the U.S. Public Health Service, though it invites confusion with the U.S. Navy. Bill Clinton’s surgeon general, Jocelyn Elders, dressed up like a vice admiral to teach America’s school kids the “benefits” of what nannies once called “self-abuse.”
Richard Carmona, President George W. Bush’s choice for surgeon general, said his priority was “improving the body, mind and spirit of the growing child.” An improvement, perhaps, over a crusade for self-abuse, but hardly a crusade for a federal bureaucrat eager to be the middleman between the Public Health Service and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The surgeon general publishes the journal Public Health Reports, produced in partnership with the Association of Schools of Public Health, but it hasn’t been outstanding in its field for years. It has been supplanted by dozens of privately funded journals.
There has been no confirmed surgeon general for more than a year, nor was there one from 2006 to 2009. The current acting surgeon general, Boris Lushniak, is making his priority, temporary as it may be, the public’s skin-care habits. Too much sun, not Ebola, is his top concern. Dr. Lushniak’s recommends that government officials “incorporate sun safety education and sun protection into school policies at the state or district.” If Johnny can’t read he can become an expert on applying suntan lotion.
And if Dr. Lushniak wants to make himself and his office useful, he could campaign to pick up a scalpel and trim this relic of an office out of the federal budget. Nothing could make the public healthier.
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