I got to thinking a lot about the post made on sf_d this morning about Dr Sanjay Gupta being asked to be the Surgeon General and the rant post that was made in liberal. It occurred to me that a lot of people, including myself, don't really know what the SG does. To my surprise, I found on the blog site Science-Based Medicine (for those of you who don't know, it was a blog started up by a group of doctors who each day trade off blogging about something in medicine, whether it be combating alternative medicine because of its lack of positive studies or just debunking medical myths) of an interview with the 17th Surgeon General, Dr Richard Carmona. Based on the interview I think the line of worry about Dr Gupta being clueless about the vaccine and autism debate is the real issue we should worry about, especially with him being so in touch with the CDC and NIH. Even after the CDC posted new stats about measles cases in the US and showing that out of 112 patients who contracted the disease, 85% were eligible for the vaccination and 66% of those had a philosophical or religious reason. Is this really the job for someone who is clueless about the debate?