A surgeon who also makes the cut as TV host

New York: Barack Obama's choice for surgeon-general is a television correspondent who has interrupted a television assignment to perform emergency brain surgery and gotten into an argument on air with leftist filmmaker Michael Moore.

Dr Sanjay Gupta, a practising neurosurgeon, is also one of CNN's busiest personalities and has been named one of People magazine's "sexiest men alive".

He has a weekend health show on CNN and has travelled across America for a series on the dangers of obesity called Fit Nation.

While he works at CNN and for CBS News, Gupta is also a faculty member at the neurology department at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He performs surgery at Emory University Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital.

White House fellow

Gupta, 39, is no stranger to the White House; he was one of 15 White House fellows appointed in 1997 and he advised Hillary Clinton while she was first lady.

Gupta joined CNN in 2001 as a health correspondent. In addition to efforts like "Fit Nation" and 2008 documentaries on the health toll taken on presidents, Gupta has talked about health angles of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. Since 2006, he's also had a contract with CBS News to do health stories on the CBS Evening News.

"He's an amazing communicator," said CBS News president Sean McManus. "He has a way of breaking down the most complicated medical and health issues into language that everyone understands. He's very, very likable and he has the ultimate credibility in that he is literally a brain surgeon."

Gupta took on Sicko filmmaker Moore in 2007, saying in a fact-checking report that Moore had fudged some facts in his documentary on the US healthcare system. "I and others are going to be a lot more sceptical with what I see on CNN," Moore retorted.