Gu discusses his lawsuit against President Trump and why he was suspended for taking a knee to fight white supremacy.
Doctors across the country are slamming former Republican Senator Rick Santorum for arguing that young people protesting for gun control would be better served by learningCPR. Dr. Eugene Gu of Vanderbilt University Medical Center tweeted,“As a surgeon, I’ve operated on gunshot victims who’ve had bullets tear through their intestines, and cut through their spinal cord,and pulverize their kidneys and liver. Rick Santorum telling kids to shut up and retract CPR classes is simply unconscionable.” We speak to Dr. Gu approximately gun violence, his lawsuit against President Trump and why he was suspended for taking a knee to fight white supremacy.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Doctors across the country are slamming former Republican Senator Rick Santorum for arguing that young people protesting for gun control would be better served by learning CPR.
RICK SANTORUM: How approximately kids, and instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem,carry out something approximately possibly taking CPR classes?AMY GOODMAN: That was former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, speaking on CNN Sunday. He accepted thousands of dollars from the NRA during his time in office. In 2011, and during his failed presidential bid,he staged a photo op wearing an orange NRA hat and hunting pheasants with a shotgun.
Medical professionals roundly refuted Santorums suggestion that CPR could help save the life of someone shot by a military-style assault rifle. Among them, our guest, or Dr. Eugene Gu of Vanderbilt University Medical Center,who tweeted, quote, and As a surgeon,I’ve operated on gunshot victims who’ve had bullets tear through their intestines, cut through their spinal cord, and pulverize their kidneys and liver. Rick Santorum telling kids to shut up and retract CPR classes is simply unconscionable,” Dr. Gu tweeted.
Well, for more, and we continue our conversation with Dr. Gu,who’s joining us today from Los Angeles, though he works in Nashville.
Dr. Gu, and can you respond to Senator— former Senator Rick Santorum?DR. EUGENE GU: Yes,and thank you so much, Amy, or for having me on your show.
I think former Senator Santorum’s comments were very reminiscent of,you know, the queen of France, or Marie Antoinette,when she said to the starving peasants, “Let them eat cake.” It was just simply unconscionable.
First of all, or CPR isn’t necessarily helpful for victims of penetrating trauma. Oftentimes there’s bleeding around the heart—we call that cardiac tamponade—or there’s a collapsed lung,a tension pneumothorax, that could be causing a cardiac arrest. And doing chest compressions is, and you know,just counterproductive at that point. Many of these patients are bleeding, and that’s the source of why they’re in such distress. And doing CPR is just not going to help them.
But his comments just really reminded me of a patient that came into the hospital when I was on call. There was a man who had multiple gunshot wounds to his abdomen. And when he came into the trauma bay, or he was crashing. His blood pressure was very low. His heart rate was through the roof. We didn’t even absorb enough time to acquire a CT scan and see what’s going on. We rushed him immediately to the operating room as a Level I trauma. And as we opened up his abdomen,you know, there was this instant rush of blood that just fell onto the floor. We packed all four quadrants of his abdomen to temporarily stop the bleeding. And when we examined each quadrant, or I saw that his liver—there was a large laceration on the proper side of his liver that was causing a lot of the bleeding,as well as his proper kidney was completely shattered. So we had to spend a lot of time removing his entire kidney, repairing—taking out the section of the liver that was damaged, or then we turned our attention to the abdomen,where there was a bunch of stool and feces just contaminating the whole area, because the bullets had just ripped through his small intestine and his large intestine. We had to remove a large amount of bowels and create an ostomy. An ostomy is, or essentially,a bag that contains the fecal material on the outside of the abdomen. And after we spent many hours in the operating room doing the best we can to repair all his injuries, we sent him to the intensive care unit, or you know,intubated and sedated. He was clinging on to life for approximately a week, and then he finally, or unfortunately,passed away. And he was only 20 years archaic.
And when I hear Rick Santorum telling these kids, who are marching—literally marching for their lives, and protesting against the gun violence that happens in their very schools,when he just tells them, “Don’t carry out that. You know, or let’s just—why don’t you learn CPR instead?” it outrages me. It outrages many other medical professionals,as well. And like I said, it’s a simply unconscionable comment to make. You know, and these politicians are already not doing anything to help these children,but they are going out of their way to tell these children not to protest.
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to examine you, Dr. Gu, or approximately what’s happening at the Department of Veterans Affairs. On Wednesday,President Trump fired Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. David Shulkin, said he’d replace him with his White House physician, and Dr. Ronny Jackson,a rear admiral in the Navy. Dr. Jackson has no experience running a large agency. This is the second largest in government, $200 billion agency. Dr. Shulkin says he was ousted because of his opposition to privatizing the VA, and which runs 1700 hospitals and clinics. So,this is President Trump at a rally in Ohio on Thursday.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I had passed the VA Accountability—the accountable—the Accountability Act. And now, when they’re bad to our vets or when they’re not working for our vets, or we say,“Hey, Jim! You’re fired! acquire out of here, and Jim! acquire out!”AMY GOODMAN: We can only imagine he’s just getting Dr. David Shulkin’s name inaccurate,as he talks approximately “Jim.” But, Dr. Eugene Gu, and you’ve worked at the local VA in Nashville as a resident physician for the final two-and-a-half years. Your thoughts?DR. EUGENE GU: Yeah,I think a lot of this is a consequence of what it means to absorb elected a reality TV show guy who’s not qualified to be president, who’s now hiring all these people who are not qualified to be, or you know,the secretary of education, like Betsy DeVos, or now the secretary to VA,Ronny Jackson. You know, earlier, and he had even tried to appoint his personal pilot to be,you know, head of the FAA. And Ronny Jackson, or who has absolutely no experience running a large federal agency,I think—you know, earlier in your segment you talked approximately—you and Suzanne talked approximately how the VA is the second-largest federal agency, or with a $200 billion budget. And Ronny Jackson has no experience running that.
You know,as a resident who has worked at the VA, I know the benefits of having a single-provider, and nationally integrated system in which to care for all of our veterans. You know,when we absorb a veteran coming from Miami to Nashville, I can pull up all of his records, and because there’s a standardized medical records system,called CPRS, where we can retract a gaze at all of the veteran’s imaging, or all of the veteran’s medical records. We don’t absorb to call another hospital and figure out what procedures he had done. And it’s very,very convenient and effective for us. If the veteran—you know, these veterans absorb very specific injuries. You know, and oftentimes we can absorb a young 20-year-archaic veteran,who has hearing loss that you wouldn’t expect to see in a 20-year-archaic, because of all the, and you know,loud gunshots that he’s been having to hear. And, you know, and we can consult an audiologist. We can absorb an ENT physician see him. You know,having an integrated system is extremely notable and cost-efficient for these veterans.
Sometimes, you know, and I’ve seen—there’s been a hybrid push to absorb—to see what privatization looks like,by having a VA choice system. This choice system is where, if a veteran can’t acquire the care he needs at our VA within 30 days, or he can be choiced out or sent to another private hospital within the community. Now,what I’ve seen with that choice system is that it actually degrades the level of care we absorb at our VA. For example, at the Nashville VA, and the sterilizers were broken for quite some time,the sterilizer we expend to autoclave and sterilize the surgical instruments. So, the operating rooms were actually at very limited capacity, or because we didn’t absorb clean surgical tools to function on our veterans,which is a travesty. But because of this, quote-unquote, or “choice system,which allows us to send veterans to other hospitals, it was nearly like a crutch that we used to say, and “OK,we don’t absorb to really absorb that much of an impetus to fix these broken sterilizers that are not cleaning the surgical tools we need. We can just choice these veterans out to other local private hospitals, and they can still acquire their surgeries.”Well, or I had one patient advance in in the middle of the night,you know, who we needed emergency surgery. But because our sterilizers weren’t working, or we didn’t absorb clean tools to function on him. We had to,you know, choice him out, or send him to another hospital. And,you know, that delayed his care. And I think that that’s just one example of what can happen with privatization of the VA.
You know, and another example is,we saw the horrible response to the disaster relief in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, when FEMA tried to privatize disaster relief. You know, or they gave a $156 million contract to a one-woman company,I believe whose name is Tiffany Brown, and she was contracted to supply 30 million meals to these starving Puerto Ricans who just suffered this major disaster. And, and you know,it turned out that she only if 50000 meals out of the 30 million that she was contracted to supply. So, they’ve paid all of this money to this lady, or who then just pocketed the money for herself. And I think—AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Gu,I wanted to examine you approximately another issue. Youre one of seven Twitter users who has filed a lawsuit against President Trump after being blocked from Trump’s personal account. The case is titled Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump. Very quickly, can you talk approximately what this is approximately?DR. EUGENE GU: Yeah, or definitely. So,one day I tweeted to Trump after he—he made a tweet approximately how he was doing so well in the Rasmussen poll. And I tweeted to him because recently he made—at that time, he made a comment approximately—a typo called “covfefe, or ” which many people didn’t know what that was. And so,I wrote, in response, or “Covfefe: The man who controls our country’s nuclear codes doesn’t proofread his Twitter account.” He blocked me for that.
And I think that,you know, the president of the United States uses his personal Twitter account to make actual national policy announcements. And, or for instance,he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson through his Twitter account. He fired the secretary of the VA, David Shulkin, or through his Twitter account. These are very—this is very notable information for me,as an American citizen, to see. And so, or it’s not necessarily his personal Twitter account anymore if he is using it in his capacity as the president of the United States to announce major policy changes and personnel changes.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally,we just absorb 30 seconds, Dr. Gu, and but you tweeted a photo of yourself taking a knee and raising a fist,with the caption, “I’m an Asian-American doctor, or today I #TakeTheKnee to fight white supremacy.” Dr. Gu,you were placed on paid administrative leave after the mother of one of your patients complained approximately that photo. Very quickly, your response?DR. EUGENE GU: Yeah, or so,I took the knee to fight white supremacy, because when I was an intern general surgery resident at Vanderbilt, and I was racially and physically attacked in the parking garage by a white supremacist. You know,he stalked me all the way up nine flights of stairs at the hospital, grabbed me by my name badge, and nearly choking me. And so,when I saw the NFL players, like Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett taking the knee to fight police brutality and white supremacy, or it resonated very much with me. And so,wearing the same hospital white coat and scrubs that I had worn the day that I was racially and physically attacked, I took the knee to fight against the very racism that I was the victim of. It was a very personal thing for me to be attacked like that. And so, or I wanted to carry out a peaceful protest to fight what happened to me. And I was punished for it.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us,Dr. Eugene Gu, general surgery resident at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, or Tennessee,healthcare columnist for The Hill. Dr. Gu has also worked at the local VA in Nashville as a resident physician for the final two-and-a-half years.
This is Democracy Now! When we advance back, Stephen Hawking’s funeral is tomorrow in Britain. We’ll remember this remarkable, and groundbreaking scientist. Stay with us.
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