Who do you think is the best ambassador of medicine to the public?

#CDoM: "The Creative Destruction of Medicine"

"Will the Neil deGrasse Tyson of medicine please stand up?" 

"There are many inspirational names in modern-day healthcare and, partially due to reform, room for even more. But a commenter on Reddit posed the question of whether there is anyone who is as well-known and charismatic a spokesperson for medicine as Neil deGrasse Tyson is for astrophysics. (Perhaps medicine is too specialized to have one emergent voice, but physicists would probably claim the same.) Now, with the recently announced news of Tyson’s Cosmos remake, I can’t shake the commenter’s question: Who is the Neil deGrasse Tyson of medicine?

While it’s hard to say medicine has one representative face or household name as recognizable as Tyson’s, here are some heavyweight contenders:
Atul Gawande

More than 70,000 Twitter followers, writes for the New Yorker, appears from time to time on Colbert Report

@Atul_Gawande

Regina Benjamin

TEDTalks, just left a super-visible position as US Surgeon General, an advocate for health medicine who built a rural health clinic then rebuilt it after Katrina, rumored to havea Congressional race on the brain . . . .

@reginabenjamin

Robert Winston

Less than 30,000 Twitter followers, but is regularly featured on comedy shows and documentaries for the BBCand leads a STEM outreach program for young students

@ProRWinston

Eric Topol

Under 30,000 Twitter followers, but advocate of patient empowerment and mHealth, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicineand the Endowed Chair of Innovation at the Scripps Research Institute

@EricTopol

Ben Goldacre

Almost 290,000 Twitter followers, TEDTalk with more than 1,000,000 views, author of Bad Science

@bengoldacre

Sanjay Gupta

Almost 1.7 million Twitter followers, regular contributor to CNN, talks about pop med topics like medical marijuana and was even considered as a Surgeon General candidate. (But does he cater too much to public interest and not enough toward science?)

@drsanjaygupta

Who do you think is the best ambassador of medicine to the public?"

Read more: http://medcitynews.com/2013/08/will-the-neil-degrasse-tyson-of-medicine-please-stand-up/#ixzz2cOdoPFlq

Atul Gawande and Ben Goldacre are working on the "Schumpeter" side of the problem - the creative destruction -, as they are both showing very convincingly that we need to reorganize our health care system (and explaining why). If we are going to build something new and better and sustainable, we need to get rid of the unsustainable junk stuff. However once you've been convinced that our health system is broken and unsustainable, that "we need pit crews instead of lonesome cowboys", what's the next step? Eric Topol, Medscape (Genomics) Chief Editor and cardiologist, shows how the digital era hits medicine. So if you want the whole package, you need to take into account all the aspects of "The Creative Destruction Of Medicine" #CDoM.

@EricTopol @blondone @neiltyson Learning w/E Topol's tweets just as much as w/A Gawande's 3 bestsellers (Better-Manifesto-Complications) :-)
— CATHERINE COSTE (@cathcoste) August 19, 2013

@EricTopol @blondone @neiltyson Topol is the geek version of Gawande so we need BOTH :-)
— CATHERINE COSTE (@cathcoste) August 19, 2013

I vote Team effort from @EricTopol @daniel_kraft would significantly benefit the Future Health of the Human race @blondone @neiltyson
— Matt Riemann (@Matt_Riemann) August 19, 2013