I took no pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States. I have always had a great deal of respect for the Office of the President, and to publicly disagree with the president was unnerving at best and painful at worst. But it needed to be done. I realized I had a critical role to play, the person who showed up and told it like it was. And I not only had to tell the truth to the president; more important, I had to tell the truth to the American people; otherwise, I would compromise my own integrity and relinquish my responsibility to my patients—the American public.
