In Cheating Death, CNN's chief medical correspondent focuses on life-saving new technologies.

Your first book was Chasing Life. What led you to the other end of the life cycle?

This probably has been a passion since I was in medical school. What do we know about the line between life and death? Someone thinks a person has died. In reality, it's just the beginning of a sequence of events that we have more control of than ever before.

Dr. Conrad Fischer of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, author of Routine Miracles: Restoring Faith and Hope in Medicine, says doctors need to be better communicators about all the breakthroughs in medicine. Agree?

I agree. I also think that individuals now more than ever have to know the difference between knowledge and information. You have to find a few sources you believe in. Your doctor cannot be the only one nowadays. Patients should be informed consumers.

President Obama went to the AMA conference in Chicago and told doctors, “If we do not fix our health care system, America may go the way of GM— paying more, getting less and going broke.” Do you see a way to fix the system?

It is a large topic. What's interesting to me is that much of the latest discussion is between the public and private option. It's premature. We know we pay too much and get too little. It's all about costs, something neither the private nor public sector is very good at reining in. How do we create a system to pay less and get more? Some of that is going to be low-hanging fruit. Do you prescribe the most expensive drug? Do you do the knee replacement for knee pain? One method is prevention: morally, medically and financially, it makes sense to keep people from getting sick in the first place.

Any second thoughts on withdrawing your name from consideration as surgeon general?

I don't have any second thoughts... for me it was a personal decision. My newest daughter was born in April. I would have been a commuting dad for a couple of years. Ironically, I wouldn't have been able to be a neurosurgeon anymore. I'm 39, I didn't think I was ready to put that away yet. But I believe in public service, and I believe the surgeon general should be able to provide a medical perspective in the policy discussion.

What was better: People magazine listing you among the sexiest men alive in 2003, or getting the Journalist of the Year award from the Atlanta Press Club in 2004?

Journalist of the Year was better, for sure. My wife was really giggling at the sexiest man alive thing. No one thought I was sexy until I was on television.