Our puritanical culture celebrates surviving on the least sleep, sneers at those who appear to need more and sacrifices sleep -- a fundamental biological need -- in favor of all other activity.

Sleep Machismo is bringing this country to its knees in terms of performance deficits at work and fueling the fire under the obesity pandemic we are now witnessing. We must all become sleep specialists.

The public health burden of insomnia on the US is measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars. While we routinely cut calories, or cram in exercise, sleep has not even entered the conversational lexicon.

That an anesthesiologist could be on tour with Michael administering propofol is both baffling and repugnant. The King of Pop was effectively anaesthetized every night, while our profession was asleep at the wheel.