CNN has launched an investigation into claims that one of its star correspondents misled viewers in a report showing his emergency medical intervention on an earthquake victim in Nepal. 
 
 
 
 Dr Sanjay Gupta, an acclaimed neurosurgeon and the network’s chief medical correspondent was reporting on the devastating 7.8 magnitude quake that killed more than 8,000 people in the poor South Asian country in April, when he participated in an emergency operation on a victim. 
 
 In both a report and interviews with CNN anchors, Gupta said he had been involved in an intervention which had saved the life of an eight-year-old girl suffering from major head injuries. Gupta was shown inspecting scans of what were said to be the girl’s skull prior to the surgery, and then in the operating theatre at the Bir Hospital, in central Kathmandu. 
 
 His actions, which came only two days after the tremor, were widely reported across the world. The girl was said to be suffering from a life-threatening blood clot in her brain. 
 
 The accuracy of Gupta’s report has now been challenged in an investigation by the Global Press Institute, an independent organisation that trains journalists in the developing world and publishes their reports. 
 
 After speaking to doctors involved in the incident as well as patients and their families, the institute reported that Gupta had actually helped with an operation on a different patient – a 14-year-old – and that the eight-year-old named in the report had not sustained any serious injuries. 
 
 The institute also reported that CNN had published a text story before the video segment aired that correctly described the girls’ injuries. Hours later, the article was updated to remove one of the girls and misreport the others’ injuries. The modified article reflected the reporting in the broadcast story. 
 
 On Wednesday, Gupta attempted to clarify the situation on the network’s morning news program, New Day, conceding that the patient he operated on “may not have been this eight-year-old girl but rather separately a 14-year old girl in that same hospital”. 
 
 He described the scene at Bir Hospital as complete chaos in the aftermath of the earthquake. Amid the havoc, details may have been confused, he said. 
 
 “These facts are important to us ... we are trying to independently verify which child it was who got that operation at the time. There were many children, many people in the hospital,” Gupta told viewers. 
 
 “When you report on these kinds of situations you take lots of different bits of information and you consolidate it and in the end you tell the story.” 
 
 Nepal was certainly in turmoil in the days after the earthquake struck, but that should not excuse the reporting errors, said Cristi Hegranes, the founder and executive director of the San Francisco-based Global Press Institute and the publisher of Global Press Journal. 
 
 “A pretty grave mistake was made … the excuse that things were chaotic shouldn’t hold up for any journalist especially when that journalist is also performing a medical operation,” Hegranes said. 
 
 The publisher said the culture of celebrity reporting raises concerns about the way foreign correspondents report abroad, Hegranes said. She argued that local journalists wouldn’t have made this mistake, and that her team, comprised of local female reporters, undertook this story to “set the record straight”. 
 
 “Now we know the identity of the patient on the table,” she said. “I’m hopeful that this conversation can be the first of many about the role of foreign correspondents and celebrity journalists in America and how they cover the developing world.” 
 
 Gupta, a former candidate for US surgeon general, said he was shown several children who were suffering brain injuries. 
 
 In a statement CNN said: “Journalism is not brain surgery. But brain surgery is brain surgery.” 
 
 “We are so proud that Sanjay was one of the few reporters in Nepal to cover the earthquake, and while there was asked to help save a young victim’s life. As we reported he assisted the surgeons at Bir Hospital by performing a craniotomy on a young victim. Some reporting has suggested it was not the young girl we, at the time of our own reporting in the midst of the crisis, believed her to be. We will try to verify that. Regardless, Sanjay spent a week in Nepal, helped save a young life in the operating room, and we couldn’t be prouder of him. He has our full and unequivocal support.” 
 
 Dr Rajiv Jha, the senior neurosurgeon at Bir Hospital who conducted the operation, told the Guardian on Wednesday that Gupta had repeatedly asked to participate in an operation, rather than been requested by medical staff to help. 
 
 “I met him that day. He said he was a reporter and a neurosurgeon too. He said ‘if you need some help, I can help you’. We only had one [theatre] at the time and I had sufficient manpower,” Jha said. 
 
 After “a few hours”, Gupta was allowed to “assist in one of the cases”, Jha said. 
 
 On CNN on Wednesday, Gupta maintained that he had been asked to intervene. 
 
 Jha also said he had been surprised to see footage of the operation broadcast as he had refused to allow CNN to bring a “big camera” into the theatre but believed a colleague of Gupta had filmed the intervention on a cellphone. 
 
 “It was never discussed with me that it would be broadcast ... He never took permission to take film,” Jha told the Guardian. 
 
 There was no immediate response from CNN to the claim. 
 
 Gupta has regularly stepped in to save lives while covering a story for CNN. He treated a two-year-old boy in Iraq, and examined patients on camera after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. 
 
 Ethics experts have previously raised questions over the conflicting instincts of a physician-journalist. 
 
 Connie St Louis, director of the Science Journalism programme at City University in London, told the Guardian in April that she was “really, really worried” about the ethics of filming a journalist’s medical intervention. 
 
 “As a journalist with medical training, do you really need to film the times when you get involved? There’s certainly a possible confidentiality issue, as well as the potential for self-promotion. If you film the journalist doing the medical procedure, they become the story. My feeling is, why do it in Nepal when there is no way you could possibly do this in America?” she said. ||||| Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Prescription and illegal opioids are commonly abused because they are so addictive. 
 
 
 
 Opioid medications bind to the areas of the brain that control pain and emotions, driving up levels of the feel-good hormone dopamine in the brain's reward areas and producing an intense feeling of euphoria. 
 
 
 
 As the brain becomes used to the feelings, it often takes more and more of the drug to produce the same levels of pain relief and well-being, leading to dependence and, later, addiction. Hide Caption 1 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Oxymorphone hydrochloride – Oxymorphone hydrochloride, under the name Opana ER, was at the center of an HIV outbreak in Indiana in 2015. Some addicts began injecting and shared needles increased the spread of HIV. 
 
 
 
 In June, the Food and Drug Administration requested that Opana ER manufacturer Endo Pharmaceuticals pull the drug from the market. It was the first time the agency has asked that a opioid pain medication be pulled "due to the public health consequences of abuse." Endo announced in July that it would pull the drug. Hide Caption 2 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Codeine – Codeine is one of the weakest opioids, often given when painkillers such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen fail to work. Because it decreases activity in the part of the brain that controls coughing, it's frequently mixed with other liquids to develop cough syrups for colds and flu. It has frequently been used for pain relief after removal of tonsils and adenoids in children. 
 
 
 
 After an investigation, the FDA restricted the use of codeine and tramadol in children under 12 and recommend against their use in children between 12 and 18 years of age. Additionally, the FDA has warned breastfeeding mothers not to take these medications due to the risk of serious adverse reactions in breastfed infants. Hide Caption 3 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Heroin – 
 
 
 
 CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta 
 
 
 
 , deaths from overdoses of prescription drugs and heroin continue to be the leading cause of unintentional death for Americans, rising 14% from 2013 to 2014. You can't get heroin by prescription, but many heroin users start off abusing prescription opioids, then turn to this illegal opioid.CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has reported on recent research that shows today's typical heroin addict starts using at 23, is more likely to live in affluent suburbs and was likely unwittingly led to heroin through painkillers prescribed by his or her doctor. According to the CDC , deaths from overdoses of prescription drugs and heroin continue to be the leading cause of unintentional death for Americans, rising 14% from 2013 to 2014. Hide Caption 4 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Fentanyl – Fentanyl citrate, pictured here, is a Class II controlled substance and one of the most powerful opioids on the market. It's often administered via injection or transdermal patch, or in lozenge form for pain after surgery, for difficult-to-manage chronic pain and for people who have developed a tolerance to other opioids. 
 
 
 
 The type of fentanyl usually associated with overdoses is bought on the street in powder or pill form and is often mixed with heroin in a clandestine lab to increase the high it produces. Street names include Apache, China girl, goodfella, jackpot, murder 8, TNT and Tango and Cash. Hide Caption 5 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Hydrocodone – These pills are a more powerful form of codeine, called hydrocodone, and are often mixed with acetaminophen. Hydrocodone is the most frequently prescribed opioid painkiller, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration , and the most abused. An overdose of hydrocodone can cause "cold and clammy skin, severely constricted pupils, and slow breathing that can lead to a loss of consciousness and death." Hide Caption 6 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Oxycodone – Oxycodone is a powerful narcotic pain reliever prescribed for moderate to high pain relief. It's often given in an extended-release formula for patients who will need to be on pain medications for long periods of time. 
 
 
 
 Patients are warned not to break, chew, crush or dissolve extended-release tablets because the rush of oxycodone into the system could cause serious health problems, including overdose and death. 
 
 
 
 Though highly addictive, oxycodone is not thought to be as frequently abused as hydrocodone. OxyContin, Percocet, Percodan and Tylox are some trade-name oxycodone products. Hide Caption 7 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Morphine – Morphine is another powerful opioid often administered via syringe for severe pain. It can come in pill form, usually as extended-release tablets and capsules, and is prescribed only to relieve difficult, chronic pain that cannot be controlled by the use of other pain medications. 
 
 
 
 As with most opioids, mixing medications, drinking alcohol or taking other meds that contain alcohol, or using street drugs while taking morphine, increases the risk of breathing problems or other serious, life-threatening side effects. Hide Caption 8 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Meperidine – Meperidine is another narcotic analgesic, similar to morphine. It's often used to help put people to sleep before an operation and to provide pain relief after childbirth. 
 
 
 
 The most common brand name is Demerol, which comes in both tablet and liquid forms. It is usually taken with or without food every three or four hours as needed for pain. 
 
 
 
 As with all opioids, meperidine can cause drowsiness, so never drive a car or operate machinery after taking it until you know how you will react. Hide Caption 9 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Hydromorphone – 
 
 
 
 Liquid hydromorphone holds the dubious honor of being 
 
 Hydromorphone is another highly potent prescription painkiller. It's most commonly known by the brand names Dilaudid, pictured here, and Exalgo.Liquid hydromorphone holds the dubious honor of being frequently mistaken for morphine in hospital "wrong drug" medication errors because of the similarity of the names and appearances. Hide Caption 10 of 12 
 
 Photos: Opioids: Addictive painkillers Methadone – Though methadone is used to relieve severe chronic pain, it's most commonly known for preventing withdrawal symptoms in patients who were addicted to opioid drugs, as a part of their recovery process. 
 
 
 
 Methadone has many of the same side effects as other opioids, including weakness, headache, nausea and vomiting, stomach pain, sweating, difficulty urinating, mood changes and vision problems, and difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. Hide Caption 11 of 12 ||||| No matter the obstacles placed in front of her, of which there were many, she refused to be pitied and was determined to live a life that mattered. She inspired countless people, invited -- no, demanded -- honest talk about illness and mortality, and brightened the worlds of those she touched with her smile, spunk and spirit. 
 
 On Sunday evening, after being taken off life support and using the newly transplanted lungs she received just one week earlier, Claire took her last breath. The cause of death was a massive stroke she suffered soon after the transplant surgery. She was 21. 
 
 'Love what is' 
 
 A quarter of Claire's life was spent in the hospital. The medical team that tended to her became family. She played hide-and-seek with nurses and left explosions of glitter in her wake. She watched one of her doctors squirm as he gave her the safe-sex talk. She took great care to decorate her hospital room so it felt and looked like home. 
 
 Her parents, Melissa Nordquist Yeager and John Wineland, split up when Claire was 3, but they remained friends and partners in her care. 
 
 Her father credits Claire with teaching him "to not be afraid of what hasn't happened yet" and to learn to "love what is." 
 
 Yeager, who lost and quit jobs as hospital stays dictated, always marveled at her daughter's aura and her ability to lift up those around her. 
 
 In 2017, Yeager recalled a conversation with Claire about death. At one point, Claire looked at her mom and said, "After you die, you're closer to everyone you love because you're part of everything," Yeager remembered. 
 
 These words were a gift, a reminder that Claire would remain with her always, even after she was gone. 
 
 Trusting Claire 
 
 More than 30,000 people in the United States, more than 70,000 worldwide, have cystic fibrosis, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation . The median survival age is 40, the foundation reports, which is a great improvement from the 1950s, when surviving long enough to attend elementary school was rare. 
 
 Claire Wineland spent a quarter of her life in the hospital. 
 
 The genetic and progressive disease creates an overabundance of mucus, which traps infections and blocks airways in the lungs. It also complicates digestion, affects the pancreas and other organs and, eventually, leads to respiratory failure. 
 
 There is no cure, but dutiful breathing treatments -- which eat up hours each day -- can help with symptoms and complications. A double-lung transplant, when successful, can add years to a patient's life. 
 
 Claire's parents learned to trust their independent and strong-willed daughter. When it came to her care, she knew her body best -- what worked for her, what didn't and how far she was willing to go. 
 
 So when she became a legal adult and told them she had no intention of getting a double-lung transplant, they had to accept her decision, even if it pained them. 
 
 "I had to be honest," she once explained. "It's not for me and never has been." 
 
 A change of heart 
 
 Claire took the gift of life and her health seriously, but she didn't take herself too seriously. She once escaped from the hospital so she could attend a Bernie Sanders rally. She laughed at the absurdities that often swirled around her, including those moments in the produce aisle at Whole Foods when shoppers would prescribe her unsolicited "cures," telling her to eat more pineapple or that a mushroom cleanse would take care of everything. 
 
 Claire Wineland's greatest wish, her mother said, was that "her foundation will live on, even in her absence." 
 
 She was of the mind that she would leave this world with the body she came in with. She'd travel, answer calls for speaking engagements and put energy into her foundation , which she set up at age 13 after coming out of a 16-day medically induced coma. She'd work on a book -- promising it wouldn't be "another happy sick person book" -- and appreciate the small things like swims in the ocean for as long as she was able. 
 
 At a TEDx talk she gave last year, Claire made a point of saying how cystic fibrosis helped give her a quality of life. 
 
 "Life isn't just about being happy. ... It's not about how you feel second to second," she said. "It's about what you're making of your life and whether you can find a deep pride in who you are and what you've given." 
 
 Claire had a change of heart about transplant earlier this year, prompted by a steep decline in her health that robbed her of the energy and ability to do what gave her joy and purpose. She wasn't done contributing. It was a welcome, albeit terrifying, development for those who loved her. 
 
 To get on the list for new lungs, she had to be sick enough to need them, yet strong enough to withstand the surgery and recovery. Some people worried that she'd waited too long and wouldn't be given the chance at continued life. 
 
 But Claire took on the evaluation process to get on the list with laser focus. She sat in an educational meeting at UC San Diego Health's transplant center and diligently took notes. 
 
 Revealed on her left ankle was a tattoo: the thumbs-up "Don't Panic" logo from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." 
 
 She listened to the risks and the long list of side effects and emerged unfazed. 
 
 "None of it spooked me," Claire said afterward. "Now that I'm looking at it as something I have to do ... I'm willing to deal with anything." 
 
 'It's a GO!!!' 
 
 In late May, she made the list and shared the exciting news with her social media followers who dot the globe. But then, a mix of health and life complications took a toll and knocked her off the list, temporarily. By mid-August, she was back on and feeling ready. 
 
 Claire and her mother beamed in a photo posted on social media after they learned her transplant was a go. 
 
 She'd worked hard to get there, was focused on her self-care and getting stronger. She joked that the squats she was doing, upon doctor's orders, would help get her more than lungs. She'd also get a butt. 
 
 She knew that the call could come at any minute, and on August 26, it did. 
 
 "It's a GO!!!" she posted on Twitter, not long before she was wheeled into the operating room in San Diego. "See y'all on [the] other side." 
 
 The nine-hour surgery went well, and her mother reported that the lungs were working great. Yeager posted a video of herself doing a happy dance with friends in the waiting room. 
 
 But not long after the successful surgery, hope turned to fear. Claire suffered a stroke when a blood clot cut off blood flow to the right side of her brain. She never emerged from her medically induced coma. Despite emergency surgeries, and what her mother described as "Herculean efforts" to try to save her, the daughter she knew was gone. Given the severity of the stroke and Claire's advance directive, it became clear that it was time to let her go. She passed away peacefully, with her parents by her side. 
 
 "They saw her into this world for her first breath and were with her for her last," Laura McHolm, the board chair for Claire's foundation, wrote in a Facebook post. 
 
 Less than 3% of lung transplant recipients have a stroke between the surgery and hospital discharge, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing , which operates the nation's organ transplant system. 
 
 Claire, who understood the importance of organ donation, was a donor herself. On Monday afternoon, her mother received word that Claire had already made a difference. 
 
 "Claire was able to save the life of two people, her right kidney was transplanted to a 44 year old woman in San Diego, and her left kidney was transplanted to a 55 year old male in Northern California. Also, Claire's corneas and tissue was recovered and she will be able to enhance the life of up to 50 people," a family services specialist wrote to Yeager in an email message. "Claire's gift is huge, I want your family to know that your daughter is a hero." 
 
 The family intends to honor her memory by continuing to advance Claire's Place Foundation , which she established to financially support others affected by her lifelong disease. 
 
 'Go enjoy it' 
 
 In one of the last videos Claire posted, she went where she hadn't before. 
 
 A self-described "goofball," she usually engaged people with humor and optimism. This time, she was raw and allowed herself to cry. As she faced the prospect of getting a double-lung transplant, she understood how desperate she was to live -- and give -- more. 
 
 "It hurts everything inside of me to make this video," she said into the camera. "I didn't realize how much I didn't expect to live this long. I didn't expect to have a chance. ... The years of telling myself I can do it on my own are over." 
 
 Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team. 
 
 She had plenty of emotional support, but she worried what transplant surgery might mean for her future and her parents' future if it didn't go well. What if they poured everything into her transplant, and she didn't make it or was not able to work again, she explained later. She needed financial help. By asking for it, she said, she could relax and get in the headspace for whatever would come next. 
 
 Before signing off, Claire implored viewers to do one thing. 
 
 "Go enjoy your life. Really. I mean that seriously," she said with her signature smile and laugh, her eyes not yet dry. "Go enjoy it, 'cause there are people fighting like hell for it."
– He didn't use the word "conflate," but Sanjay Gupta used many other words to try and clarify why a report he filed from Nepal after the April earthquake there was apparently filled with inaccuracies, the Guardian reports. The Global Press Institute, a journalist-training nonprofit, reports not only that Gupta didn't save the life of an 8-year-old girl he claimed to have operated on—it says he actually helped with a surgery on a 14-year-old—but that after Gupta's segment aired, CNN took down a story that accurately reported on the 14-year-old's injuries and put in its place a story that swapped in the 8-year-old's name to match Gupta's report. Gupta tried to clear things up yesterday on CNN, admitting he may have mixed details up during the chaos. "There were many children, many people in the hospital," he said, per the Guardian. "When you report on these kinds of situations, you take lots of different bits of information and you consolidate it and in the end you tell the story." The neurosurgeon who performed the surgery on the older girl also tells the paper that Gupta wasn't asked to help, as Gupta claims, but that he harangued staff until they conceded; the surgeon also says he never gave permission for Gupta's team to film the operation. His statements underscore what some ethics experts are saying is a conflict of interest: being a physician and a journalist and filming your interventions. Meanwhile, the director of the GPI isn't buying Gupta's "things were so crazy" excuse. "A pretty grave mistake was made," she tells the Guardian. "The excuse that things were chaotic shouldn't hold up for any journalist, especially when that journalist is also performing a medical operation." CNN notes it's investigating, adding, "Journalism is not brain surgery. But brain surgery is brain surgery. … Sanjay spent a week in Nepal, helped save a young life in the operating room, and we couldn't be prouder of him. He has our full and unequivocal support." (Read the Global Press Institute's entire damning report.)