Blog

Let’s have a quiz.  Who is the U.S. Surgeon General?  (a) Vivek Murthy, (b) Boris D. Lushniak, (c) Everett Koop, or (d) none of these people.

The answer is (d), though you should feel good if you selected Boris D. Lushniak, who is the “acting” Surgeon General. Vivek Murthy should be the Surgeon General, but the Senate won’t confirm his appointment. .

Who’s Murthy? The Boston Globe has high praise for him.  He graduated from Harvard College, magna cum laude in 1997 with a degree in biochemical sciences, and then earned a combined medical and business degree from Yale. He works as a hospitalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and is regarded as humble and passionate about his work.

Why hasn’t his appointment been confirmed? According to U.S. News & World Report, the answer “is the iron grip the National Rifle Association has on the Republican Party. The NRA objects to Murthy’s nomination because he believes that guns are a public health hazard.”

In a letter to Senate leaders, NRA-Institute for Legislative Action Executive Director Chris W. Cox wrote, “Murthy’s record of political activism in support of radical gun control measures raises significant concerns about the likelihood he would use the office of Surgeon General to further his preexisting campaign against gun ownership.”

Murthy is also a member of Doctors for America which lobbies for gun law changes. According to the Cox, “Murthy urges mandatory licensing “for anyone purchasing guns and ammunition—including mandatory firearm safety training and testing” and “regulations that would place ‘limits on the purchase of ammunition,’ and establish a ‘mandatory waiting period of at least 48 hours.’” In short, Murthy is “radically anti-gun.”

Let’s go back to that idea of a public health issue. What does that mean?  The Institute of Medicine offers this definition: “what society does collectively to assure the conditions for people to be healthy.” You might think that public health concerns only disease, but public health is much more. The Sheldon Margen Public Health Library, University of California, lists tobacco control and lead poisoning as public health issues. The Center for Disease Control says that motor vehicle crashes are a “major public health problem.”

Why not gun violence, questions U.S. News: “It’s pretty obvious to everybody except the NRA die-hards that guns are a clear and present danger since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there were 335,609 gun deaths in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. If that’s not an epidemic, nothing is.”

To look at gun violence as a public health issue means you work backward from a gun death and analyze what could be done to prevent a similar death in the future. Maybe a legal issues needs to be addressed, maybe it’s a matter of education or changing attitudes. The NRA sees any such effort as an imminent threat to gun owners, but I haven’t heard doctors talk about confiscating guns—as if that’s a possibility.

The NRA is entitled to its view, but the real issue is not whether Murthy is “radically anti-gun,” but why the Senate feels compelled to do the NRA’s bidding.  Murthy has the qualifications to do the job. Why should anybody be surprised about his views on guns? He’s a doctor, and doctors get paid to figure out how to decrease mortality rates. Why should guns be excluded?  And besides, how big of a threat can Murthy be to gun owners? As Surgeon General, his role will be limited to advocating for medical and health practices; he’ll have no legislative power.

Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at the Senate’s timidity at the feet of the NRA. “Most politicians fear talking about guns almost as much as they would being confronted by one.” [1]

Let me change gears here. With Thanksgiving just three days away, I ask you to spend a few moments thinking about the thousands of U.S. service members serving overseas, some of them in very harsh conditions.  Sure, they get paid to do this, but that doesn’t make it any easier to be away from family. If you’re so inclined, remember them in your prayers.

__________________________________________________

Jack D’Aurora writes for considerthisbyjd.com

___________________________________________________

 [1] Arthur Kellermann, MD, formerly of the Center for Disease Control, and former Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark, who was once the NRA’s point man, in an op-ed piece they wrote in The Washington Post¸July 2012.