The National Rifle Assn. has a problem with Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, President Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, but it has nothing to do with Murthy’s medical expertise. It’s that Murthy thinks gun control is smart public health policy. Unfortunately, too many members of the Senate share the gun lobby’s skewed view of the world, much to the detriment of the country and, it seems, to Murthy’s chances of being confirmed.
Murthy, an outspoken Obama supporter since before the 2008 election, earned an undergraduate degree at Harvard, an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a medical degree from the Yale School of Medicine; he teaches medicine at Harvard and is an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; he’s served on a federal medical advisory board and is involved in medical nonprofit groups, all according to the White House. Whether that qualifies Murthy to be surgeon general is a legitimate question for the Senate in its constitutional role of giving advice and consent to presidential nominations.
But Murthy’s belief that guns, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links to more than 30,000 deaths a year, are a public health issue should not be the litmus test for whether he is qualified to be the nation’s top public health advocate.
Source: L.A. Times