Vivek Murthy is the new Surgeon General of the United States, after a hard-won confirmation by the Senateyesterday. Murthy, whose position that guns are a health-care issue in the US earned him the ire of the countrys powerful gun lobby, will serve a four-year term as the nations top doctor and public health advocate. The position has lacked a permanent director sinceJuly 2013.
Murthyco-founded Doctors for America, a group of 16,000 physicians and medical students that sent a strongly-worded letter(pdf) last year to the Congress, urging politicians to take stricter measures to stop gun violence. Thatearned him the ire of the National Rifle Association, slowinghis confirmation, but may have also been one of the factors that ultimately helped him win the support of dozens of politicians, medical groups, and universities.
The letter proposed attempting to cut gun deaths in half by 2020, by banning assault weapons, tighteningsafety regulations, fundingresearch on gun violence, and repealing laws that ban physicians from discussing gun safety with patients. It said:
The circumstances and causes of gun-related injuries and death are diversemass shootings, suicides, individual disputes, robberies, and accidents. There is no single provision that will stop these tragedies from happening, so we must approach the issue from all available angles, just as we have successfully approached other threats to public health such as motor vehicle accident deaths and deaths from fire and drowning.
During his February 2014 opening remarks (pdf) in front of a Senate nominating committee, Murthy stressed the USs other health problems, saying if he was nominated he hoped to marshal partnerships across the country to address the epidemics of obesity and tobacco-related disease, to reduce the crippling stigma of mental illness, to roll back the resurgence of vaccine preventable disease and to address many other issues.
During that nearly two-hour hearing,senators questioned him about his track record on public-health management, what he thinks of medical marijuana (hes heard of anecdotal evidence but believes more information is needed to safely prescribe it), and, predictably, guns.
I do not intend to use the Surgeon Generals Office as a bully pulpit for gun control, Murthy said, in response to a question from a Republican senator:
My concerns with regards to issues like gun violence have to do with my experience as a physician, seeing patients in emergency rooms who have come in with acute injuries; but also seeing many patients over the years who are dealing with spinal cord injuries, post traumatic stress disorder, and other chronic complications from gun violence.
In his May 2014 address to graduates of Harvard Medical School, he first thanked the crowd for not opposing him as commencement speaker, saying that its nice to be out of the line of fire, for a change. He thendelivered a speech that stressed the courage necessary to be doctor when medicine is facing crises with costs, quality, and coverage, and critical public health challenges.
Murthy calledon the students to follow in his footsteps and become public-health advocates:
We can no longer remain within our exam rooms and ignore what happens in our communities. As physicians and dentists, we must have a presence in both places. Our sacred responsibility is both to help the patient in front of us and also to safeguard the health of the nation.
Source: http://qz.com/313164/us-surgeon-general-vivek-murthy-on-obesity-medical-marijuana-vaccines-and-yes-guns/
