Plan B Forum

Murthy's nomination was held up for more than a year, leaving the United States without a permanent surgeon general since Regina Benjamin stepped down in July 2013.

Vivek Murthy's nomination to surgeon general was confirmed by the Senate on Monday night, ending the suspense of whether the 37-year-old's nomination would be doomed because of previous comments linking guns to public health. One of those comments was a tweet from 2012: "Tired of politicians playing politics w/guns, putting lives at risk b/c they're scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue."

That was enough to set off the gun lobby in full opposition to Murthy's nomination, with moderate Democrats from gun-friendly states also lining up against Murthy, who was educated at Harvard and Yale and was most recently a physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Others have raised questions about his experience and prior advocacy for President Obama's health-care agenda.

Murthy, who was confirmed with 51 Senate votes, has promised to play nice on guns, though. In his confirmation hearing earlier this year, he said he would focus on public health issues where there's broad agreement, like fighting childhood obesity.

That also ignores the point of the office Murthy will now occupy into the next presidential administration (the surgeon general is appointed for a four-year term). As the nation's top doctor, the surgeon general is supposed to be a nonpartisan arbiter of medical fact — and at times, speak the uncomfortable truths that no one else is willing to.

The late surgeon general C. Everett Koop said Reagan administration officials told him not to talk about AIDS, but he did anyway — bringing the deadly virus front and center in Washington when the Reagan administration wouldn't acknowledge it. Another former surgeon general, David Satcher, told Congress in 2007 that the Clinton administration tried suppressing a report of his showing the effectiveness of needle exchange programs — but he went ahead and released the report. Richard Carmona, a surgeon general under President George W. Bush, said the Bush administration blocked his 2006 report calling on Americans to tackle global health problems because "the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishment," The Washington Post reported at the time.

The office's most famous report in 1964 that linked smoking to deadly diseases was a wake-up call for the nation — U.S smoking rates dropped from 43 percent at the time to to 17.8 percent last year, the lowest rate on record. Knowing that the report would come under attack, the surgeon general at the time, Luther Terry, quit smoking three months before going public with the report.

Gun right advocates naturally don't want gun violence framed as a public health issue. Across the country, firearms are involved in almost as many deaths as car accidents — and in some states, gun deaths occur at higher rates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The costs of firearm-related injuries cost the taxpayer more than a half-billion dollars each year, according to an Urban Institute analysis this year. It seems the public health case is there, if Murthy wants to make it.

But Carmona, a former surgeon general, worries that Murthy's tainted too politically before he even steps into the role.

"The fact is the surgeon general is not the doctor of either party," said Carmona, whose term as surgeon general ended in 2006. Carmona said he opposed Murthy's nomination because he believed Murthy lacked experience and further politicizes the surgeon general role. "The surgeon general is the doctor of the people, and they need someone there who is going to speak truth to science and power."

Carmona, a Democrat who ran and lost for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona in 2012, suggested that the position of surgeon general should have a nonpartisan order of succession within the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which the surgeon general heads. Murthy's nomination was held up for more than a year, leaving the United States without a permanent surgeon general since Regina Benjamin stepped down in July 2013.

"This should really be an area that's nonpartisan," he said.

But public health advocates have been supportive of Murthy, with the American Public Health Association calling him "fully qualified" to serve as surgeon general. "The next surgeon general should use the bully pulpit of the office to be an outspoken, science-driven, effective leader," APHA executive director Georges Benjamin wrote in the Huffington Post in February in support of Murthy's nomination.

We'll soon see just how capable Murthy will be in using that bully pulpit.

Guinevere wrote:Oh good Christ. No one is taking away your stupid guns (or even wants too) - that's an entirely false assertion. Regulating them, yes, taking them away, hardly.

wesw wrote:if we lose our right to bear arms, even rube may be able to become dictator.

Guinevere wrote:Oy.

(we've already had this discussion, I'm not going to rehash it, sorry I even brought it up)