Murthy's Confirmation Battle Between Public Health Experts and the Gun Lobby
Public health officials want to be free to address gun violence threats with their patients.
This article is for subscribers only.
While Dr. Vivek Murthy’s long-delayed confirmation as Surgeon General has more to do with Senator Ted Cruz and Democrats’ poor midterm showing than anything else, some in the public health community are glad that a doctor wasn’t punished for supporting a commonly held belief about guns.
Harold Pollack, the Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago (who worked with Murthy at Doctors for America) argued that his confirmation proved that addressing the dangers of guns is not “the third rail of public health policy" that many portray it to be.