My first day of medical school nearly 16 years ago was a warm day in New Haven, Conn. I quickly put on a T-shirt and my cut-off jean shorts the ones I had worn dozens of times as an undergraduate at the University of Florida and hurried off to class where I immediately felt like the fish out of water I was. Not only could I barely understand the cell biology lecture being delivered by the heavily accented and more heavily published professor, but I was easily the most inappropriately dressed student in the class some having even donned suits for their first day as a doctor-in-training at the Yale Medical School.

That day, meeting many of my classmates for the first time, a skinny, smiling, Indian guy strode up to me and instantly put me at ease. I quickly learned that he was from Miami, too. He had gone to Harvard with the valedictorian of my high school class and remarked, Wow, hes a smart guy, intuitively making me feel on equal footing. At that moment, I had no idea how smart Vivek Murthy was he kept such things under a cover of humility as long as he could. I had even less of an idea that so many years later, that skinny Indian kid would be nominated for U.S. Surgeon General.

At the age of 21, while the rest of us talked about saving the world, Vivek started to do it founding an HIV/AIDS outreach organization that spanned an ocean. He was tireless and uncomplaining as a medical student and sincerely wanted to learn as much as possible about all the various cultures represented in our diverse class at Yale. He even accompanied me and a few other Jewish students to the traditional Sabbath meal on several occasions, asking questions and intently listening to how another group of people saw the world.

Were members of the National Rifle Association to sit down with Murthy, they would discover a great listener and someone who is sympathetic to the way others think and feel. I imagine many of them would become his supporters instead of trying to derail his nomination. But there is not likely to be such a meeting. Instead, people who have never met him will continue to take a few mainstream statements he has made about gun control to create a caricature of a person who doesnt actually exist. The real Murthy answered in his Senate hearing when asked that he had no intention of using the position of surgeon general as a bully pulpit for gun control. And when he says something, he means it.

While medical school and residency changes many, Murthy stayed true to his vision of saving the world. He went on to get an MBA at Yale and then joined me at the Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston for his internal medicine residency. Since he had taken a year off to learn more about the business world, he was now a year behind me and I was his supervising resident. Again, his optimism and dedication to patients was unwavering not an easy task when putting in 30-plus hour shifts every third or fourth day on top of what most consider a regular work week.

Shortly after completing training, Murthy founded what is now Doctors for America in order help the millions of Americans who couldnt access health care or did finally access it far too late. He became a crusader for the Affordable Care Act, going to the While House on several occasions. For this, he has been accused of being handed the surgeon general nomination as some form of political patronage. I doubt this is true. More likely, President Barack Obama or his advisers had the good fortune of sitting down with this visionary, caring physician and came to the obvious conclusion that he would make an outstanding surgeon general.

Think that scenario is naive? Well, after the tragedy at Sandy Hook slightly more than a year ago, Murthy was already involved in Washington, and if he were more politically minded, he probably never would have written anything that could have been misconstrued by the NRA or further antagonized Republicans. But throughout the years, Murthy has steadfastly repeated the mantra, patients over politics, and he has lived it. He is the kind of doctor who will fight for his patients no matter the toll it takes on himself. And thats the type of person we should all want as surgeon general.

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Commentary: The real Dr. Vivek Murthy