With his distinctive beard and gold-braided uniform, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was probably the most recognizable of President Ronald Reagan’s appointees. But what made him memorable was that he used that public profile to draw attention to the most acute health dangers of the era, particularly the risks of smoking and the specter of the AIDS crisis. “He really was America’s doctor,” said former FDA Commissioner David Kessler.
Born in Brooklyn, Koop was inspired to become a pediatrician as a child after seeing premature babies in incubators, said The Washington Post. He spent 35 years as the innovative head of surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia before being chosen, at age 64, to be Reagan’s surgeon general—despite having no public health experience. “His chief credential was that he was a socially conservative Christian physician.”
Koop promised during his lengthy Senate confirmation hearings that he would not let his religious beliefs affect his job, said The New York Times, and he kept his word. Although he considered abortion a “violation of divine principle,” he disappointed social conservatives by declaring that he did not believe the procedure to be “essentially unsafe.” He later acknowledged that Reagan had “expected him to zealously oppose abortion,” and had considered firing him for not doing so.
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Koop also angered Big Tobacco, said The Wall Street Journal, after carrying out a “crusade to end smoking in the United States.” He travelled the country in 1984 informing the public that tobacco was as addictive as heroin or cocaine, and in 1986 issued a groundbreaking report linking secondhand smoke with cancer. During his time in office, the national smoking rate dropped from 33 percent to 26.
But it was Koop’s response to the AIDS crisis that cemented his legacy, said Slate.com. After years of fruitless pleading with the Reagan White House to address the little-acknowledged disease, Koop produced a report on the crisis in 1986 that “didn’t mince words,” promoting contraception and calling for sex education starting from the third grade. He later mailed a pamphlet on AIDS to 107 million households, drawing public attention to the epidemic—as well as huge criticism from Christian conservatives. Too many people, Koop later said, “placed conservative ideology far above saving human lives.”
