| C. Everett Koop | |
|---|---|
Dr. C. Everett Koop, who was widely regarded as the most influential surgeon general in American history and played a crucial role in changing public attitudes about smoking, died on Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 96.
| |
| Surgeon General of the United States | |
| In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989 | |
| President | Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Edward Brandt (Acting) |
| Succeeded by | James Mason (Acting) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Charles Everett Koop October 14, 1916 Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | February 25, 2013 (aged 96) Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth Flanagan (1938–2007) Cora Hogue (2010–2013) |
| Children | Allan Norman David Elizabeth |
| Alma mater | Dartmouth College Cornell University |
| Religion | Presbyterianism |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Everett_Koop
Dr. Koop issued emphatic warnings about the dangers of smoking, and he almost single-handedly pushed the government into taking a more aggressive stand against AIDS. And despite his steadfast moral opposition to abortion, he refused to use his office as a pulpit from which to preach against it.
These stands led many liberals who had bitterly opposed his nomination to praise him, and many conservatives who had supported his appointment to vilify him. Conservative politicians representing tobacco-growing states were among his harshest critics, and many Americans, for moral or religious reasons, were upset by his public programs to fight AIDS and felt betrayed by his relative silence on abortion.
As much as anyone, it was Dr. Koop who took the lead in trying to wean Americans off smoking, and he did so in imposing fashion. At a sturdy 6-foot-1, with his bushy gray biblical beard, Dr. Koop would appear before television cameras in the gold-braided dark-blue uniform of a vice admiral — the surgeon general’s official uniform, which he revived — and sternly warn of the terrible consequences of smoking.
“Smoking kills 300,000 Americans a year,” he said in one talk. “Smokers are 10 times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers, two times more likely to develop heart disease. Smoking a pack a day takes six years off a person’s life.”
When Dr. Koop took office, 33 percent of Americans smoked; when he left, the percentage had dropped to 26. By 1987, 40 states had restricted smoking in public places, 33 had prohibited it on public conveyances and 17 had banned it in offices and other work sites. More than 800 local antismoking ordinances had been passed, and the federal government had restricted smoking in 6,800 federal buildings. Antismoking campaigns by private groups like the American Lung Association and the American Heart Association had accelerated.
Dr. Koop also played a major role in educating Americans about AIDS. Though he believed that the nation had been slow in facing the crisis, he extolled its efforts once it did, particularly in identifying H.I.V., the virus that causes the disease, and developing a blood test to detect it.
Where he failed, in his own view, was to interest either Reagan or his successor as president, George Bush, in making health care available to more Americans.
Dr. Koop was completing a successful career as a pioneer in pediatric surgery when he was nominated for surgeon general, having caught the attention of conservatives with a series of seminars, films and books in collaboration with the theologian Francis Schaeffer that expressed anti-abortion views.
At his confirmation hearings, Senate liberals mounted a fierce fight against him. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Dr. Koop, in denying a right to abortion, adhered to a “cruel, outdated and patronizing stereotype of women.” Women’s rights organizations, public health groups, medical associations and others lobbied against his appointment. An editorial in The New York Times called him “Dr. Unqualified.”
But after months of testimony and delay, he was confirmed by a vote of 68 to 24, garnering more support than many had expected. Some senators who had been hesitant to support him said he had convinced them of his integrity.
Dr. Koop himself said he had taken a principled approach to the nomination. As he and his wife, Elizabeth, had driven to Washington for the confirmation hearings, he recalled telling her, “If I ever have to say anything I don’t believe or feel shouldn’t be said, we’ll go home.”
An Only Child in Brooklyn
Charles Everett Koop was born on Oct. 14, 1916, in Brooklyn, and grew up in a three-story brick house in South Brooklyn surrounded by relatives; his paternal grandparents lived on the third floor, and his maternal grandparents as well as uncles, aunts and cousins lived on the same street. He was the only child of John Everett Koop, a banker and descendant of 17th-century Dutch settlers of New York, and the former Helen Apel.
Dr. Koop traced his interest in medicine to watching his family’s doctors at work as a child. To develop the manual dexterity of a surgeon, he practiced tying knots and cutting pictures out of magazines with each hand. At 14 he sneaked into an operating theater at Columbia University’s medical college, and he operated on rabbits, rats and stray cats in his basement after his mother had administered anesthesia. By his account, not one of the animals died.
While attending high school at the private Flatbush School, he worked as a summer volunteer in hospitals near his family’s vacation home in Port Washington on Long Island. He then attended Dartmouth College and, after graduating, entered Cornell University Medical College in Manhattan and married Elizabeth Flanagan of New Britain, Conn., a Vassar student.
He completed his residency at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, where he acquired a reputation for boldness. Afterward, his surgery professor, Dr. I. S. Ravdin, offered him a job as surgeon in chief of Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, a rare offer for someone so young.
Dr. Koop held that position until the Reagan administration recruited him 35 years later. By then he had become renowned in medicine as an innovator in surgery on infants.
Dr. Koop and his colleagues performed thousands of operations to correct birth defects in premature babies or other newborns; 475 operations alone were on those with esophageal atresia, a condition, previously fatal, in which the esophagus and the stomach are not connected.
In one case, after cutting open the side of a baby’s chest to find an entire section of the esophagus missing, he built, on the spot, a new link out of tissue from the baby’s colon. It became standard procedure for repairing such a defect. He also did groundbreaking work in separating conjoined twins.
Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, a pediatric surgeon turned public health advocate, died Monday. He was 96.
Koop served as surgeon general from 1982 to 1989, under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
He was outspoken on controversial public health issues and did much to raise the profile the office of the surgeon general.
He died peacefully at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, Dartmouth College said in a news release announcing his death.
"Dr. Koop did more than take care of his individual patients -- he taught all of us about critical health issues that affect our larger society," said Dartmouth President Carol L. Folt. "Through that knowledge, he empowered each of us to improve our own well-being and quality of life. Dr. Koop's commitment to education allowed him to do something most physicians can only dream of: improving the health of millions of people worldwide."
Koop, called "Chick" by his friends, was perhaps best known for his work around HIV/AIDS. He wrote a brochure about the disease that was sent to 107 million households in the United States in 1988. It was the largest public health mailing ever, according to a biography of Koop on a website of the surgeon general.
He was also well-known for his work around tobacco, calling for a "smoke-free" society. His 1986 surgeon general's report on the dangers of secondhand smoke was seminal.
"That was the shot heard around the world, and it began to change public policy everywhere," said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.
The report started the move toward prohibiting smoking on airplanes, restaurants and at workplaces.
Dr. Koop was the most recognized surgeon general of the 20th century. He almost always appeared in the epauleted and ribboned blue or white uniform denoting his leadership of the commissioned corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. With his mustacheless beard, deep voice and grim expression, he looked like a Civil War admiral or, as some cartoonists suggested, a refugee from a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.
The theatrical appearance, however, masked a fierce self-confidence, an unyielding commitment to professional excellence and a willingness to challenge the expectations of his patrons.
A 64-year-old retired pediatric surgeon at the time Ronald Reagan nominated him in 1981, Dr. Koop had no formal public-health training. His chief credential was that he was a socially conservative, Christian physician who had written a popular treatise against abortion. His confirmation took eight months. Few people expected him to talk about homosexuality, anal intercourse, condoms and intravenous drug use when almost nobody else in the Reagan administration would even utter the word “AIDS.”
Dr. Koop, however, believed information was the most useful weapon against HIV at a time when there was little treatment for the infection and widespread fear that it might soon threaten the general population. In May 1988, he mailed a seven-page brochure, “Understanding AIDS,” to all 107 million households in the country.
“He was a guy who surprised everybody,” said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was Dr. Koop’s chief tutor in AIDS matters and became a close friend. “People expected one thing, and they not only got another thing, they got someone who was amazingly effective.”
“You couldn’t go anywhere where he wasn’t recognized. Even the tollbooth guy on the [Boston] Callahan Tunnel — everybody recognized that beard,” said former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler, who worked closely with Dr. Koop on the campaign against tobacco, among other issues. “He really was America’s doctor.”
Kessler recalled Dr. Koop’s refreshing lack of ideology, which sometimes perplexed those inside the Beltway.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/25/health/c-everett-koop-dead/?hpt=he_c1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/c-everett-koop-former-surgeon-general-dies-at-96/2013/02/25/be6cc52e-c5da-11df-94e1-c5afa35a9e59_story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/us/c-everett-koop-forceful-surgeon-general-dies-at-96.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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