By Kim Painter, Special for USA TODAY
C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general who brought frank talk
about AIDS into U.S. homes, has died at his home in Hanover, N.H.,
officials at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth said Monday. He
was 96.
Koop, a pediatric surgeon with a conservative reputation
and a distinctive beard, served from 1982 to 1989 during the Reagan
administration and the early months of the administration of George H.W.
Bush.
"He was a historic figure," who became surgeon general the
year the AIDS pandemic began and played a pivotal role in educating
Americans about it, says Anthony Fauci, director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
"Dr. Koop will be
remembered for his colossal contributions to the health and well-being
of patients and communities in the U.S. and around the world," said a
statement released by Chip Souba, dean of the Geisel School of Medicine
and Joseph O'Donnell, senior scholar at the C. Everett Koop Institute.
"As one of our country's greatest surgeons general, he effectively
promoted health and the prevention of disease, thereby improving
millions of lives in our nation and across the globe."
Koop may
best remembered for his official 1986 report on AIDS - a plain-spoken
36-page document that talked about the way AIDS spread (through sex,
needles and blood), the ways it did not spread (through casual contact
in homes, schools and workplaces) and how people could protect
themselves.
The report advocated condom use for the sexually
active and sex education for schoolchildren, pleasantly surprising
liberals and upsetting many of Koop's former supporters. An eight-page
version was mailed to every American household in 1988.
The
brochure came in a sealed packet with the warning that "some of the
issues involved in this brochure may not be things you are used to
discussing openly."
In interviews and speeches, Koop always
stressed that sexual abstinence and monogamy were the best protection
against AIDS, but that medical experts had a duty to tell people who did
not choose those paths how they could stay healthy.
"My position on AIDS was dictated by scientific integrity and Christian compassion," Koop wrote in his 1991 biography, Koop: The Memoirs of America's Family Doctor.
Koop
also made his mark in the fight against smoking, with another 1986
report that alerted the public to the dangers of second-hand smoke -
setting the stage for today's widespread prohibitions against smoking in
public places.
At one point, Koop was the second-most recognized
public official in the United States, after President Reagan, says
Alexandra Lord, a former Public Health Service historian and author of Condom Nation: The US Government's Sex Education Campaign from World War I to the Internet.
He was one of the most high-profile surgeons general, before or since,
she says -- though she says people under age 35 or so may not know his
name today.
In his time, "Koop was very effective," so much so
that he made some subsequent administrations "very nervous" about the
potential power of the men and women occupying the office, Lord says.
Charles Everett Koop was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 14, 1916. He
briefly played football at Dartmouth College, where he acquired his
lifelong nickname "Chick," according to a biography posted online by the
National Library of Medicine. An early fascination with medicine
eventually led him to Cornell University Medical College. In 1945, he
became first surgeon in chief at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a
position he held until his appointment as surgeon general.
His
nomination for that position was opposed by groups who feared he would
use the office to promote his anti-abortion views - which he said were
developed during a career saving newborns with life-threatening birth
defects. But Koop avoided pronouncements on abortion during his tenure.
After
he left office, he became one of the first high-profile doctors to
establish a presence online. His website, DrKoop.com, was launched in
1997 and was intended to provide reliable health information to the
public, he said. But Koop and his backers faced criticism over ties with
companies advertising on the site. Like many Internet efforts of the
era, it failed, going bankrupt in 2001.
Koop remained active,
though, heading his C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth in New
Hampshire. At a news conference in Washington, D.C., in 2010, when he
was 94, he spoke from a wheelchair and told reporters that he was "very,
very deaf" and legally blind, the Washington Post reported.
But
he still had the strength to warn that AIDS was becoming a "forgotten
epidemic." Although 56,000 Americans were still getting infected each
year, "simply put, HIV is no longer on the public's radar screen," he
said.
At a time when AIDS was new, though, and the nation needed
someone to give it the facts straight up, Koop filled the bill, says
Woodie Kessel, a former assistant surgeon general who was a longtime
friend and a Koop Institute fellow. "Every time there's a new threat to
our well-being, it takes somebody to calm our fears... He worked to
address those fears with facts, with science and with great compassion."
Fauci, who also became friends with Koop and worked with him
on his AIDS report, says: "He was an amazing champion of treating it as a
disease, not as a stigma. He understood it was a public health disaster
in the making. ... I remember he would say, 'Tony, you do the science,
I'll do the education for the public.'"
Surgeon General Regina
Benjamin said in a statement that when she took office, in 2010, "Dr.
Koop sat down with me on what would become the first of numerous
occasions to offer guidance and support. We often prayed together."
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius called Koop "a fearless public servant."
Contributing: Liz Szabo