C. Everett Koop, MD
Reflecting on the opposition by the American Public Health Association and the American Medical Association to his nomination by President Ronald Reagan as the nation’s spokesperson on public health
Remembering the Opposition by Public Health Groups to the Nomination of Dr. Koop as Surgeon General
Rick Richards, MD and Alan Blum, MD, co-founders of DOC (Doctors Ought to Care, 1977-2002), discuss the opposition by the American Public Health Association and the American Medical Association, among other organizations, to President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of renowned pediatric surgeon Dr. C. Everett Koop (1916-2013) as Surgeon General in 1982. Dr. Koop was confirmed and served in this position from 1982 to 1988, throughout which he was a staunch supporter of efforts to reduce tobacco use and promotion (02:07)
Reference: Dr. C. Everett Koop, whose nomination to the post….
“If you look at the biomedical literature of the past 30 years, you have to be impressed with the extraordinary amount of evidence that has been generated to prove the causal relationship between cigarette smoking and some two dozen disease conditions. The medical literature now holds an inventory of more than 50,000 studies regarding smoking and health. The overwhelming majority of them clearly implicate cigarette smoking either as a contributing cause or the primary cause of illness and death.
“Now these are facts. They are part of the case built by medical researchers here and the world over for the past three decades, a case that is scientifically conclusive. And the verdict is clear: Smoking is the leading preventable cause of disease and death in this country.”
–C. Everett Koop, MD, 1985
At the 1988 Annual Scientific Assembly of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) in New Orleans, US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop awarded Rick Richards, MD (on right), Alan Blum, MD (on left), and Tom Houston, MD (not pictured) the Surgeon General’s Medallion for their pioneering decade-long public health activism through their organization DOC (Doctors Ought to Care).
Other photographs include Drs. Koop and Blum with William Cahan, MD (1914-2001), a prominent thoracic surgeon for more than 50 years at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a leading anti-smoking activist in New York City, where he led People for a Smoke-Free Indoors. The photo was taken on January 18, 1996 at the ceremony for the Smoke-Free America Awards, hosted by Drs. Cahan and Koop. Dr. Blum was one of the recipients.
