A grateful world, nation and cadre of surgeons general who followed in his shadow are forever indebted to Surgeon General Koop's wisdom, fortitude, integrity and selfless service.
Actions, such as the designation of National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, spring from First Lady Michelle Obama's leadership of efforts to end childhood obesity within this generation.
The fact is that a bill allowing any employer to deny insurance coverage based on a moral objection - along with giving an employer permission to ask for medical records showing why a woman is taking birth control - opens up a set of problems that I'm sure its sponsors have not fully considered.
As a young surgeon in training at the University of California San Francisco General Hospital in the early '80s, my colleagues and I were inundated with an epidemic of young men with fevers, rashes, swollen lymph nodes and eventually death.
Trying to block women from getting access to contraception or defunding Planned Parenthood is completely nonsensical from a policy standpoint.
If the childhood obesity epidemic remains unchecked, it will condemn many of our kids to shorter lives, as well as the emotional and financial burdens of poor health.
When I came home after my statutory term as surgeon general, I just resumed my life here in southern Arizona. Teaching at the university; my law enforcement career. Sitting on some boards. All the things I did before.
I see good ideas on the Republican side as well as the Democratic side. You have to return civility and statesmanship to governance. If you don't do that, it doesn't matter what portfolio of issue you're pushing, nothing is going to get done.
The average person doesn't understand what a stem cell is. There's a lack of health literacy in our nation. So the public can't really get into this dialogue because they don't understand the complexity of stem cells, not the faith-based approach, not the ideological or political, but the science behind stem cells.
In honor of Surgeon General Koop's legacy, we should ensure that the position of surgeon general is protected from political interference, funded appropriately and nominated from the ranks of career public health professionals who merit consideration, as is done in the other uniformed services.
I still look at my job as being a doctor of the people, and I'm going to look at the science... If we can find a viable alternative that gave us harm reduction as people are withdrawing from nicotine, I'm happy to engage in that science and see if we can do that.
