A Doctor Up to the Task

Dr. C. Everett Koop put public health before politics as the nation’s surgeon general, and President Bush should keep that example in mind as he seeks a replacement. Koop, who announced last week that he would leave his post in July, provided much needed leadership in educating the public about acquired immune deficiency syndrome and the health hazards of smoking.

It was on AIDS that Koop’s leadership was both timely and bold. The nation’s top doctor, he insisted on the importance of early sex education about AIDS and advocated the use of condoms to reduce the spread of the virus. He spoke bluntly on the issue at a time when many in the Reagan Administration either wanted to pretend it would go away or to blame the victims, many of whom are homosexual men. As Jeff Levi of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force put it, Koop helped transform public discussion of AIDS “from moral judgment to public health.”

We did not always agree with Koop. He continued to speak out against abortion. He did, however, argue that there was not enough scientific information on the physical and psychological impact of abortions on women to write a report that President Reagan sought. Koop also defended the Reagan Administration rules that brought the federal government into treatment of deformed babies, a matter that should be strictly left to doctors and the infants’ parents.

Not since the days of the earliest surgeon general’s report on smoking has that issue had the government-sanctioned visibility that Koop has given it. He warned that smoking kills some people and cautioned that people are at risk even if they don’t smoke but inhale other people’s tobacco smoke. He called for a smokeless society by the year 2000.

A White House source said the Bush Administration has a litmus test for the next surgeon general. “The President couldn’t take the heat if he appointed anybody pro-choice” on the abortion issue, the source said. It would be far more fitting if Bush used scientific judgment as a litmus test for the job of surgeon general. Koop passed that test; his successor should, too.