C. Everett Koop

Charles Everett Koop was born October 14, 1916, in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of banker John Koop and Helen Apel Koop. He studied zoology at Dartmouth, where classmates nicknamed him Chick, earned his medical degree at Cornell in 1941, and took a further doctorate in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1947. In 1946, at twenty-nine, he became surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a post he held for thirty-five years. He built the country's first neonatal surgical intensive care unit in 1956, pioneered techniques for separating conjoined twins, and pushed survival rates for newborns once considered inoperable. A devout evangelical Presbyterian, he was already a prominent public opponent of abortion, through books and films made with theologian Francis Schaeffer, well before politics noticed him.

Reagan nominated Koop for surgeon general in 1981 largely on his anti-abortion record, over objections from liberal and medical groups who mocked him as Dr. Kill Koop; the Senate confirmed him 60 to 24 that November, and he was sworn in on January 21, 1982. He then declined to deliver the political outcomes his own backers expected. In 1989 he told the White House there was no scientific basis for a report it wanted, claiming abortion caused women lasting psychological harm. He made smoking his central public health target, issuing eight reports and, in 1988, declaring nicotine as addictive as heroin, while cigarette use nationally fell from 38 to 27 percent across his tenure. And in 1988 he had every household in the country, some 107 million of them, mailed a plainspoken pamphlet on AIDS that discussed condoms without euphemism.

Understanding AIDS cost roughly 25 million dollars to print and mail and became the largest public health mailing in American history, and it cost Koop his political base. The same religious conservatives who had fought for his confirmation, expecting a culture warrior, denounced him for teaching schoolchildren about condoms; Phyllis Schlafly said it read as if the gay rights movement had edited it, and Jerry Falwell suggested a simple call for abstinence would have saved taxpayers the money. Koop, an evangelical and a Falwell associate, believed the pamphlet matched his own values exactly and never apologized for it. He had buried a piece of his life already: his son David died at twenty in a rock-climbing fall on Cannon Mountain in January 1968, a loss Koop and his first wife, Elizabeth, wrote a book about to help other grieving parents.

Koop left office October 1, 1989, the only surgeon general the Associated Press ever called a household name, recognizable by his Amish-style beard and Navy dress uniform as much as by anything he said. He hosted an NBC documentary series in 1991, co-founded the early health website drkoop.com in 1997, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995. His first wife, Elizabeth, died in 2007 after nearly seven decades of marriage; he remarried in 2010, at ninety-three. Koop died of kidney failure on February 25, 2013, in Hanover, New Hampshire, at ninety-six, having outlasted nearly every one of his old critics.

C. Everett Koop's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Neonatal surgical intensive care unit other
  The nation's first, at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia 1956
• Sometimes Mountains Move book
  Co-written with his wife Elizabeth after their son David's death 1979
• Understanding AIDS other
  Mailed to all 107 million U.S. households at a cost of roughly $25 million 1988
• Eighth Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health other
  Declared nicotine as addictive as heroin or cocaine 1988
• drkoop.com company
  Early consumer health website; filed for bankruptcy in 2001 1997

• October 14, 1916 aged 0 Born in Brooklyn, New York
• 1946 aged ~30 Becomes surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
• 1956 aged ~40 Opens the nation's first neonatal surgical intensive care unit
• January 1968 aged 51 His son David dies in a climbing accident on Cannon Mountain
• January 21, 1982 aged 65 Sworn in as U.S. Surgeon General
• 1988 aged ~72 Mails Understanding AIDS to every U.S. household
• October 1, 1989 aged 72 Leaves office as Surgeon General
• February 25, 2013 aged 96 Dies in Hanover, New Hampshire

• Ronald Reagan 1911–2004
  40th president whose conservative domestic program and assertive Cold War strategy reshaped American politics. appointed
• Jerry Falwell 1933–2007
  Pastor and political organizer who helped make conservative evangelicalism a major Republican constituency. opposed by
• Ryan White 1971–1990
  Teenager with HIV/AIDS whose fight against discrimination changed public perception of the epidemic. championed
• Larry Kramer 1935–2020
  Writer who co-founded Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP — forcing faster federal response to AIDS. initially distrusted by