OH, NO!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Everett_Koop

C. Everett Koop died this week.   

[LMNO]

Goddammit.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Goddammit.

Granted, he was born in 1916, but he was the ONLY person pissing off BOTH sides in the 1980s, by telling the truth out loud, in public, even going so far as to mail ACCURATE information to EVERY HOME IN AMERICA, concerning AIDS.

He also told Reagan to shit in his hat concerning abortion, tobacco, and a bunch of other shit.

[Junkenstein]

direct lift from wiki:

Koop is perhaps most remembered for four facets of his professional work:
Abortion: Though Koop was opposed to abortion on personal and religious grounds,[19][5][13][20] he declined to state that abortion procedures performed by qualified medical professionals posed a substantial health risk to the women whose pregnancies were being terminated, despite political pressure to endorse such a position.[16][20]

Tobacco: In his 1988 Report of the Surgeon General, it was reported that nicotine has an addictiveness similar to that of heroin or cocaine. Koop's report was somewhat unexpected, especially by those who expected him to maintain the status quo in regard to his office's position on tobacco products. During his tenure, in 1984, Congress passed legislation providing for new, rotated health warning labels on cigarette packs and required advertising to include the labels. Those labels remain unchanged today. New labels containing graphic depictions of smoking-caused illness and death have been announced by the FDA, but are on hold pending the outcome of tobacco industry legal challenges. Koop issued a challenge to Americans in 1984 to "create a smoke-free society in the United States by the year 2000."[21] As Surgeon General, he released eight reports on the health consequences of tobacco use,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] including the first report on the health consequences of involuntary tobacco smoke exposure. During Koop's tenure as Surgeon General, smoking rates in the United States declined significantly from 38% to 27%.[30]

AIDS: Koop was Surgeon General when public health authorities first began to take notice of AIDS.[31] Koop wrote the official U.S. policy on the disease, and in 1988 he took unprecedented action in mailing AIDS information to every U.S. household.[32] Gay activists and their supporters were unhappy with the way in which he targeted gay sex and the risk of infection through anal sexual intercourse as primary vectors of the disease, but Koop was unapologetic claiming such activities entail risks several orders of magnitude greater than other means of transmission. Religious activists, upset over the pamphlet's frank discussion of sexual practices and advocacy of condom use, called for Koop's resignation.[33] Koop also infuriated some former supporters by advocating sex education in schools, possibly as early as the third grade, including later instruction regarding the proper use of condoms to combat the spread of AIDS. While a straightforward telling to the public about the disease was controversial, Koop was also criticized by some health activists who claimed that his office had not gone far enough in attempting to develop a cure or vaccine, reducing the role of his office to educating the public on health concerns.

Baby Doe and the Rights of Handicapped Children: In April 1982, a child born in Bloomington, Indiana, was diagnosed with Down syndrome as well as esophageal atresia with tracheoesophageal fistula. Six days later, after court involvement and parental discussion involving disagreement among physicians about whether or not to treat the baby or let him die, the baby died, having been denied surgical treatment to correct his esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula. Baby Doe, as he would be known, became a symbol for children with birth defects, handicapped infants, and the debate over infanticide. Koop was not initially involved with the Baby Doe case but had a special interest in it. As a pediatric surgeon in Philadelphia, he and his colleagues had operated on 475 such babies during his 35 years there, with ever-increasing survival rates. During his last eight years in active practice, Koop never lost a full-term baby upon whom he had operated to correct esophageal atresia. It was due to this background that he became actively involved championing policies to protect the rights of newborns with defects, which led to Congress passing the Baby Doe Amendment.

[/b]

This guy was practically a fucking saint for the US health system. What the fuck would you guys be like without this guy?

Edits for points of brilliance.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Shit, wish someone else like him would come along!

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Shitfuckdamn.

[navkat]

I remember him. Surgeon General in the 80s. I remember thinking he was weird...but now that I think of it, it's even weirder that we never even HEAR from a Surgeon Gen since Koop. Nobody gets on TV anymore and says "This shit's poison. Don't fucking let them put it in your food."

It's like the office has become some bullshit figurehead thing...O WAI...

[AFK]

The position was actually empty for a time.  One of the last "big" movements that came out of that office was a push, during the Bush administration, to address underage drinking.  It was a big deal in the field, of course, but it barely made a splash in the "real world".  But the call came from an Acting Surgeon General, and he didn't have a beard.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The position was actually empty for a time.  One of the last "big" movements that came out of that office was a push, during the Bush administration, to address underage drinking.  It was a big deal in the field, of course, but it barely made a splash in the "real world".  But the call came from an Acting Surgeon General, and he didn't have a beard.

and he didn't have a beard.

and he didn't have a beard.

and he didn't have a beard.

[AFK]

Americans like Characters.  No one has time for plain vanilla pant-suit wearing squares, fuck those guys, right? 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Americans like Characters.  No one has time for plain vanilla pant-suit wearing squares, fuck those guys, right?

Yeah, what were you expecting?

Make it interesting, or the rubes won't buy.  No matter how fucking smart you are or how important your message, YOU have to communicate it.  You expect the population to listen just because it's important?

HELLO?

IS THIS THING WORKING?

[AFK]

No Mr. Bond, I expect the public to die.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

No Mr. Bond, I expect the public to die.

Happens to everyone.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I can't stop laughing.