AIDS Lecture December 7,1987
1414

          Address
          BY
    C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
      Surgeon General
           Ofthe
     U.S. Public Health Service
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Presented to American Society of Hospital Pharmacists
        Atlanta, Georgia
        December 7,1987

This lecture was give two days after speaking to the AMA medical students, the last time I had
made a public presentation on AIDS.

I opened with lavish praise for pharmacists in all seriousness but with some humor: especially
pointed to the pharmacists' contribution to the achievement of quality hospital-based heath care
in the United States -- which led to the challenge of AIDS we all face.

I announced that I would be avoiding the biomedical information but spend the next few
moments with them sharing a number of non-medical concerns that strike at the very heart of the
American system of health care delivery. Indeed they make the scientific issues tend to pale in
comparison when compared to highly sensitive issue of law, ethics, economics, morality ,and
social cohesion.

What I said thereafter was a summary of what I had said in the previous four lectures but I did
emphasize for that this audience their fears of being at high risk was simply unfounded and they
should have no basis for shunning AIDS patients. I referred them to guidelines put out by the
Department of Labor and HHS and directed them to the Federal Register notice, which has a
tremendous amount of information on AIDS.

There were no new figures or statistics of incidence or economics, but I did mention the danger
of second-class care for AIDS patients and thought that we should consider such thinking
unthinkable.

Many of the points I tried to make are included in the address I gave to the student section of the
American Medical Association on the 5' of December, which includes a lengthy index.