2 - lecture cover - press conf.

Statement

By C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
  Surgeon General
U.S. Public Health Service

Washington, DC
October 22, 1986

The President had asked me in February of 1985 to prepare a report to the American
people on AIDS. It may seem to the user of this archive that it was an inordinate period
of time to consume for such a task in presenting the report in October the following year.

This is the report that I asked the President's Cabinet to protect in privacy between the
time I gave it to them the previous afternoon and the time I address the press on the
morning of October 22, 1986.

I will not attempt to summarize this as I prepare the introduction almost 18 years later. I
do suggest that the user read it carefully to absorb what I thought my assignment was
from President Reagan, what efforts I made to do it properly, and what I thought could be
accomplished by it.

Here and there, peppered throughout the reported are short statements by the Surgeon
General that hit political issues of the day.

There was a long and detailed question and answer period which followed and it is worth
repeating here all of what's been said elsewhere in this archive, that my answer to the
question of how early sex education should be begun, set a good portion of the country
against me in my fight against AIDS, because I was accused of leading the children of
American down the garden path to immorality. Quite to the contrary, it was my oft stated
belief that you cannot teach a child how to avoid a sexually transmitted disease unless
you also inform that child something about his or her own sexuality. I stood by that
statement then and I stand by it now.

This was a turning point, as several of the things I did in Washington were, in reference
to my support by and disagreements with certain constituencies. The public health
community far and wide was with me and my report was largely copied by the
governments of France and Australia for circulation to their citizens. I lost some
ultraconservative old guard Republicans, because they thought I was coddling
homosexuals. I lost fearful parents who didn't have the courage to teach their own
children what they should know about sex education and instead condemned me for
trying to help. It was from this group, I presume, that the threats on my life arose from
time to time.


Unbalance I gained more than I lost. Congressmen and Senators who had taken no notice
of me or had actually decried the things I did, made emotional pro-Koop, pro-public
servant addresses both house of Congress. One Senator wept in public at my compassion
for homosexuals. I may have lost a lot of the Conservatives, but I gained many more
Liberals and a huge previously uncommitted group of Moderates.

I learned once again, on this occasion, that almost any health warning issue by the
Surgeon General divides the populous into those who agree with him and those who do
not. There are always zealots on each side; and they always make themselves heard.