AIDS lecture July 11, 1987

           Address
          BY
    C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
      Surgeon General
           Of the
      U.S. Public Health Service
            And
  Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Presented at the Gold Medallion Book Awards Banquet
Of the Evangelical Christian Publisher's Association
        Anaheim, California
           Julv 11. 1987

It was three days since I last spoke about AIDS to NAACP in New York.

At the time I delivered this address the definition of Evangelical Christian was a little
tighter than it now is and I acknowledged to the members of this organization that I was
myself, an Evangelical Christian, and I thanked the audience for maintaining a place for
Christian publications in our society. I didn't know much about their business, but I
couldn't believe that it was easy.

I wondered out loud why in this wonderful country of ours, it was so terribly hard to be
good and to do good. I told them I knew there was a message there and it had to do with
need of investing oneself to feel the joy and to feel the hurt when carrying out acts of love
and charity and of peace and of justice.

I was speaking this audience's language when I said to live as salt and light remained a
great challenge for a Christian in our society. In public life the commitment to decency
was under the constant siege of powerful and negative forces in our culture:

o  Television shows that glamorize violence.. .

o  Motion pictures that brutalize the act of love.. .

o  Newspapers that sensationalize human pain and sorrow.. .
o  And book publishers that scandalize the human spirit.

I acknowledged that I knew they were better than that, and thanked them on behalf of
myself and millions of others just like me. I looked forward to the day when I would be a
plain citizen once more having hung my uniform up in the closet for good and said I
would spend some time getting reacquainted with my good friends in the Evangelical
movement - friends who had shown me infinite love and patience through these two
terms as Surgeon General.

Had I written this a little later in my second term, I would have been more guarded in
those comments, because in the long run a great many people of faith never understood

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what I was trying to do as the Surgeon General to prevent the spread of AIDS and I was
certainly misunderstood when President Reagan asked me to write a report on the effects
of abortion on women - a misguided effort to focus on women instead of the fetus.

Nevertheless, I reminded them of the fact that we stood together on "Baby Doe" in most
instances, we confronted the issue of pornography together, I acknowledged that I was no
stranger to controversy, but I had been blessed with good friends, good colleagues, and a
good strong faith and I needed all three.

I finally got around to the issue of AIDS, which was what I had gone for and presented it
in four general categories.

First, I talked about the mysterious virus, how it was named, noted that we had to move
forward conservatively and carefully, making some necessary adjustments, but not
putting our fundamental values at risk. I reaffirmed my belief that science, especially
scientific inquiry in a free society like ours would eventually get us out of this AIDS
mess. But I added that with this disease, like no other, science and morality walked
hand-in-hand and side-by-side to the containment of the epidemic.

Second, I reminded them again that AIDS was a contagious disease and that it was
growing, reporting 10,000 new cases in a year which had ended on June 1, 1986 and
15,000 new cases in the year ending June 1, 1987. I pointed out conservatively that in the
ten-year future history of this disease, a quarter of a million people would have
contracted AIDS.

My third point was that the disease of AIDS was spreading geographically having at first
been seen almost exclusively in the populations most at risk, primarily homosexual and
bisexual men in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. But at the time of this
lecture 19 major cities had each reported more than 300 cases since 1981. This disease
was not longer someone else's problem; it was now everyone's problem. It's also a
"world class" disease with World Health Organization having reported 50,000 cases from
113 countries including Iceland, Paraguay, and the Bahamas. That was the first time I
called it this a "world class" disease and gave those statistics.  It was also the first time
that I said that in some Central African countries as many as 11 per cent of the population
were infected with the virus. I noted that villages were decimated and exposed my fear
that in the next decade and a half, there would be, not a sufficient number of young,
educated, men and women to run the government, the factories, and the business of those
developing countries.

The fourth and final point was that the disease of AIDS was considered to be 100 per cent
fatal - the fundamental reason we were so worried about it. That statement, of course,
was before our present knowledge of the containment of AIDS - not cure - with
pharmaceutical cocktails, but at this particular time, the message was that it didn't matter
who had it and how they got it, we couldn't overlook the fact that people died from it.


With those four pillars out of the way, I discussed the transmission of AIDS rather
explicitly and then because of the audience I was addressing, I made it clear that I did not
condone intravenous drug abuse and flatly opposed the kind of sexual promiscuity -
among men and women - that endangered any persons physical, mental, emotional, or
spiritual health.

I told them I thought that kind of behavior was wrong - wrong on public health grounds
and wrong on moral grounds.

However, I was not the Chaplain of the American people, I was their the Surgeon
General - also it was the first time I had said that. It was my job to wage all-out war on
that disease.. .and not against people. My concern was to stop the chain of transmission
in the most effective way possible, consistent with our laws and traditions.

The actual closing pages of this speech cannot be found.
                "A closed mouth gathers no feet."
                Advantages of scientific inquiry
                 "Baby Doe"

Blood & semen in the transmission of AIDS
Books publishers that scandalize the human spirit
Cause of AIDS

Chaplain of the American people is not the Surgeon
    General

Contagion of AIDS
Current figures on AIDS
Endangerment of physical, mental, emotional &
   spiritual health
Fatality of AIDS
Geographic spread of AIDS
Global figures on AIDS
Heterosexual transmission of AIDS
Identifications with this group of Evangelical
    Booksellers

Intravenous drug abuse & AIDS
Motion picture that brutalize the act of love
Mystery of AIDS
Newspapers that sensationalize human pain &
      sorrow

Plight of central African countries due to health
   organization statistics
Pornography in American life
Powerful & negative forces in our culture
Science & morality as partners in the containment
    of AIDS

Television shows that glamorize violence
       to decency

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