NOTEWORTHY DEATH

Transformed surgeon general job

C. Everett Koop, who raised the profile of the surgeon general by riveting America’s attention on the thenemerging disease known as AIDS and by railing against smoking, has died in New Hampshire at age 96.

An assistant at Koop’s Dartmouth institute, Susan Wills, said he died Monday in Hanover, where he had a home. She didn’t disclose the cause of his death.

Koop wielded the previously low-profile post of surgeon general as a bully pulpit for seven years during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

An evangelical Christian, he shocked his conservative supporters when he endorsed condoms and sex education to stop the spread of AIDS.

He carried out a crusade to end smoking in the United States - his goal had been to do so by 2000.

Koop, a former pipe smoker, said cigarettes are as addictive as heroin and cocaine.

Koop’s impact was great, although the surgeon general has no real authority to set government policy.

He described himself as “the health conscience of the country.”

In 1986, he issued a frank report on AIDS, urging the use of condoms for “safe sex” and advocating sex education as early as third grade.

He also maneuvered around uncooperative Reagan administration officials in 1988 to send an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households.

Koop was born in New York’s borough of Brooklyn, the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor.

He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon, and at age 13, he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats.

In 1938, Koop married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. She died in 2007.

They had four children - Allen, Norman, David and Elizabeth. David, their youngest son, was killed in a mountain-climbing accident when he was 20.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 8 on 02/26/2013

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