5. During
World War I, under SG
Rupert Blue, cigarettes were issued as part of each fighting man's basic
field rations kit.
6. In 1964, SG Luther Terry published a
report that nailed cigarette smoking as a cause of cancer, triggering the
Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act. This sent the tobacco lobby into a frenzy of denial, bribery, and
intimidation that continues to this day.
7.
Antonia Novello, under
George H. W. Bush, was a harsh critic of
Big Tobacco. Her brother-in-law,
Don Novello, played a chain-smoking priest,
Father Guido Sarducci,
on Saturday Night Live.
8. Surgeon General Hugh Cumming is remembered for the notorious
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, begun under his watch in 1930, to study the effects of untreated syphilis in African American men. The program continued under six successive SGs, being declared unethical only in 1973. The study proved that it's unhealthy to leave
syphilis untreated.
9. In 1981, Reagan's ultraconservative SG, C. Everett Koop, brought the traditional full military regalia back to the office. But he was no dandy: His famous uniform was made of polyester.
10. Koop penned a brochure
(PDF) explaining the risks of
AIDS - writing frankly about sexuality - and had it mailed to every household in the United States. It was the first government mass mailing of its kind. He took a lot of flak for it.
11. He also performed a
cameo in
The Exorcist III.
12. Today the 90-year-old Koop is a pitchman for Life Alert, the emergency medical response service with the catchphrase, "
I've fallen and I can't get up!"
13.
Joycelyn Elders was our first black SG. Like Koop, she advocated frank sex education in schools. Unlike Koop, she did not survive the flak; she was gone within 15 months, the shortest tenure of any SG.
14. She was forced to resign because, when asked about masturbation at a U.N. conference on AIDS, she
responded in a positive way. There are no existing audio or videotapes of her response; the exact words that led to her firing remain unknown.
15. Under
George W. Bush, SG Richard H. Carmona
said officials asked him to censor his reporting on
embryonic stem cell research, contraception, and the unrealistic proposition of abstinence-only sex education. He was also instructed to mention the president three times per page in every speech he gave.
16.
Separated at birth? Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu also required scientists to sprinkle his name in their speeches.
17. Carmona, a
high school dropout, earned his GED in the Army, was a decorated
Vietnam Special Forces combat veteran, then won the "Gold-Headed Cane Award" as top graduate at the
University of California Medical School. He also served as a paramedic and a nurse.
18. Resistance to Bush's nomination of James W. Holsinger as 18th Surgeon General comes partly from his
purported antigay bias. In a paper he wrote for the
United Methodist Church in 1991 - which some say is light on science and heavy on dogma - Holsinger declared that male homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy.
19. On the bright side, PETA likes him: Acting SG Robert A. Whitney, who served in the interim between Novello and Elders, was a veterinarian.
20. The SG's position has been vacant on many occasions. The longest vacancy was four years.
