AIDS lecture May 27, 1988
15/16
AIDS: What We All Need To Know
By
C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
Surgeon General
Of the
U.S. Public Health Service
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

AIDS Interfaith Council
Houston, Texas
May 27, 1988

 

It had been 18 days since I had last spoken publicly on the AIDS epidemic.

The AIDS Interfaith Council in Houston, Texas was an ad hoc group formed since the beginning
of the epidemic, but fit very well with my plans to talk to as many religious bodies as I could
about the facts that they should know and it seemed of all the lectures I had given recently the
one entitled; “AIDS: What We All Need To Know” was the most appropriate for this group. I
had given this same talk to the National Association of Elementary School Principals in San
Francisco on April 18™ 1988, at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, MA on March 31“, 1988, and to
the National Association of Secondary School Principals in Anaheim, California on March 6",
1988. It seemed the ideal speech, of those I had recently given, to present to this audience.

In my own presentation copy of the manuscript, the paper of the first two pages is different than
that which follows and what I think accounts for the difference here is that I started nght in on
the subject at hand and did not go through the frequent preliminaries of making connections with
the audience and the people who had brought them together. This probably is because of the fact
that I did not know any of people responsible for inviting me to address the Interfaith Council.

The reader is referred to the other lectures mentioned and the introductory pages to those
lectures. Indexes will be found where appropriate on the previous occasions on which it was
delivered.