May 25 1983
Dear Jim:
Thanks for your kind note of May 2nd.  I just arrived back from the World Health Assembly in Geneva and had a chance to read it.  It was most thoughtful of you to have the Pediatric Surgery Festschrift in my honor bound for the libraries.
I guess I appreciate this gesture especially now because I have taken so much heat on the Infant Doe Regulations.  It would seem that the medical profession here and there (and the whole house staff of the Children's Hospital) seems to think that I personally wrote those regulations. As a matter of fact, I am the one who has been trying to get the Department to sit down and talk with pediatricians before anything was promulgated. This I finally accomplished on the day I left for Geneva in late April.
I look forward to seeing you on the night you say good-bye to Jim Betts.  Betty joins me in sending our love to you both.
Sincerely yours,
C. Everett Koop, M.D.
Surgeon General