AIDS Lecture November 17, 1987
Address given by C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
Surgeon General
U.S. Public Health Service
Presented to the West Jersey Health System
Cherry Hill, NJ
November 17, 1987
It had only been one day since I had talked about AIDS to a public audience. This audience, in what really is a bedroom suburb of the city of Philadelphia, was medically oriented. And after reminding them that there was much more going on in the world than AIDS, I said I would stick to that and start with the global picture, and reported that as of August the case load in countries other than the United States had reached 14,600. Of course that was far below the true figure, and because AIDS was very under-reported. For example, about 17 countries in Africa reported one case or no cases at all, while other countries, some sharing common borders report 300, 700, and 1,000 cases. Almost all too nonsensical to record at all. The W.H.O continued to say that over the next five years, the world could add anywhere between a half-million to another three million new cases, and of course that was underestimated too.
To round out the statistics up to date, I gave the United States figures at that time (since June of 1981 to the present) 43,000 cases in America, with 26,000 dead.
The rest of the lecture is really a repetition of what I said to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, California on September 21, 1987. For that reason, no index will be given.