AIDS lecture March 30, 1988
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Heaton Memorial Lecture by C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Presented at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Washington, DC
March 30, 1988
It had been thirteen days since I had addressed a public audience on the epidemic of AIDS.
The Heaton Memorial Lecture at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was in honor of General Heaton, who had been Surgeon General of the Army during World War II. It was he who, along with my mentor, General I. S. Ravdin, had operated on General Eisenhower, an operation known not so much for its technical success, but for the fact that it broke the barrier of confidentiality and good taste in reporting in the press the medical problems of a celebrity. I was in Denver, Colorado on the day after that operation was performed, before General Eisenhower was elected President of the United States. I remember my shock in reading the headline in the Denver Post: "Ike has B. M." Things have never been the same since.
Speaking of things being the same, this lecture is essentially the one I had given thirteen days before to the Federation of American Health Care Systems in New Orleans on March 17, 1988, and on two other occasions, February 17, 1988 and March 3, 1988. The user is referred to the introductions of those lectures for additional information, and because this is a repeat lecture, no index is included.