Koop and the AIDS Crisis
The Top Doc’s Changed Image

By Larry Liebert
Chronicle Washington Bureau Chief

Washington

C. Everett Koop looks every
bit the hard-line moralist, with
his stern goatee and the mili-
tary uniform that comes with
his job as surgeon general of the
United States.

When the pediatric surgeon
from Philadelphia was chosen by
President Reagan in 1981, his record
of public campaigning to ban abor-
tions and his allegiance to tradition-
al “family values” made him a fa-
vorite of Moral Majority-style con-
servatives.

The 70-year-old Koop says his
views have not changed, but the
AIDS crisis — and his pragmatic, far
from moralistic reaction to it —
have turned his image topsy-turvy.

Many of his old conservative
friends want Koop’'s scalp for urg-
ing AIDS education in the schools
and condom advertising on televi-
sion. Gavs and liberals consider him
a national hero for opposing manda-
tory AIDS tests and speaking out
ugainst discrimination toward AIDS
carriers.

Obviously enjoying the difficul-
ty people are having in pigeonhol-
ing his brand of public health, Koop
recently told an interviewer, “I take
that as sort of a compliment, I
guess.”

Koap’s unique role will be illus-
trated dramatically tomorrow
when he addresses a joint session of
the California Legislature in Sacra-
mento.

His speech will be nonpartisan,
but his hosts will be the Legisia-
ture’s liberal Democratic leaders.
They are unabashedly hoping to
capitalize on Koop’s prestige in
their effort to pressure Republican
Governor Deukmejian. Thev want
the governor to spend more than
the $21.4 million he has proposed
for the year ahead to fight AIDS and
to sign legislation he had vetoed
that would ban discrimination
against AIDS victims.

anneal
SURGEON GENERAL'S

ADVICE ON AIDS

 

 

   

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop

& AIDS education as early as
elementary school ‘so that
children can grow up knowing
the behavior to avoid to protect
themselves.”

GB An end to the networks’
self-imposed ban on condom
ads because “the threat of AIDS
is so great, it overwhelms other
considerations.”

No mandatory testing for
exposure to the AIDS virus and
no quarantines “because AIDS
is not spread by casual contact.
@ No tattoos of those who are
infected, as some conservatives
have suggested. “AIDS should
not be used as an excuse to
discriminate against any group
or individual.”

uw

 

 

 

neuvering.

“The public health issues be-
come more important to him than
anything else,” said one of Koop’s
top advisers. “He's not interested in
the local politics. He is a man witha
mission.”

Jim Brown, Koop's aide, said
Koop’s seemingly liberal stand on
AIDS, embodied in a report he is-
sued last October, stems simply
from his strong sense of duty.

said. “He has a lot of old-fashioned
values — abstinence until you're
married and a faithful, monoga-
mous relationship. But there are
peuple who will not listen (to such
advice), and he thinks you have to
tell them how to protect themselves
from catching AIDS. He has to take
into consideration that people could
die if they didn’t know what to do.”

It is that attitude that has earn-
ed Koop his surprising new coliec-
tion of friends — and enemies.

“He’s been incredibly good,
and we really didn’t expect it at all,”
said Urvashi Vaid of the National
Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “He
came out of what we thought was a
right-wing, Christian background.
Once he started meeting with peo-
ple and preparing his report, he
came to his own conclusions. It’s
made a tremendous difference.”

By contrast, Robert Grant,
chairman of the evangelistic Chris-
tian Voice group, described Koop as
a good man getting some bad ad-
vice.

“Dr. Koop is taking an Alice-in-
Wonderland approach to coping
with the worst epidemic in world
history,” said Grant. “It calls for
drastic measures, not for putting a
Band-Aid on cancer, which is what
condoms are to AIDS. He should
recommend abstinence. The sexual
revolution is over. It's come to a
screeching halt. People must be-
come adults and get their drives
under control.”

Koop said recently that no one
in the Reagan administration has
demanded that he curb his com-
ments, although he has lately begun
to stress family values as the most
important part of sex education in
schools.

Koop has not backed off from
his fundamental message.

“If you regard homosexual be-
havior as a sin,” he recently told a
convention of religious broadcast-
ers, “please remember that one of
your fundamental teachings has
been to ‘separate the sin from the
sinner.”