Lectures Vol. 1~Tab K (Pst. SG yrs.) cover
Public Health and Private Lives
By
C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD

A Response on Receiving the Cosmos Club Award 1989
Cosmos Club

Washington, DC

October 19, 1989
The Cosmos Club is a relatively unique social club in Washington, where membership is
based not upon family background, money, or one’s position in society, but rather on
achievement. It was originally a literary club, but now is much more universal in
membership. The club boasts of a large number of Pulitzer prize winners, of Nobel prize
winners, of Cosmos Club Award winners, and more recently of winners of the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, whose pictures are framed along the corridor that
parallels Massachusetts Avenue and runs the length of the original building. I made the
latter two collections, but not the former two and this address was given on the occasion
of my receiving the Cosmos Club Award of 1989, just fifteen days after I had left my role
as Surgeon General and was once again a member of the private sector.

I announced at the onset that I wanted to talk about the experiences of citizen C. Everett
Koop as he participated in one corner of the American national government over the
previous eight years. Not a “kiss and tell” story. It began with a frank assessment of how
I felt and what I thought I should do in those eight long months I waited for confirmation
as Surgeon General.

The premise of my remarks was that government service forces you to know more than
you already know — even more than you may care to know -- about the way our
democracy works and about the motives, good and bad, of one’s fellow citizens, which
includes colleagues and close friends — and of course, about yourself.

I covered what I thought, at that time, were the highlights of my eight-year stint as
Surgeon General.

I truly bared my soul in this exposition and concluded with the sure knowledge that one
can make a difference in public service and that the difference may be in oneself, as well
as in one’s nation. Both are definitely worth the trouble.