Lecture Pst. SG yrs Vol. 18/3 May 29, 1990 cover
Speech

Brown University Medical School
Commencement

Providence, Rhode Island
May 29, 1990

By

C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD

 

In this archive, the user will find my 6 commencement addresses on “Ethical Imperatives
For The Young Physician.” Another series I did at a later date on the Hippocratic oath
given in several medical schools. There is the only one other commencement speech in
this archive besides the first one that I gave right after being appointed as Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Health at a time when I was very unpopular with the press
resulting in a fairly hostile reception by the University of California at Irvine. This
lecture to Brown is more or less the type of commencement address I was giving in 1990.
I have mentioned else where in this archive that 1990 was the first spring that I was out of
office and I turned down the offer of 30 honorary degrees that spring and gave just a
modest number of commencement addresses. The day before this one I had spoken at
Vassar College, my wife’s school, where I apparently was the first commencement
speaker that ever had courted a Vassar student successfully and married her.

Leaving the outdoor commencement at Vassar I stepped into an animal hole in the
ground and sprained my ankle, which was a burden at Brown where it is the custom for
the entire graduating class of the whole University to start on a march from the campus,
early in the morning, with each graduate school making its way to a separate venue for
it’s own commencement exercises.