Jump to full article: AP, 2009-07-14
Author: MIKE STOBBE
Intro: he U.S. Surgeon General has been described as "the nation's doctor," a "national nanny" and the person who puts warning labels on cigarette packs. But lately, the position has been mostly called something else: invisible.
Once the government's leading voice on health issues, the surgeon general faded into relative obscurity in recent years. When asked to name a surgeon general, many people can only recall Dr. C. Everett Koop — the famous Reagan appointee with the look and bearing of a biblical prophet.
Some thought that would change under the Obama administration . . .
The job of surgeon general was created in 1870 to oversee the reorganization of a government network of hospitals for sailors, which was in shambles. The first surgeon general adopted a military model, creating a cadre of uniformed government physicians that could be sent anywhere they were needed.
Those uniformed doctors became medical heroes. They figured out that malnutrition was causing the pellagra illness that plagued the American South. They confined a dangerous plague outbreak in San Francisco. They coordinated care for millions of Americans sickened by the deadly Spanish flu.
Meanwhile, the surgeon general's power grew, with oversight of such agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as they came into being. For decades, surgeons general were chosen from within the ranks of federal public health agencies.
Perhaps the surgeon general to have the biggest impact was Dr. Luther Terry, who in 1964 released a report that was seen as the government's official confirmation that smoking causes lung cancer. It influenced millions to stop smoking.
"It was one of the most important public health reports or public health pronouncements in medical history," said Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society's chief medical officer.
However, by the mid-1960s, some political leaders had grown discontented with the surgeon general's troops, believing they had dragged their feet in implementing Great Society programs like Medicare. A government reorganization in 1968 stripped the post of administrative powers, and since then the surgeon general mainly has been a health educator and spokesman, reporting to an assistant secretary of health and human services. . . .
"She'll bring a front-line perspective you rarely hear in policy discussions," he said.
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