The overarching issue, really, is our surgeon general should be able to communicate transparently and honestly with the American public on all issues.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In honor of Surgeon General Koop's legacy, we should ensure that the position of surgeon general is protected from political interference, funded appropriately and nominated from the ranks of career public health professionals who merit consideration, as is done in the other uniformed services.
Surgeons always underestimate the pain and disability involved in what they do to people.
It worries me about our unwillingness to really address reforms and modernization in Medicare. This thing was designed 37 years ago. It has not evolved to keep pace with current medical technology.
The insistence that the commercialisation of the body is a fit subject for political discussion and intervention is well overdue.
A surgeon will cut off a limb in order to protect the body from disease. And a commander-in-chief should pull out of a war that cannot be won in order to protect a nation.
I really think the most important thing I do is to protect the dignity and the integrity of the Office of the Surgeon General.
We are spending most of our time in American health care fixing the mistakes that either we in the profession are causing or our patients are, without recognizing it, causing to themselves.
The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science - that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.
Folks really need to be very cautious about overanalyzing or overparsing what I've said to this reporter or that reporter.
I don't have to talk to a surgeon to play a surgeon, you know what I mean?