Why President George H. W. Bush “froze out” Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Mike Magee For the past seven years the AIDS epidemic had raged throughout America. One year earlier, an AIDS activist group had coalesced in Greenwich Village, New York. They called themselves ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). They were largely HIV-positive individuals who were fed up with being given the cold shoulder by government […]

Koop’s Ghost of Christmas Past Haunts RFK Jr.

Mike Magee The Ghost of Christmas Past, in the form of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, has returned this season to torture one RFK Jr who refuses to fully share life saving vaccines with children. In the encounter, the ghostly Koop reviews a time 37 years ago when citizens came together to celebrate separating […]

Covid – “A Mirror for Social Thought and Plausible Action.”

Mike Magee As we enter the third year of the Covid pandemic, with perhaps a partial end in sight, the weight of the debate shows signs of shifting away from genetically engineered therapies, and toward a social science search for historic context. Renowned historian, Charles E. Rosenberg, envisioned a similar transition for the AIDS epidemic […]