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 […]

Thomas E. Kurtz and “A Few Good Men”

Mike Magee This has been a challenging week for me, but not for the reasons you might think. Compartmentalization skills have allowed me to push the 2024 Presidential election into the back reaches of my mind as I worked to complete teaching a course on “AI and Medicine” at the Presidents College at the University […]

American Science’s “Odd Couple” – Dr.’s Koop and Fauci.

The following 5-part series is excerpted from an as yet unpublished history of 20th Century medicine in the United States by Mike Magee MD. PART I: The Conversion of C. Everett Koop On the day after Ronald Reagan’s election, Christian conservative Jerry Falwell was euphoric. As he said, “I knew that we would have some […]