To save as a PDF, click "Print" and select "Save as PDF" or "Print to PDF" from the Destination dropdown. On a mobile device, click the "Share" button, then choose "Print" and "Save as PDF".
Available From UC Press
Surgeon General's Warning
How Politics Crippled the Nation's Doctor
What does it mean to be the nation's doctor? In this engaging narrative, journalist Mike Stobbe examines the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, emphasizing that it has always been unique within the federal government in its ability to influence public health. But now, in their efforts to provide leadership in public health policy, surgeons general compete with other high-profile figures such as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Furthermore, in an era of declining budgets, when public health departments have eliminated tens of thousands of jobs, some argue that a lower-profile and ineffective surgeon general is a waste of money. By tracing stories of how surgeons general like Luther Terry, C. Everett Koop, and Joycelyn Elders created policies and confronted controversy in response to issues like smoking, AIDS, and masturbation, Stobbe highlights how this office is key to shaping the nation’s health and explailns why its decline is harming our national well-being.
Mike Stobbe is a national medical correspondent for The Associated Press and is based in New York City. He covers the CDC and writes on a range of health and medical topics. He has a doctorate in public health policy and administration from the University of North Carolina.
"Mike Stobbe's history of the U.S. surgeon general is more than a grand tour of American medicine. It is a thoughtful and engaging analysis of what the surgeons general did and do while pursuing the not-always-so-straight line of advancing the public's health."—Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, Director at the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, and Editor-in-Chief of The Milbank Quarterly
"Surgeon General's Warning is a fascinating, thoroughly researched historical tour of the political battlefields of U.S. public health. We watch successive surgeons general lead noble charges—or beat cowardly retreats—in struggles to marshal indifferent, embarrassed, or corrupt administrations against plagues ranging from venereal disease to tobacco and from AIDS to obesity."—Arthur Allen, author, Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver
"Well researched, engagingly written."—Jill Center, Senior Health Policy Analyst
"Surgeon General's Warning is a fascinating, thoroughly researched historical tour of the political battlefields of U.S. public health. We watch successive surgeons general lead noble charges—or beat cowardly retreats—in struggles to marshal indifferent, embarrassed, or corrupt administrations against plagues ranging from venereal disease to tobacco and from AIDS to obesity."—Arthur Allen, author, Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver
"Well researched, engagingly written."—Jill Center, Senior Health Policy Analyst