By Lewis Delavan
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The federal government’s top doctor must be allowed to be an independent advocate for scientific truth, three former U.S. surgeons general said today during a forum sponsored by the Arkansas Minority Health Commission.
Drs. Joycelyn Elders, Antonia Coello Novello and Richard Carmona each said it is vital for the surgeon general to be an advocate for science, even if it’s unpopular.
“The day you see the truth and fail to speak is the day you begin to die,” said Elders, a outspoken former Arkansas health director who was forced out as U.S. surgeon general under President Clinton after suggesting masturbation “perhaps should be taught” in schools. “So you can see, I’m going to live a long time.”
Novello served as surgeon general from 1990-1993 under President George H.W. Bush; Elders from 1993-1994; and Carmona from 2002-2006 under President George W. Bush.
Surgeons general have paradoxically become stronger under heavy fire and budget cuts, Carmona said.
“Polls have shown the most visible, credible person in the federal government is the surgeon general,” he said.
Carmona said Congress should mandate the surgeon general to present an annual state-of-public-health address.
Carmona said within a year after he warned that second-hand smoke dramatically increases the risk of heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmokers and can be controlled only by making indoor spaces smoke-free, 25 states banned smoking in public places.
Arkansas’ Clean Indoor Air Act banned most smoking in indoor public places on July 21, 2006, less than a month after Carmona’s warning.
The trio said the office has been politicized by Democrats and Republicans alike in the past four decades. All said the surgeon general should be allowed to give non-partisan, unbiased advice to Americans.
Novello said she was serving as a resident at a county hospital in the early 1980s when the medical staff noticed an unknown disease. She said researchers in 1983 identified it as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which may lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Then-Surgeon General Benjamin Koop came under heavy political fire for advocating safe sex techniques to help prevent HIV, Novello noted, recalling one politician in particular declared the disease “God’s punishment for homosexuals.”
Carmona said Koop’s insistence at publicizing that HIV was a preventable infectious disease helped prevent it from becoming a pandemic. Still, politicians called for Koop’s firing.
“President Reagan saved him, saying ‘he’s doing the right thing — he’s a doctor,’” Carmona said.
Elders said there’s nothing complex about good health; the hard part, she said, is convincing individuals to follow the basics: Eat breakfast; eat three meals daily; eat a high-fiber, low-saturated-fat diet; sleep six to eight hours daily; drink only in moderation and exercise 20-30 minutes at least five days a week.
Novello said it is vital for medical schools to teach about culture.
“If you don’t know the culture of the people, you will never have the best health care,” she said. “Culture is crucial. If you don’t understand it, you are going to fail.”
She said many other health needs should be addressed, as well. For example, she said, 17 percent of men never see a physician, and of those who do, many appointments are made by their spouses.
The state Minority Health Commission was created in 1991 with the goal of ensuring all minority Arkansans have equal access to health care. Its Web site says Elders, as Health Department director, played a key role in its establishment.
The summit was held as part of the commission’s “Healthy People 2020: Health Equity for All Arkansans” initiative, which aims to continually improve access to health care through 2020.
