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The first full biography of Reagan's famous Surgeon General, who put science before politics—cutting smoking by 25%, leading the fight against AIDS, and shocking both liberals and conservatives on abortion.

When Ronald Reagan chose C. Everett Koop to be Surgeon General of the United States in 1981, liberal politicians, women's groups, and even the public health community opposed the nomination because of his conservative social views and strong anti-abortion beliefs. By the time he left office in 1989, the same people who had vilified him as “Dr. Kook” were singing his praises, and many conservative politicians and activists who had championed his nomination were criticizing him as a traitor. He had also become “the only surgeon general [who was] a household name,” according to the Associated Press, because of his ubiquitous media exposure around the HIV/AIDS crisis, his unique look, and his savvy with the press. How had Koop remade himself and this once major government office, which sounded grand but in the 1960s had been stripped to a minor advisory role?

As Nigel M. de S. Cameron shows, Koop was, above all, guided in his decisions by his unwavering physician’s commitment to saving lives. Even in the face of political pressures and what many expected to be his personal beliefs, he focused on science and public health. On smoking, abortion, and AIDS he openly defied Republican politicians and alienated New Right conservatives because his reading of the science did not support their ideologies. It was this adherence to science, health, and office that led him to refuse to campaign on abortion, seek compromise on the disabled “Baby Doe” case, relentlessly go after Big Tobacco, and finally reach out to the gay community as AIDS and fear of AIDS exploded. Both supporters and detractors consistently misjudged him.

This first full biography of Koop draws on thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews with family, friends, and colleagues to tell the story of the precocious boy from Brooklyn who was already the world’s most celebrated pediatric surgeon when he became Surgeon General and one of the most recognizable public figures in late-20th century America. Koop remains a sterling example—to both left and right—of how public officials should conduct themselves.

Filling a significant gap in contemporary scholarship, Driven by Fear looks at the past to offer critical lessons for our age of bioterror threats and emerging infectious diseases.

On August 26, 1960, twenty-three-year-old Danish cyclist Knud Jensen, competing in that year's Rome Olympic Games, suddenly fell from his bike and fractured his skull. His death hours later led to rumors that performance-enhancing drugs were in his system. Though certainly not the first instance of doping in the Olympic Games, Jensen's death serves as the starting point for Thomas M. Hunt's thoroughly researched, chronological history of the modern relationship of doping to the Olympics. Utilizing concepts derived from international relations theory, diplomatic history, and administrative law, this work connects the issue to global political relations.

During the Cold War, national governments had little reason to support effective anti-doping controls in the Olympics. Both the United States and the Soviet Union conceptualized power in sport as a means of impressing both friends and rivals abroad. The resulting medals race motivated nations on both sides of the Iron Curtain to allow drug regulatory powers to remain with private sport authorities. Given the costs involved in testing and the repercussions of drug scandals, these authorities tried to avoid the issue whenever possible. But toward the end of the Cold War, governments became more involved in the issue of testing. Having historically been a combined scientific, ethical, and political dilemma, obstacles to the elimination of doping in the Olympics are becoming less restrained by political inertia.