Dr. Koop's Digital Korner

November 16, 2018 11:46 AM

How famed U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, at the age of 82, became an internet entrepreneur, and why his namesake website burned out, fast. (from Ernie Smith's excellent Tedium newsletter)
posted by Etrigan (9 comments total)

The mistake is that he didn't have a jingle:

For all the latest medical poop
Call Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
Poo poo pa-doop.
posted by SansPoint at 12:17 PM on November 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

The mistake is that he didn't have a jingle:

ahem(nsfw audio)
posted by thelonius at 1:31 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Say what you will about ol' C. Everett, dude had a snazzy Lincoln beard. That plus the Admiral costume went a long way to establishing his credibility with the 95% of people who believe "Doctor" = "old white man."
posted by basalganglia at 2:09 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Chiming in to say that years before the Surgeon General appointment, in the late 50s or early 60s, my family had a connection to Dr. Koop. My mothers youngest sister was born with some sort of odd growth on her neck. It looked like a mole, but it extended through her neck and ended extremely closely to her spinal cord. Dr. Koop was the surgeon who performed the very delicate operation to remove the growth, and my aunt never had any complications afterward.

Just my two cents.
posted by annieb at 4:19 PM on November 16, 2018 [9 favorites]

I always thought his whole beard/outfit was what it would look like if a Kentucky Colonel was promoted.
posted by MysticMCJ at 7:14 PM on November 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

They kept claiming that it was a fascinating story, but it was literally just "an old dude bought a website but let it get way too commercialized until it collapsed because it wasn't good enough." That's the "dog bites man" of internet websites, especially from the early dot-com boom.
posted by Scattercat at 7:15 PM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

General C. Everett Koop Is my favorite of all the US Surgeons General.
posted by vorpal bunny at 10:40 PM on November 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

Interesting article. Koop was a legit public heath icon, and after reading the article, I feel a bit sad that he kind of...well, it just seems he got taken advantage to some degree. I don't think it has tarnished his overall legacy, thankfully.
posted by davidmsc at 8:56 AM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

He definitely put the General in Surgeon General.

I'm not sure there's much to say about the website except that he bungled it, but it's not as though anybody really had a good formula for how to run one at the time. Lots of other people tried and failed. I think he deserves some credit for understanding the importance of technology and trying for it, though; lots of political figures of his generation (guy was born in 1916) never grasped that.

It's an interesting footnote, but hopefully only a small-print part of his legacy. Even if you don't agree with all his personal beliefs, and I certainly don't, it's hard to deny that the guy seemed to take his job protecting public health in the US seriously, and he navigated some pretty ugly political waters to do it.

Though I have to admit, my favorite Surgeon General is probably Dr. Joycelyn Elders; Koop gets a close second.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:26 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]