Surgeon General

As the daughter of sharecroppers, Dr. Joycelyn Elders never expected successes to come easily in life. Even so, the delay of nine months between President Clinton's announcement of his intention to appoint her the nation's next surgeon general and her confirmation by the Senate last week was a difficult wait for a woman as focused and forceful as Dr. Elders.Her willingness to ruffle feathers by blunt talk about social and sexual realities guaranteed that hers would be a high-profile appointment, and that her confirmation would be a lightning rod for those who see partisan politics as the major front in a broad-based cultural conflict.

Washington's best-known chain smoker is Speaker of the House John Boehner. Its best-known sneak smoker is President Barack Obama. Mr. Boehner is tired of being queried about his habit, saying to Chris Wallace of Fox News, "Why is this a topic? Leave me alone. " The White House, on the other hand, has been adhering to a policy of trying to keep the presidential puffing from being a topic by ignoring questions about it. However, on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama ignited more talk about her husband's reputed five-cigarette-a-day habit by saying he has stopped smoking.

Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who is President Clinton's nominee for surgeon general of the United States, faces confirmation hearings before the Senate Labor Committee today that deserve to be fiercely controversial -- and educational. We support Dr. Elders without reservation, not least because she dares to shock the American public and enrage the religious right with blunt commentary on how this country should confront the searing problem of unwanted, unplanned teen-age pregnancies.She favors health education in schools that would alert adolescents of the perils they face before it is too late.

WASHINGTON - -In a historic shift in public health policy almost half a century after the U.S. surgeon general first warned of the lethal dangers of smoking, Congress is poised to give the federal government sweeping new authority to regulate the manufacturing of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The legislation, long resisted by the tobacco industry, could allow consumers to see for the first time what chemicals and other additives tobacco companies put in their products. It would empower the Food and Drug Administration to put new limits on harmful ingredients and prohibit tobacco companies from marketing "light" cigarettes.

WASHINGTON -- The fight over the nomination of Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. as surgeon general has become nearly as tortured and politicized as recent struggles over Supreme Court or Cabinet nominees.Heated congressional debate, war-room strategy-making, TV appearances -- all over a public health position that has little explicit responsibility, no policy involvement, a tiny budget and staff, and an oddly anachronistic military uniform.But the furor over the position of surgeon general, once a post of great administrative prominence and force, in many ways reflects the revamping of the 124-year-old job into a potentially powerful bully pulpit.

The debate over confirmation of Dr. Joycelyn Elders as surgeongeneral speaks volumes about the evolution of that office and its position in the contemporary health establishment. Only in recent times, shorn of most of its original administrative functions, has the office emerged as "First Doctor" to the nation and vocal advocate for health reform.The surgeon general, usually a three-star commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, is the lineal descendant of the "Supervising Surgeon" of the "Marine Hospital Service."

It's apparently time for another pointless debate over who should be surgeon general of the United States. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed M. Joycelyn Elders, who famously called for schools to teach young people how to masturbate. Now President Bush has tapped James W. Holsinger Jr., a surgeon and cardiologist from Kentucky, for the position. Dr. Holsinger evidently has some antediluvian views on homosexuality, which makes his fitness for office questionable, to say the least, and the usual suspects are preparing to do battle whether or not he should be confirmed.

WASHINGTON -- Setting off a firestorm that the administration immediately tried to extinguish, Surgeon General M. Joycelyn Elders said yesterday that she believes the legalization of drugs would dramatically reduce the nation's soaring crime rate.Speaking about violence as a public health issue at a National Press Club luncheon, Dr. Elders noted that the majority of violent crimes involve alcohol or drug use and asserted that othernations have legalized drugs with positive results."I do feel we'd markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalized," she said in response to a question.

WASHINGTON -- Amid right-wing attacks that Surgeon General nominee M. Joycelyn Elders is a radical, anti-family "Condom Queen," the White House and numerous health groups have mounted a full court press, hoping to head off the kind of opposition that derailed the controversial Lani Guinier nomination last month.Dr. Elders, the outspoken Arkansas health chief who has championed school-based health clinics, availability of contraceptives in schools, sex education beginning in kindergarten and abortion rights, is scheduled to go before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee for her confirmation hearing Friday.

Old Joe Camel, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. "smooth character," should hit the desert trail because his message is too seductive to children, the surgeon general and the American Medical Association said yesterday.Surgeon General Antonia Novello's invitation to cramp the style of Old Joe, who shoots pool, plays Las Vegas and woos women with a Camel in his snout, raised the stakes of a public relations battle over the marketing of tobacco and alcohol products. Ms. Novello's status as surgeon general -- and her notification yesterday of the Federal Trade Commission of her concern -- also raised a First Amendment issue.

President-elect Barack Obama has asked Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be the next surgeon general, looking to a popular television personality to help provide a public face for his health care agenda. A health and medicine correspondent for CNN and CBS, Gupta, 39, is also a practicing neurosurgeon in Atlanta and a member of the faculty of the Emory University School of Medicine. The surgeon general oversees some 6,000 officers in the commissioned corps of the Public Health Service. Gupta would bring to the post an unparalleled background as a communicator, having won widespread public recognition and a number of journalistic awards in recent years.

JULIUS RICHMOND, 91 Former U.S. surgeon general Dr. Julius Richmond, the U.S. surgeon general in the Carter administration who issued a report labeling cigarette smoking "slow-motion suicide," has died. Dr. Richmond, who was the first director of Head Start, died Sunday at his Boston-area home, said a spokeswoman for Harvard University, where Dr. Richmond was professor emeritus. In 1979, Dr. Richmond presented his Surgeon's General's Report on smoking, a follow-up to the 1964 report by an earlier surgeon general that led to warnings on cigarette packs.

When it comes to health and fitness, the magic pill may not be a pill at all. It may be something much harder to swallow. Many U.S. health professionals are adopting the decades-old directive of a Japanese researcher who said adults need to go for a long walk - 10,000 steps - nearly every day of the week. Children and people aiming to lose weight need more steps, and seniors need fewer. Other factors, such as medical conditions, also complicate the generic one-size-fits-all approach. But it's tough to find someone in the health arena who doesn't think more walking would benefit a lot of hearts, bones, muscles and even psyches.

The florid face, the heaving gut, that terrible wheezing he makes just getting out of the sleigh and landing with a thud on your roof like a pallet of cinder blocks. Let's not even get into blood pressure issues, cholesterol levels and body mass index. "A heart attack in a red flannel suit" - that's what they whisper at the doctor's office when he shows up for his annual physical. The question is this: Should Santa Claus be hitting the StairMaster? Is it time for the big guy to sign up for NutriSystem, join a gym, slim down, tone up and try to fit into those Dockers with the 36-inch waist again?

Richard Nixon was a crook. He was also a liar and anti-Semite who sought to subvert the Constitution. I wish he was president again. I'd also take Jimmy Carter, widely perceived as being about as effectual as Elmer Fudd, or Bill Clinton, fastest zipper in the West. Flawed men, yes, but say this much for them: When it came to a choice between people and party, between the public and the politics, there was at least a bare chance they would put the people, the public, first. No such chance exists with the current occupant of the mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue.

WASHINGTON -- Speaking days after the last surgeon general told Congress that he had been muzzled by the White House, President Bush's new nominee for the post told senators yesterday that he would quit before he let politics interfere with science. Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., a Kentucky cardiologist, also sought to distance himself from a 16-year-old church paper in which he characterized gay sex as abnormal and unhealthy. "I can only say that I have a deep, deep appreciation for the essential humanity of everyone, regardless of their personal circumstances or their sexual orientation," Holsinger, 68, told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

As the latest nominee for surgeon general prepares to face a Senate committee today, it's hard to know which is in worse condition: Dr. James Holsinger's prospects for confirmation or the future of the job itself. Dr. Holsinger arrives with the baggage of some controversial positions on homosexuality and stem cell research that have alienated interest groups on the left and the right. And he's coming days after his predecessor, Richard H. Carmona, gave Congress an outraged account of how the Bush White House muzzled his views on such critical issues as mental health and secondhand smoke, forcing him instead to address medical topics from a politically censored script.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's first surgeon general testified yesterday that his speeches were censored to match administration political positions and that he was prevented from giving the public accurate scientific information on issues such as stem cell research and teen pregnancy prevention. "Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," said Dr. Richard H. Carmona, surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, to a House committee.