The surgeon general is responsible for sharing scientifically-based information with the public so that they can improve their health. But I will say personally that my goal as surgeon general is to help build a culture of prevention in America so that we are a nation that is as good at preventing illness as we are at treating it.
The first job of the president of the United States is to protect your safety and your security and the security and safety of your family.
In honor of Surgeon General Koop's legacy, we should ensure that the position of surgeon general is protected from political interference, funded appropriately and nominated from the ranks of career public health professionals who merit consideration, as is done in the other uniformed services.
Our current draconian laws prohibiting the use of marijuana by responsible adults are doubly flawed. Not only does such prohibition violate fundamental freedoms but also. . . it undermines personal health and public safety. Regardless of your views on the civil liberties issues. . .another compelling justification for marijuana law reform: that it will promote health and safety for all of us, including our nation's children.
As 17th U.S. Surgeon General, I was privileged to serve as the nation's doctor. I focused much of my time on promoting proven programs and individual steps that lead to good health.
The federal government has the responsibility to protect the nation's public health, to protect us from foreign threats. And it [Zika] really is an illness that we are seeing arrive from abroad. So it is a threat to public health, and it is the federal government's job to cooperate in this.
I've had opportunities before to run for office - the Republicans recruited me when I was surgeon general, to run for Congress, to run against Gov. Napolitano. But I didn't feel it was my calling... I felt, 'Well, I'm flattered, but I really would rather stay and be the doctor of the nation and stay as surgeon general.'
I believe a nation does not maximize its health care until it starts to ask the hard question: How can we prioritize our expenditures to buy the most health care for the most people? We should not apologize for rationing; we should promote it and advance it.
The security of our nation depends on the men and women who are willing to sacrifice their safety, and possibly their lives, to protect the freedoms the rest of us enjoy.
A surgeon will cut off a limb in order to protect the body from disease. And a commander-in-chief should pull out of a war that cannot be won in order to protect a nation.
Now our job, our duty, our responsibility to ensure the safety and security of our citizens cannot be complete unless we guarantee health care security for our citizens.
A grateful world, nation and cadre of surgeons general who followed in his shadow are forever indebted to Surgeon General Koop's wisdom, fortitude, integrity and selfless service.
Security is still the most important issue facing Washington state residents and millions of Americans - the security of having a job, of access to affordable health care, of a quality education, and of protecting our homeland and defending our nation.
Everyone has values, and values their family, values their health, their sanity, their safety and security, and their families, their parents, their children, their pets, their environments, well-being in general.
Human beings have a drive for security and safety, which is often what fuels the spiritual search. This very drive for security and safety is what causes so much misery and confusion. Freedom is a state of complete and absolute insecurity and not knowing. So, in seeking security and safety, you actually distance yourself from the freedom you want. There is no security in freedom, at least not in the sense that we normally think of security. This is, of course, why it is so free: there's nothing there to grab hold of.
It's always been government's role to protect the security of the nation. And cyber-attacks is a security issue, from our perspective. And it's a security issue of particular concern with respect to the nation's core critical infrastructure, the infrastructure everyone relies on, the energy sector, the telecommunications sector, the banking sector.