Koop announced that cigarette packs had to carry a warning statement (1964). I was still a kid but I recognized the intrusion of government into my life. I started smoking that very day as my own act of defiance.
Me too - very young, but recognized it!
Koop wasnt surgeon general until 1981 under Reagan.
But he made up for it, in part, in 1979 by conjoining a half-dozen Democrats into a sort of ‘human centipede.” He experimented with lab rats as well and the surgery was conducted under rigorous scientific standards in the basement of the WH. They were volunteers (more-or-less) but you don’t hear much about it. It was controversial.
They were separated ten years later and asked to be called “Dianne Feinstein.” Yes, there are actually six of them.
That was William H. Stewart Surgeon General under LBJ, NOT C. Everett Koop, SG under Reagan. Koop was also very strongly anti-Smoking but not the first to put warnings on cigarettes.