For his first three years as U.S. Surgeon General, Koop had been prohibited to publicly address AIDS, an issue of great controversy within the Reagan Administration. Once Koop's superiors in the Department of Health and Human Services reversed their position and allowed him to discuss AIDS--the greatest public-health crisis of the late 20th-century--Koop went on a three-year crusade to inform Americans about the disease and to help them protect themselves from it. Between 1986 and 1989, he was the most prominent--and often only--government spokesman on the AIDS epidemic.
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