Former Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop dies at 96

C. Everett Koop, a courageous and brilliant pediatric surgeon who pioneered techniques for operating on newborn babies and became an outspoken and effective surgeon general, died Monday in New Hampshire at age 96.

Dr. Koop was one of the first surgeons to devote a career to treating children. In 33 years at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, he established the first neonatal intensive-care unit in the United States and won worldwide recognition for performing operations — such as the separation of conjoined twins — that had rarely, if ever, been done before.

With his widely publicized and historic operations on birth defects in the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Koop made Children's Hospital a kind of Lourdes where anguished parents came praying for modern medical miracles.

As a U.S. Surgeon General, he spoke out strongly against smoking, about teen suicide and domestic abuse, about drunk driving and the lack of medical insurance.

And he put aside his own fundamentalist Christian beliefs and conservative political views to treat such subjects as abortion and AIDS as public health issues, not moral or political ones.

He had no problem defending the apparent split between his Christian belief and his official activities. ''All I have done is face the issues that were there and deal with them with as much integrity and honesty as I could, and I'm somewhat surprised that everybody thinks I am so unusual,'' Koop told an interviewer for the Washington Post.

At 6-1, and 210 pounds, with a square Lincolnesque beard, a ringing voice, piercing eyes and a shoulders-back, chin-up military bearing, he reminded people of a Biblical prophet or a stern Puritan figure. When he was surgeon general, he liked to heighten the effect of his bearing by wearing the white uniform to which his office entitled him.