Surgeon General U S

The nation's first Latino surgeon general came to Los Angeles on Friday and challenged members of her own ethnic community to throw off "cultural contradictions" and educate their children about AIDS. "AIDS is no longer a disease of women and men," Antonia Novello declared. "AIDS is a disease of families."

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said the majority of Republicans in the Senate would not consider the legal abortions performed by President Clinton's nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr., to be grounds for rejecting him. "I think when we come down to the narrow question about whether he's disqualified for having done something which is legal, that a majority of Republican senators will support him," Specter said on CNN's "Newsmaker Saturday."

Eighty-seven GOP House members sought the resignation of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders on Friday, escalating a conflict over Democrats' attacks on right-wing Republicans. The Republicans' letter to President Clinton came two days after Elders, according to newspaper accounts, referred to the "un-Christian religious right" and added: "We've got to be strong to take on those people who are selling our children out in the name of religion."

The White House on Tuesday broadened its investigation into the abortion record of Surgeon General-nominee Dr. Henry Foster Jr. as rising criticism from Congress began to transform the issue into a question of Clinton Administration credibility and competence. Stung by criticism that his White House initially gave Congress faulty information on Foster's abortion history, President Clinton vowed that he would stand by him in the face of opponents' claims that he had ended hundreds of pregnancies.

Ninety-nine senators asked Surgeon General C. Everett Koop on Monday to declare drunk driving a "national crisis," but Koop said he believed the problem was most effectively handled locally. At a news conference, Koop said that "we must be clear on one major point: When the American people, acting at the community and state levels, decide they want to get drunk drivers off our roads, that's when it will happen."

Under a hot sun, in the middle of a neighborhood recently torn by violence and racial tension, the surgeon general of the United States on Tuesday brought a universal message to the parents of the Jordan Downs Housing Project in Watts: Immunize your children. "Our children are in harm's way," Dr. Antonia Novello told the crowd.

Does America need a national "family doctor"? With the bitter battle over surgeon general nominee Henry W. Foster Jr. ending in defeat for President Clinton, Republicans on Capitol Hill are expected to escalate their efforts to do away with the job entirely, stirring fierce debate over the role of the nation's top doctor. Has the job of surgeon general become so ideological, so political and so divisive that it has outlived and diminished its usefulness?

Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. saved the life of the mayor's infant son. He talked a scared and confused Joyce German out of an abortion. He ran a network of prenatal clinics that persuaded young, poor women to abandon their midwives. And he delivered babies. "Oh, the babies," recalled his nurse, Thelma Walker-Brown. "Lots of babies. Babies, babies, babies." He was just out of medical school when he came to Tuskegee. Young, ambitious, trained in modern medicine.

After more than two decades of delivering grim statistics about the dangers of cigarettes, the annual surgeon general's report on smoking released Tuesday brought some good news--it is never too late to quit. "Smoking cessation has major and immediate health benefits for men and women of all ages," Surgeon General Antonia C. Novello said at a press conference.

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials. The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S.