Dr. C. Everett Koop became nationally prominent as the U.S. Surgeon General from 1981 to 1989. Opinion polls rank him as the nation’s most trusted health authority. In 1998, together with other investors, he established DrKoop.com, a health information Web site. A prospectus filed at the time with the Securities and Exchange Commission stated that the company intended to “establish the DrKoop.com brand so that consumers associate the trustworthiness and credibility of Dr. C. Everett Koop with our company.” The stock held by Koop at the time of the initial offering is worth over $47 million (on paper, as of September, 1999).

Regrettably, DrKoop.com and Koop personally have betrayed the trust of the public through practices such as the following:

• The site offered visitors a list of hospitals and health centers that it described as “the most innovative and advanced health care institutions across the country.” The list was actually an advertisement for the institutions listed, each of which had paid DrKoop.com a fee of about $40,000 to be included.

• Similarly, the site’s “Find a health care provider near you” service only helped visitors find providers who had paid money to the site to be included.

• The company received undisclosed commissions on health products and services sold because of its Web site.

• The site declared Quintiles Transnational Corp. to be “the world’s leading clinical organization.” Quintiles uses DrKoop.com to recruit volunteers for clinical trials of new drugs for pharmaceutical companies. The Koop Web site did not mention that its arrangement with Quintiles entitled it to receive a payment from Quintiles for each person enrolled in a trial through DrKoop.com.

  Critics have charged that patients’ interests are not adequately protected in commercially run clinical trials of drugs. The issue is currently being investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

• In an apparent violation of American Medical Association ethics rules, Koop would personally have been entitled, under the site’s original plan, to 2% of the payments from Quintiles. AMA rules state that “payment by or to a physician solely for the referral of a patient is fee splitting and is unethical.”

• Koop has formed a partnership with the American Council on Science and Health, a group funded by industry and private foundations and viewed by consumer advocates as having a pro-industry bias. Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, says the group “has never met a pesticide it didn’t like.” A press release describing Koop’s partnership said it was intended to provide consumers with “an unbiased, scientific analysis of the latest trends in health and medicine, as well as clarifications of health misinformation found in the mainstream press.”

• Koop personally lobbied members of Congress on behalf of the Schering-Plough Corp. to help it obtain a valuable patent extension, without disclosing that his nonprofit organization, the Koop Foundation, had earlier in the year received a $1 million grant from Schering-Plough.

The above is based largely on “Hailed as a Surgeon General, Koop Criticized on Web Ethics,” The New York Times, September 4, 1999.