Nigel Cameron

When credibility is your only asset: the cautionary tale of DrKoop.com [PODCAST] Historian and ethicist Nigel Cameron discusses his article, "How DrKoop.com rose and fell: the untold story behind the Surgeon General's startup." The conversation chronicles the dramatic history of t...

My latest podcast with KevinMD on Dr. Koop: The Many Lives of the Surgeon General

kevinmd.com/2025/06/when...

How DrKoop.com rose and fell: the untold story behind the Surgeon General’s startup C. Everett Koop’s ambitious venture into online health care through DrKoop.com soared briefly before collapsing under the weight of blurred ethics, failed business strategies, and lost public trust.

How DrKoop dot com, briefly the world's top health site, helmed by Koop in his 80s - how it rose and how it fell; from my new Koop biography. "The definitive biography for decades to come," per Randy Balmer. Per top online medic KevinMD. kevinmd.com/2025/04/how-...

Kristi Noem’s Bag, With Security Badge and $3,000, Is Stolen (Gift Article) The homeland security secretary was dining at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. She also lost her passport and keys.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/u...

Who has $3K cash?

The Blogs: What Israel can learn from the many lives of Dr. Koop From the blog of Kenneth Ryesky at The Times of Israel

blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-israel-...

Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking, says professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University

The kicker is in the last para.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

C. Everett Koop’s fearless fight against the tobacco industry In his first major press conference as U.S. surgeon general, C. Everett Koop boldly confronted Big Tobacco, reshaping the government’s stance on smoking, challenging industry narratives, and cementing...

Here's an extract from my biography of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, published later this month by U Mass Press. Enjoy - and buy one! This from the top physician site, KevinMD: kevinmd.com/2025/03/c-ev...

Everything is terrible, so why not learn about the first woman to run for US president in 1872. It is a story of defiance and success against incredible odds, so maybe it can cheer us all up a little…

Looking forward to the publication of my biography of Dr. Koop! Next month from U Mass Press.

So MS is raising its price for our account by just less than one-third. I'm relieved that this will help fund "new innovations." Seriously....

Sigh

Macron, Tusk to discuss deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine after ceasefire, Bloomberg reports French President Emmanuel Macron is visiting Warsaw on Dec. 12 to brief the Polish prime minister on his meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump last week and to discuss Europe's support for Uk...

⚡️ Macron, Tusk to discuss deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine after ceasefire, Bloomberg reports.

President Macron is visiting Warsaw on Dec. 12 to brief the Polish prime minister on his meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump last week.

How a Stowaway at J.F.K. Airport Made It All the Way to Paris (Gift Article) Prosecutors accused Svetlana Dali, 57, of hiding among other travelers during a busy travel day before Thanksgiving.

I hope this lady, who is plainly a bit of a nut, gets a reward for showing how ridiculous is airport "security."

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/n...

They gave envelopes of cash. A sheriff made them ‘auxiliary’ deputies, feds say. Ex-Culpeper Sheriff Scott Jenkins goes on trial Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, charged with multiple counts of bribery and fraud.

A (depressing) American tale. wapo.st/3ZMBnvQ

German opposition leader Friedrich Merz, during a visit to Kyiv, confirmed his readiness to provide Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles if he heads the German government after the elections in February 2025.
www.holosameryky.com/a/merz-pidtv...

Ah, Eurostar! As in the sub-channel original. Crummy wifi and filthy windows. Always. Plus decaying seat-backs and no holders for drinks. And inane nagging messages on the TV screens. #monopoly

Happy days!

Ahem.... Of course this raises rather starkly two very different issues, one of which is that a gazillion smart folk (including a bunch of my friends) decided to go MAGA; the other is that the MAGA analysis assumes that America ain't great, which is pretty unobservant and, well, unpatriotic.

I suspect someone will get a Nobel for the physics of moving around on a bus.

I'm reminded of Nicholas Kristoff's comment on George W. Bush's PEPFAR, said now to have saved 20m+ lives in Africa - the single best policy of any prez in his lifetime. (Of course, as the sadly late Mike Gerson - who had a lot to do with it - pointed out, Koop had laid the groundwork....)

When Nazi Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.

Well, there’s a story.

One of the fun things about living in Belgium is that many of the locals don't know or care who is "in power," bolstered by the fact that there have been long periods with no-one at all at the helm.

Most admired President or Prime Minster currently in power. Any candidates right now or are we calling the whole thing off?

Haha. Distinctly weird to be revisiting one's Twitter youth.

13,000 journals for free!

Wel, it's complicated! One reason why Americans love criticizing the UK single-payer model, and vice versa, is that neither wants to look at continental Europe. In Belgium and France, where we live now, the systems are hybrid. We are required to buy private insurance from what are called mutuals.

"We've spent the last 2 or 3 days talking about what the police are doing, and I wanted to address the question, what did the killer do to make it possible that we're still talking about a massive manhunt?" @cnn.com about my @theatlantic.com essay.

Opinion | The Rage and Glee That Followed a C.E.O.’s Killing Should Ring All Alarms (Gift Article) It echoes another era of extreme inequality and extreme violence.

I'm reminded of a flight I took many years back seated beside an increasingly drunk executive of a health insurance company, who spent a couple of hours telling me how they made their money out of denying care, and how bad he felt about it. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/o...

Iran Begins to Evacuate Military Officials and Personnel From Syria (Gift Article) The withdrawals by one of President Bashar al-Assad’s key backers come amid a resurgent rebel offensive.

Extraordinary report from the NYT on Iranian evacuation from Syria. This looks like much more than a routine dependents' safety move. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/w...

Today's Brussels delight!