I remember the scandals with masturbation and cigarettes, but other than that, I remember the Surgeon General being a very common site in interviews and PSAs as a general spokesperson about health matters in the US.
Our current Surgeon General is Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy, who has an excellent set of credentials, but no one knows who he is. If I remember correctly, the last Surgeon General in the public eye was during the Clinton administration.
What happened to this role?
EDIT: secondary question - was there any official word or some statement made by an administration or was the role just pushed out of the limelight?
Not my subject area but it would seem that the Surgeon General, although a respected position, has an ill-defined role, no budget and has been subject to increasing political constraint. Former Surgeon General, Richard Carmona (2002-2006), who resigned his position, was prevented from speaking out on topics like stem cell research, emergency contraceptives, the health of prisoners, mental health, secondhand smoking, and global health issues; he was also directed to include a reference to President Bush 3 times on every page of any speech that he gave and these speeches were vetted by the Department of Health and Human Services. He was prevented from travelling to conferences and also the Special Olympics (because of their association with the Kennedy family) David Stacher, Surgeon General under the Clinton Administration, also suffered interference when reporting on sexuality and public health - partly the result of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Likewise, under the Reagan Administration Everett Koop faced attempts to derail his AIDS campaign. Also, as you refer to, Joycelyn Elders, appointed in 1993, was fired by Clinton in 1994 due to the expression of controversial views on drug legalisation, masturbation, and abortion. Most of the above emerged during a 2007 hearing of the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at which six former Surgeon Generals spoke; they all reported political interference but Carmona faced the clearest and most explicit directives curtailing his pronouncements.
The position itself emerged out of that of the Supervising Surgeon of the Marine Hospital System which was created in the early 1870s as a central authority to reform an existing and run-down system of 30-40 federal hospitals for sailors. The US Marine Hospital Service evolved into the US Public Health Service and the position of the Surgeon General, the director of this service, grew in importance with the increase of the Federal Health Bureaucracy during the 20th century. By the 1960s, the Surgeon General, appointed from within the Public Health Service, was responsible for a variety of federal health programmes including the National Institute of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Indian Health Service. In 1964, the profile of the position was notably raised when Luther Terry released the first tobacco report in 1964.
In 1967, most of these Public Health Service roles were taken away from the Surgeon General and the position became largely ceremonial. When difficulties or controversies arose out of this role, some administrations elected to vacate or leave the post unfilled; under Nixon, there was no Surgeon General from 1972-76.
Everett Koop is commonly credited with creating a new role for the surgeon general as an advocate for public health during the AIDs crisis. Possibly the last serious attempt to resume that role was during the Joycelyn Elders tenure (forced to resign for discussing at a UN conference the potential value of encouraging masturbation to prevent AIDS). The Office does retain the role of promoting public health policy, but it appears to be heavily political constrained in the present.
Mike Stobbe, a journalist, has a book about the decline of the office, Surgeon General's Warning How Politics Crippled the Nation’s Doctor, and you can listen to an interview with him here.
Sorry I'm a youngster. But what is this masterbation scandal that you speak of?